Originally published in 1934, The Colored Sacred Harp contained 77 songs, all but one composed by black singers from southeast Alabama and northwestern Florida. Judge Jackson (1883–1958) first heard shape note singing as a teenager in Montgomery County, Alabama, and he was composing tunes of his own by his twenty-first birthday. In the 1920s, Jackson had several of his compositions printed on broadsheets and gave or sold them to friends and acquaintances in Ozark and Dale County. This is the 1973 revised edition.