11 Facts About Hall Johnson

Francis Hall Johnson was an American composer and arranger of African-American spiritual music.

Francis Hall Johnson was born on March 12,1888, the fourth of six children of Alice Virginia Sansom and William Decker Johnson, who was a bishop in the AME Church.

Hall Johnson attended the private, all-black Knox Institute and earned a degree from Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina.

Hall Johnson attended Atlanta University, the Juilliard School, Hahn School of Music, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Hall Johnson went on to play the violin and viola professionally, including in the orchestra for the 1921 musical, Shuffle Along.

Hall Johnson played in the orchestra led by James Reese Europe as it accompanied Vernon and Irene Castle on tour, and he played with the New York Syncopated Orchestra, led by Will Marion Cook in 1918.

Hall Johnson would go on to arrange music for and conduct his choir in more than thirty feature-length Hollywood films, besides a number of short films and cartoons.

Also in 1937, the Hall Johnson Choir was featured in the soundtracks of the Frank Capra film Lost Horizon, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Hal Roach's Zenobia.

In 1941 they returned for yet another Disney film, Dumbo, specifically for the song "When I See An Elephant Fly"; Hall Johnson himself voiced one of the crow characters, the Deacon Crow.

In 1951, the Hall Johnson Choir was selected by the United States Department of State to represent the United States at the International Festival of Fine Arts held in Berlin, Germany.

Hall Johnson's photograph, taken by Sidney Cowell in 1960, is included in the National Portrait Gallery of the United States.