Introduction
-What is Gospel music?
Gospel music was an artistic response to the Great Migration, one of the most significant cultural episodes in twentieth-century American history. Thousands upon thousands of southern African Americans who migrated to Chicago in the early and middle part of the twentieth century confronted economic, social, and cultural challenges that were bewildering, daunting, and disempowering.
The prejudice migrants withstood was in many ways just as insidious as the discrimination they experienced down South. Gospel songs, and the gospel music community, provided the catharsis and affirmation they needed to feel less like strangers in a strange land. Borrowing from the lyrics of Rev. W. Herbert Brewster’s “How I Got Over,” gospel music enabled migrants to literally “shout troubles over.” Wrote Horace Clarence Boyer, “It was . . . not unusual to witness a singer singing through her problems.”1 Gospel music was, in many respects, the only freedom migrants found. It offered them freedom from the daily indignities of being a black southern migrant in an unforgiving urban North, and freedom for a better condition spiritually, emotionally, socially, and—for some—financially. (p.2)
"The duality of the migrant experience—to cling to one’s southern roots while striving to be part of the cosmopolitan northern urban black culture—was never as evident as when gospel singers and musicians swung hymns and spirituals to the steady rolling beat of urban jazz or the Hammond B3 organ. " (p.3)
-While gospel as a composition style traces its roots back to the nineteenth century, Methodist minister Charles Albert Tindley is considered the African American hymnist who launched the twentieth-century gospel music movement. (p.3)
-sociopolitical role of Gospel music in the African-American community.
-composers of Gospel chorus: Dorsey, Frye
First, gospel music became a way for African American migrants to express personal frustration with the class-preoccupied status quo and establish their place and status within the city’s church and social communities, even if it meant starting new churches.
Second, gospel music as developed in Chicago transcended denominational boundaries.
Third, the gospel music industry grew out of the necessity for entrepreneurship among African American migrants.
Fourth, like most styles of music, gospel music was periodically altered by the young.
a steady, incremental work in progress from the 1920s onward, starting with the Pentecostal
and Holiness churches and spreading into mainline Protestant churches
during the 1930s. (p. 6-7)
ROOTS
The Gospel Train is Comin':
from the South (New Orleans) into Chicago. As slaves Africanized Christianity, they brought biblical themes of escape and deliverance into their own repertory of slave songs and spirituals. They were especially attracted to the mournful long-meter, or “lining out,” psalms and hymns, in which a church leader recited or “called” a stanza of a psalm or song and led the congregation in a sung response. This practice, developed in mid-seventeenth-century white New England congregations in the absence of hymnbooks or instruments, was introduced to slave communities around 1750 by Samuel Davies, a New Light preacher. “Doc Watts” hymns—in essence, any long-meter hymn written by Isaac Watts and other hymnists—can still be heard “raised” or “lifted” by a deacon for congregational participation prior to a worship service in black Baptist churches (p.16).
-the storefront church (p.23...)
"Belonging to a church that felt like home and sounded like home, migrants not only could move “up to a spiritual plane” but also were able to establish a distinct identity and sense of belonging in the unfamiliar urban frontier where both identity and belonging were elusive. On one hand, the proliferation of storefront and sanctified churches was welcomed by the deliberative Protestant churches because it helped ease overcrowding on Sundays." (p.25)
The Pace Jubilee Singers, Charles Henry Pace’s mixed vocal ensemble from Beth Eden Baptist Church in Morgan Park, Illinois, represented an early, and possibly deliberate, blending of the formal jubilee style enjoyed by the city’s Old Settlers with the urban vernacular popular music that appealed to the southern migrant. As such, the group is a fascinating example of African American sacred music in transition. (p.48)
-radios broadcast church services with gospel music
-the Gospel Nexus By 1930, the principal players in the gospel nexus—Dorsey, Frye, Martin, Jackson, and Butts—were in a position to transform African American sacred music, one church at a time. (p.86)
-Perhaps the most significant decision that Dorsey made in organizing the Pilgrim gospel chorus was to emulate the Ebenezer formula by offering membership to anybody who wanted to be part of the new group. Choir members did not have to possess any special musical talent to join, nor did they have to audition. They were welcome as long as they were members of Pilgrim and abided by the tenets of Christianity. Dorsey handled the choir’s musical training personally and taught supplemental courses on reading music.
44 In many respects, Dorsey’s choir rehearsals were lessons in vocal training. Lena Johnson McLin, Dorsey’s niece, recalled that he insisted members of the chorus clearly articulate each word in a song so that the listener could understand the message. (p. 95) Making choir membership
egalitarian had a sociological impact. It ensured
that the gospel chorus was, like its music, for the masses. As such, the gospel chorus served much the same purpose as the new storefront churches lining Bronzeville’s main avenues. Both offered
familiarity, commonality, and comfort to newcomers. Both were oases of belonging in a city where southern migrants were needed but not necessarily wanted. (p.96)
-Revivals: groups that sang in the rural southern tradition were in demand, because the success or failure of a revival depended on the power of the preacher’s message and the soul-stirring music. (p.98)
-"Take My Hand, Precious Lord": September 1932 Dorsey's wife and baby died. Frye took Dorsey out to pull him out of his despondency. => his magnum opus:
Precious Lord, take my hand / Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Thru the storm, thru the night / Lead me on to the light,
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home. (p.104)
-as a slow, passionately sung ballad. “Precious Lord” expressed a wellspring of emotion. It contained a more personal message than the songwriter’s earlier, more didactic gospel songs. [It] communicated a deep personal sadness, one that could be understood universally. Thus, when members of the Ebenezer congregation shouted, they did so out of empathy for Dorsey’s loss but also out of their own deeply felt—and perhaps deeply hidden—feelings of loss, solitude, separation, indignation, poverty, and illness. (p.105)
-Improvisation: Although radio was transmitting gospel beyond church walls, sheet music remained an important way to get new gospel songs in the hands of singers. Gospel sheet music, however, was only a rough guide for the vocalist. First, most gospel singers could not read musical notation. Second, and more importantly, the composer or arranger, and the gospel music audience, expected the artist to make the song his or her own by improvising on the original composition. In other words, no two performances of a gospel song were exactly alike. (p.118)
BRANCHES
1940s: Migration from the South continued unabated into the 1940s, with as many as two thousand African Americans moving to Chicago each month. (p.149)
First Church of Deliverance, Mahalia Jackson, Roberta Martin Singers (Besides being a singer, songwriter, pianist, and director, Roberta Martin was also a teacher. Romance Watson told Idella Johnson: “She taught us how to breathe. . . . She taught us how to present our songs. . . . She always said, ‘Be sure that you enunciate so that people will know what you’re singing about along with that gorgeous voice that you have. So you can get your song across.’ . . . She taught us stage presence. She just taught us everything.”63 Archie Dennis said to Johnson: “The Martin Singers taught you a way of life—how to be a Martin Singer. You were carrying her name. There were certain things you
just don’t do. You never smoked in public, if you smoked. . . . If you drank or tasted, you had to be sure of the person that you did it around.”) p.160;
the energetic and mature-sounding Lux Singers
-As gospel music became more accepted in the church, the demand for new songs and arrangements increased. If the gospelization of spirituals and hymns represented the 1930s—Dorsey originals notwithstanding—the 1940s represented a renaissance of more-sophisticated gospel songwriting. The new songs were prayers and sermonettes set to music, sung with piano or organ accompaniment,
and delivered with a preacher’s force and conviction or a poor pilgrim’s supplication. The song structure of verse and chorus was borrowed from the standard hymn, but the vernacular lyrics spoke the language and articulated the worldview of disenfranchised African Americans throughout the nation.
By writing, publishing, and performing the new songs, Dorsey, Roberta Martin, Theodore Frye, Kenneth Morris, and Sallie Martin established what historians call the Chicago School of Gospel. Together, they transformed Bronzeville into the “fertile crescent” of gospel sheet music publishing, sales, and distribution for the entire nation. The substance and style of their compositions
became the benchmark for gospel music in what Anthony Heilbut has termed its Golden Age: 1945 to 1960. (p.167-168)
-Dorsey: his gospel compositions “went not above the people but into their hearts.”
9 Indeed, the messages of Dorsey’s songs were so memorable that some titles became part of the church lexicon. melodies were accessible. (p.169) Dorsey’s rhythms tended to evoke the “natural flow of African American speech,” and the 12/8 tempo became as linked to gospel music as the Hammond Organ and the Leslie speaker.
-Martin and Morris Studio: publishing "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" (p.177)
-Post WWII
Gospel quartets:
1945: After risking their lives to emancipate Europe from the Axis terror, southern black soldiers returned home from the Second World War to find conditions in their communities just as perilous as the ones they had left. (p.204) Chicago's West Side became a significant port of entry. "Of all first-generation Chicago quartets, none was as formidable as the Soul Stirrers. They were regulars on radio, received top billing at live appearances, and were ready to make a national impact on record." (p.206)
-Around 1952 and 1953, therefore, quartets started adding “music,” or instrumental accompaniment. The most common addition would be the electric guitar, but some groups also added drums, piano, and organ. (p.213)
-By the end of the 1950s, Chicago had further anchored its primacy in gospel music by being home base for most of the major gospel publishing houses as well as gospel artists of national stature. Record companies—Vee Jay in particular—were pumping out gospel releases. Nearly every nonliturgical church had a gospel choir, and many broadcast their music-filled services over radio.
But a tsunami of change was charging westward from Detroit. It arrived on the South Side in 1959, altering the sound of the Chicago gospel chorus forever. (p.259):
Second-Generation Gospel Choirs: The Voices of Tabernacle by James Cleveland: "Charles Craig and James Cleveland came out with a completely brand new idea of all kinds of contemporary chords, extended chords, chord alterations. Things the organ would do, the piano would answer, and vice versa. And a lot of jazz rhythms, where you had sevenths and ninths and thirteenths—Charles Craig could hear all that and incorporated it into his music, along with Beethoven, Mozart, a lot of the masters. Everything in music changed after that, across the country, to a point that no longer was it just the verse and the chorus, and maybe an extended chorus, and foot-patting and basic chords. It became extremely contemporary—it was a completely new sound. The gospel sound after 1960 became all choirs and big. ... Everybody had to be the “Voices of” because everybody was trying to be like the big choir from Detroit. (p.261-262)
community choirs, church choirs...
-God's Got a Television (TV broadcasts 1955s..)
-"Tell It Like It Is" Songs of Social Significance:
"Of all Chicago-based gospel singers, Mahalia Jackson was the most ardent activist of the civil rights movement and passionate believer in its leader, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Her involvement with the movement began in 1956, when Rev. Ralph David Abernathy invited her to sing for an event to stimulate financial and moral support for the Montgomery bus boycott." (p.299)
-the historic March on Washington. The march, scheduled for August 28, 1963, became, according to historian Taylor Branch, “a transcendent ritual of American identity. (p.301) Although Mahalia Jackson was to sing only one selection, the crowd shouted for more, so she did “How I Got Over” as an encore. In the tradition of the gospel singer setting the tone for the minister’s sermon, Jackson readied the crowd for (Martin Luther) King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, considered by many the greatest address of the twentieth century. (p.302)
-the fading of the traditional sound... The overwhelming success of “Oh Happy Day” was the natural culmination of an incremental transition in the gospel music field that began even before the 1959 Detroit Invasion. During the late 1950s, Leon Lumpkins and the Gospel Clefs of Newark displayed a flair for complex arrangements and distinctive melodies that predicted, and perhaps stimulated, departures from the standard gospel sound. (p.320)
Youth have always been at the forefront of musical change, and gospel was no different.
-Regarding Amazing Grace, Aretha Franklin's monumental gospel album, Downbeat assistant editor Aaron Cohen notes that Franklin could just as easily have included original songs or reworked hymns in the fashion of the Edwin Hawkins Singers or the gos-pop of Ralph Bass and Monk Higgins. Instead, she drew from the golden age of gospel canon.29 Giving them her own touch, Franklin rendered gospel songs and hymns such as “God Will Take Care of You,” “Precious Lord,” “How I Got Over,” “Mary, Don’t You Weep,” and the version of “Never Grow Old” learned from Billy Kyles and the Maceo Woods Singers. (p.321)
13-17 February, 2017
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.
P: What an interesting and fun read. Fun, not because the content is always happy but the author really tells the story of the birth of Gospel music in Chicago and the stories of the individuals who made Gospel music in an engaging way. It is good writing because as someone who do not necessarily have much contact with Gospel music or any of the names in the book, I found the reading breezy and compelling. I finished this book so fast and was left with a clear picture of the development of Gospel music in the last century.
