Songfacts®:

• Also known as "What Kind of Shoes You Gwine To Wear?" (from the first line of its opening verse), this early Negro spiritual was popularized by the Fisk Jubilee Singers following the American Civil War and African American emancipation.
  
  The song was published in the Brandeis University monograph The Story Of The Jubilee Singers With Their Songs as "What kind of shoes are you going to wear?", wherein it was credited "Published in sheet form, with piano accompaniment, by John Church & Co, Cincinnati." The song as published was in the key of A Flat Major, and in 2/4 time. No composer, lyricist or arranger appears to have been credited.
  
  The religious/spiritual content is self-evident:
  
  What kind of shoes you going to wear? Golden slippers!
  What kind of crown you going to wear? Star-ry crown!"
  What kind of robe you going to wear? White robe!
  What kind of song you going to sing? New song!
• A recording was made by the (unaccompanied) Fisk University Jubilee Quartet in 1909.
  
  Although the Fisk Jubilee Singers were extraordinarily successful - the name continues into the 21st Century - this particular song was soon overtaken by the James Bland parody "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers!" >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2