The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet was founded in 1934 by four students at Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk, VA. With changes in personnel, and having dropped “Jubilee” at some point, the group is still performing today. They were extremely popular in the ’40s and ’50s, with many crossover performances. I first became aware of the group because they backed Leadbelly’s only recording of “Midnight Special,” which was evidently some producer’s idea of a good match. That clip is at the bottom of the post, so you can decide for yourselves if it works; I don’t think it does, despite the high talent levels, but you can decide for yourself at The Faculty Lounge.
Note: I am not sure how much longer there will be Saturday Music Posts. Typepad, the blogging platform for The Faculty Lounge and Prawfs, is closing down at the end of the month. TFL will hopefully be migrating to WordPress, but the process may not be able to transfer videos, including the 24 posts, with around 200 videos, I have queued up for the next six months. It takes a couple of hours to create each post, so I am not looking forward to recreating over 50 hours of work. Still working on transferring the queued posts, and will let readers know whether it is successful.
Posted by Steve Lubet on September 13, 2025 at 06:19 AM