My earliest memory of Paul Robeson is from about 1960. My brother, Mike and I were listening to a Pete Seeger record with a song Pete wrote entitled “Hold the Line,” which was about a Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York in 1949. The concert was canceled after it was attacked by racists and fascists, but Robeson returned in less than a week with union members and former servicemen defending the concert. While we were listening to the song, my dad walked in and said, “Your grandfather was there.” My grandfather, Abraham Goldfield, was a typesetter in Manhattan. He could set type in English, Russian, and Yiddish. My dad could do it in English and Yiddish. My grandfather was a member of the Communist Party USA, and he did a lot of typesetting for them. So, it was no surprise that he had gone to such an event. Incidentally, I have also worked as a typesetter for the Black Panther Party in their printshop in Oakland in 1981. I typeset the last five issues of their newspaper.

My dad had two favorite singers. One was the great Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso. My grandfather had Caruso 78s, and once I found a CD of Caruso and gave it to my dad as a present. The other favorite was Paul Robeson, and at my dad’s memorial service in 2002, I played Robeson singing “Joe Hill.”

Paul Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1898 and died in 1976. His father was a minister in Princeton, which was an outpost of the Jim Crow south in southern New Jersey. Wealthy southerners often sent their sons to Princeton. And before he became president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, was president of Princeton. Wilson was a notorious racist. Paul, however, went to the state university, Rutgers, which is in New Brunswick, on a full scholarship. Robeson was the only African-American at Rutgers at that time. There he was an outstanding student, and a two-time consensus All-American football player, though his name was removed from the list because he was African-American. He was also elected valedictorian of his class. He then went on to get a law degree at Columbia and played in the National Football League for the Akron Pros at the same time.

Robeson went on to Broadway, where he starred in plays and then musicals. He sang “Ol’ Man River” in Showboat and continued to sing it for his entire career, though he gradually made the lyrics more radical. He toured the world until the State Department revoked his passport in 1950, and only returned it eight years later.  Robeson could speak and sing in more than twenty languages. Once when he was in Sydney, Australia, he visited the new opera house, which was under construction, and he gave an impromptu concert for the workers who were building it.

Sony released this 14-CD set with a 159-page book in 2024. It has many, many photos and two introductions: one by Shana L. Redmond and one by Susan Robeson, Paul Robeson’s granddaughter. It also has a filmography and photos from Robeson’s career on stage. Two of the discs in this box set are live concerts from the Mother A.M.E. Zion Church in Harlem and from the Royal Albert Hall in London. Disc 1 has early Victor and RCA recordings from 1925 to 1940. It includes traditional songs, as well as “Ol’ Man River,” and John Latouche and Earl Robinson’s “Ballad for Americans.” Disc 2 has HMV recordings from 1928 to 1929. Disc 3 has more from HMV in 1930 and 1931.  Disc four covers 1932 and 1933. Disc 5 takes us to 1936.  Disc 6 goes to 1937.  Disk 7 continues to 1938, and Disk 8 is from 1939. Disk 9 combines Columbia Masterworks recordings from 1942 and 1947. Disc 10 has more Columbia recordings from 1945 and 1947. Discs 11 and 12 are the two live concerts mentioned above. Discs 13 and 14 feature Robeson reading from Othello, which he played on stage in the title role in London in 1930 and on Broadway in 1943.

https://www.ccmusic.com/paul-robeson-voice-of-freedom-his-complete-columbia-rca-hmv/194399774526

Sony Records