Hand's up all those that have never heard "John Brown's Body"! It must be one of those songs that is known to the whole English-speaking world and even to those just starting to learn English. I certainly have known it since childhood, but the version I sing is that performed by Wilfried Drygala. I don't know where he learned it.
I well remember joining in a pub jazz session whilst on holiday in Richmond, London sometime in the mid-1990's and surprising the people around me with Wilfried's version which has six verses compared with the four-verse somewhat complicated version provided in The Story of the Jubilee Singers.
Brian Kelly and I loved wailing the "Glory, glory hallelujah! chorus, when singing in the Idle Fellows, in the quite normal manner, to us that was, of the typical demented English pub crowd, much to Wilfried's chagrin and annoyance.

Lyrics