Work began composing while still in high school and continued throughout his career, completing over one hundred compositions in a variety of musical forms—for full orchestra, piano, chamber ensemble, violin and organ—but his largest output was in choral and solo-voice music. He was awarded first prize in the 1946 competition of the Federation of American Composers for his cantata The Singers, and in 1947 he received an award from the National Association of Negro Musicians. In 1963 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Fisk University. Following Work's collection Negro Folk Songs, the bulk of which was recorded at Fort Valley, he and two colleagues from Fisk University, Charles S. Johnson, head of the department of sociology (later, in October 1946, chosen as the university's first black president), and Lewis Jones, professor of sociology, collaborated with the Archive of American Folk Song on the Library of Congress/Fisk University Mississippi Delta Collection (AFC 1941/002). This project was a two-year joint field study conducted by the Library of Congress and Fisk University during the summers of 1941 and 1942. The goal of the partnership was to carry out an intensive field study documenting the folk culture of a specific community of African Americans in the Mississippi Delta region. The rapidly urbanizing commercial area of Coahoma County, Mississippi, with its county seat in Clarksdale, became the geographical focus of the study. Some of the correspondence included in this collection between Work and Alan Lomax, then head of the Archive of American Folk Song, touches on both the Fort Valley and the emerging Fisk University recording projects. The legendary Muddy Waters was first recorded as part of this project. John Wesley Work died on May 17, 1967. Musical works Yenvalou for orchestra (1946) Sassafras, pieces for piano (1946) Scuppernong (1951)Appalachia (1954)From the Deep South (1936)The Singers, cantatas (1941)Isaac Watts Contemplates the Cross (1962) Other works Arrangements for S. A. T. B. of several collected Christian folk songs of the 1860s, first appearing in print in the early 1900s, and published in 1948 by Work through 'Galaxy Music Corp', NY. Galaxy Music was sold to E. C. Schirmer Music Company in 1989.This Little Light O' Mine with solo unaccompaniedJesus, Lay Your Head in the Window for high voice with piano accompanimentDone Made My Vow to the Lord for chorus of mixed voices, with tenorGo Tell It on the Mountain (Christmas) for mixed voices or junior