The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square is pleased to release the second in a series of digital single recordings: “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head.” These digital release singles focus on music that brings peace, reflection, joy, and encouragement to listeners around the world. The Choir’s most recent prior digital single "Meditation," released last July, quickly took its place at the top of the Choir’s most listened-to tracks. “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head” is an introductory track for O Holy Night: Christmas with The Tabernacle Choir, which will be released digitally and physically on Friday, October 28.

Enjoy this digital release of “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head” by streaming it on Spotify and other streaming services. Watch the companion video on The Tabernacle Choir’s YouTube channel.  Use this link to connect to the streams and videos and to pre-order/pre-save/pre-add the track and album.

When taping the Choir’s 2021 Christmas performances, there was a hush in the Conference Center audience when 360 Choir members silently and quickly shifted position to encircle music director Mack Wilberg in the Conference Center choir loft.  and began to What followed was an emotional experience for everyone as the Choir sang so softly and gently an a cappella version of the American folk carol “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head.” The music of this reassuring lullaby, sometimes called “The Manger Cradle Song,” evoked to the listeners the tender scene of the Savior’s birth.

The music for “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head” was collected from Hardin County in central Kentucky in the early 20th century but, as with so many other folk carols and hymns, the song’s origins predate by many decades its collection and publication. Though still not widely known today, “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head” began to gain an audience through solo and choral arrangements during the American folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Mack Wilberg fashioned his a cappella arrangement of this soothing folk carol, especially for the 2021 Christmas concert.

The lyrics of this beautiful refrain take the form of a soothing serenade to the sleeping Christ Child on that first Christmas night. A single verse alludes to the disquieting conditions of the Holy Nativity—Mary and Joseph’s late arrival in Bethlehem, with an uncertain fate and (as the lyrics surmise) blowing winds—before concluding with the glorious serenity of the moment.

Jesus, Jesus, rest your head,
You have got a manger bed
All the little ones on Earth
Sleep in comfort at their birth.
Jesus, Jesus, rest your head,
You have got a manger bed.

Have you heard about our Jesus?
Have you heard about His fate?
How His mother went to the stable
On that Christmas Eve so late?
Winds were blowing, cows were lowing,
Stars were glowing, glowing, glowing.

Jesus, Jesus, rest your head,
You have got a manger bed.
All the little ones on Earth
Sleep in comfort at their birth.
Jesus, Jesus, rest your head,
You have got a manger bed.

Jesus, Jesus, rest your head,
You have got a manger bed.