[1] Recordings of various songs about the disaster date to as early as 1913.
White's 1928 book American Negro Folk-Songs, "The Titanic" has been traced back to 1915 or 1916 in Hackleburg, Alabama.
Other versions from around 1920 are documented in the Frank C. Brown Collection at Duke University in North Carolina.
Early recordings include Ernest Stoneman's "The Titanic" (Okeh 40288) in September 1924 and William and Versey Smith's "When That Great Ship Went Down" in August 1927.
According to Jeff Place, in his notes for the Anthology of American Folk Music:[4] "African-American musicians, in particular, found it noteworthy and ironic that company policies had kept Blacks from the doomed ship; the sinking was also attributed by some to divine retribution."