Dark was the night, cold was the ground

Blind Willie Johnson: "Dark was the night"

Like "Amazing Grace", "Dark was the night and cold the ground" was an eighteenth century English hymn.

Blind Willie Johnson's masterpiece was considered by Ry Cooder to be the most soulful and transcendent piece in all American music, and it was included in the symbolic Voyager Golden Record in the spacecraft launched in 1977.

I used "Dark was the night" as the opening of a film soundtrack back in 1965.

This intense and deeply moving wordless moan about the Crucifixion is based on the hymn "Dark was the night, and cold the ground" by Thomas Haweis, who was born in Cornwall in 1732 or 1734, and died in Bath on February 11, 1820. He is buried in Bath Abbey. Haweis was co-founder of the London Missionary Society. His hymns were published in Bath in 1792 (enlarged edition 1808), as "Carmina Christi, or Hymns to the Saviour. Designed for the Use and Comfort of Those Who Worship the Lamb that was Slain".

If you're in the gospel mood, try Blind Willies' "Let Your Light Shine On me"

I have that on an ancient 78rpm record.

Film version