American composer and band director John Joseph Morrissey (1906-1993) served as an officer in the music branch of the U.S. Army Special Services during World War II before beginning a long career as head of the music department and band director at Tulane University in New Orleans. He wrote numerous original works in the popular style in addition to many arrangements he made for band. SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT was one such arrangement, written for solo trombone with band accompaniment. While the solo is fully-written out, the well-known spiritual is very much set in the jazz style, with the accompaniment approached much as other jazz-style large ensemble works from the 1940s.