Five Songs for Martin Luther King That Folks Don’t Fully Know

By Seamus Gallivan

Martin Luther King is honored every day in The Good Neighborhood, for the first guiding principle of content on this site is his famous saying, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

On this day named in his honor, it is our penchant to produce a collection of songs that bear his inspiration. These lists exist elsewhere, and while many folks can conjure a few such songs quickly – from U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and “MLK” to Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” to Public Enemy’s “By the Time I Get to Arizona,” to name but a few – here are five that are either lesser known or whose connections to King are lesser told.

Donna the Buffalo – “Mr. King”

I saw Donna the Buffalo on New Year’s Eve 2000 at Skipper’s Smokehouse in Tampa, and they opened with this song. I’ve not heard it since until today, but the simple yet profound lyrics have stayed stuck in my head. That’s a song doing its job.

Patty Griffin – “Up to the Mountain”

It is one of the great and everlasting glories of the life of Martin Luther King that he was able to preach outside of his choir and connect his cause to the masses – for example, in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery, among King and some 8,000 marchers were Caucasian, Asian, and Latino advocates.

King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech in Memphis on the eve of his assassination in 1968, although focused on the sanitation workers’ strike in that city, spoke to social justice in general and the need for the United States to fulfill its founding principles. In closing, with grace and determination and without a hint of fear, he discussed the personal danger that he clearly felt closing in.

That powerful moment continues to inspire, including in this red-headed stranger from Maine who is considered among the greatest gospel singers, and whose song here was first delivered by King contemporary Solomon Burke.

Grant Green – “Selma March”

That 1965 Selma March was so triumphant because it was a third attempt at doing so after the first two were met with such bloody resistance that President Lyndon Johnson summoned Alabama Governor George Wallace to Washington, and declared before Congress, “What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause, too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

Those words were reported to have moved King to tears. After the first march had met a wall of state troopers, the third, just two weeks later, was protected by the US Army, Alabama National Guard, FBI agents and Federal Marshals, and upon arrival in Montgomery, a “Stars for Freedom” rally was held, with singers Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Peter, Paul and Mary, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nina Simone all performing.

Jazz guitarist Grant Green channels the triumph in the opening cut from his 1965 album, His Majesty King Funk.

Nina Simone – “Why? (The King of Love is Dead)”

While this song is widely known, this clip is of the full performance including a series of statements by Simone that were edited out of the album version.

Although Simone broke from from King’s pacifist message by advocating for a violent revolution and separate state earned by armed combat, her appearance at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island three days after King’s assassination and performance of this song written by her bass player, Gene Taylor, is nothing short of captivating and unifying. Balancing stunned sorrow with stern resolve, she opens herself up to a world of pain and power in the way that is her lasting legacy.

Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band – “We Shall Overcome”

This is another song that is widely known, although lesser so is how it connects to King.

Originally credited to Maryland-born gospel composer Charles Albert Tindley and published in 1947 as “We Will Overcome,” the wording was changed to “Shall” by Pete Seeger, seeking an easier roll off the tongue. Seeger sang it for a Highlander Folk School audience in 1957 that included King, who remarked at how much the song stuck with him. King recited the words in that final Memphis sermon in 1968, as well as to an interfaith congregation in Hollywood in 1965, following with a phrase that itself became famous – “We shall overcome. We shall overcome. Deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome. And I believe it because somehow the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”