by Kip Lornell
Roberta Martin, gospel pioneer, was honored by the Smithsonian Institution in the 1980s. Courtesy of Kip Lornell.
Dorsey began his career as a blues performer. His first widespread exposure came with Ma Rainey, for whom he served as pianist and musical director until 1928 when he joined Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker). This duo proved enormously successful with a series of records with lightly salacious tunes such as “It’s Tight Like That,” “Somebody’s Been Using That Thing,” “Billie the Grinder,” “Stewin’ Your Mess,” and “The Stuff You Sell.” Along with Big Bill (Broonzy) they were among the front-line purveyors of “hokum blues,” featuring snappy guitar or guitar/piano duets, double entendre or humorous lyrics, and clear vocals. This music was strictly uptown, played for fun, but ultimately unsatisfying for Thomas Dorsey. In 1932 Tampa Red and Georgia Tom broke up their partnership. Red remained with blues and hokum music, but Dorsey turned his full attention to gospel composition and performance.
Dorsey’s gospel recordings, “How About You?” and “If You See My Savior,” recorded in March 1932, debuted nearly a decade after he began writing gospel songs. His debut sold quite poorly, which is not surprising considering the country was hitting the depths of the Depression and 75 cents was too much for even the most uplifting recording. Although Dorsey went on to record a few more religious titles, he quickly proved his worth as a composer. Nearly four hundred songs flowed from his pen, including such American classics as “Take My Hand Precious Lord,” “If You See My Savior, Tell Him That You Saw Me,” “Little Wooden Church on the Hill,” “Peace in the Valley,” “When the Gates Swing Wide,” “Hide Me in Thy Bosom,” and “Search Me Lord.” Many of these enduring compositions were published as sheet music, while others appeared in the National Baptist Sunday School hymnal, Gospel Pearls, the first edition of which appeared in 1921.
Dorsey also served as one of the principal organizers of the National Gospel Music Association. He and his fellow Chicagoans founded this organization in 1935 and it rapidly expanded to chapters across the United States. By the late 1930s gospel music was being performed in black churches throughout the entire country.
Gospel music clearly benefited from the media’s attention. Although gospel recordings were not plentiful until after World War II, they did trickle out slowly. Radio proved more helpful as performers with Sunday programs increased, spreading the word to those who could not or did not attend church services that featured this new music. The printed media became the most critical factor in disseminating gospel music throughout the community. Small publishing houses began printing songbooks containing the words and simple four-part musical notations for these new compositions. These songbooks sold well as gospel fans looked forward to each new edition. Used as a point of departure, songbooks provided groups with an established reference for embellishing the printed arrangements for their own purposes. In its actual performance black gospel music is highly dramatic and personal. No printed score could hope to (or want to) limit the singers’ vocal techniques, their reworking of harmonies, or the use of syncopation to heighten their performance.
By the late 1930s Roberta Martin had emerged as one of the most important innovators in gospel music. Her recordings from the 1940s and 1950s suggest that even in the middle of the twentieth century, black gospel music combines West African and western European elements. Her melodies betray an allegiance to black American folk and African traditions in her use of few tones (often pentatonic scales or the mixolydian mode), conjunctive melodies, and a persistant emphasis on one principal tone. Most of the songs adhere to the simple ab song form. Her harmonic language is closer to standard western European usage, with a clear emphasis on the primary chords. She also demonstrates a clear preference for compound duple meters, especially 12/8.
Another major innovation spawned by this music, the gospel concert/caravan, began in the late 1930s and signals its movement from the grassroots to the popular realm. Gospel programs brought together performers for special shows outside of the church service itself. Of course this was not distinctly new because out-of-town groups were sometimes invited to sing at special Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon programs. The innovation occurred when singers got together and toured full time. The community had not previously been able to financially support such groups, but gospel’s newly minted popularity permitted this. Thomas A. Dorsey’s progeny hit the road as part of a package that performed on tours during the week as well as on weekends. Although they were several years ahead of their time, the Soul Stirrers of Houston, Texas, became the first gospel quartet to begin touring, trading their full-time day jobs for full-time touring in 1938.
Black gospel music represents a blend of musical as well as cultural innovation. First, it is music whose harmonic and melodic structure was deliberately similar to popular tunes. Composers like Dorsey felt that one way to reach a mass audience with a spiritual message was to package the songs in familiar musical settings. Second, its message was equally straightforward with themes that appealed to the heartstrings: mother, duty, and home. Third, its simplicity was clearly aimed at an audience that could easily participate and become enveloped in gospel music. Fourth, gospel became the first African American religious music for which direct authorship of songs could be ascribed. Finally, gospel music emerged as the first style to be packaged with the mass media in mind and clearly aimed toward an increasingly sophisticated audience that looked to radio, records, and printed sources for sacred music.
PENTECOSTAL SINGING AND GUITAR EVANGELISTS
Holiness sects came into existence during the last decade of the nineteenth century as people sought to gain a second blessing or sanctification through direct possession or intervention on the part of the Holy Spirit. Holiness services, both black and white, are highly emotional, featuring spirited preaching, equally compelling music, and even more improvisation. Significantly, the performance practices found in Pentecostal churches form the foundation for modern black (and, in some instances, white) popular music during the mid- to late twentieth century.
Spontanteous holy dancing, shouting (ecstatic speech), and glossolalia (speaking in tongues) are three notable aspects of Holiness services that occur as congregation members are possessed by the Spirit. These ritual acts are part of most Pentecostal services, though they are almost never captured on record. One would have to listen to or attend an entire service to taste its true flavor, but several important black Pentecostal performers did record as early as 1926.
By the time of these initial recordings, most of the black Holiness sects were no more than thirty years old. The majority of these Churches of God were founded in the Deep South between 1895 and 1905. Most significant is the Church of God in Christ, founded in Lexington, Mississippi, by Charles C. H. Mason in 1895. Shortly after the turn of the century, Mason moved the church headquarters to Memphis, where it remains today. The Church of God in Christ has grown to be the largest African American Pentecostal church. In the early twenty-first century Pentecostal adherents comprise close to 20 percent of all black churchgoers, many of whom belong to urban congregations (temples) with small memberships.
Pentecostalists believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the “second baptism” that people receive because of special calling. This spiritual rebirth or calling is reflected in their fiery music. Holiness singers believe that they are called to praise God with a variety of instruments, as cited in the Book of Psalms. Rev. F. W. McGee, who established a temple in Chicago’s South Side in the middle 1920s, and the blind pianist Arizona Dranes were among the outstanding early Holiness recording artists. McGee was a preacher whose sermons were recorded by Victor with the accompaniment of various stringed instruments and horns. Other sanctified preachers, such as Rev. D. C. Rice, preferred to lead small ensembles in performances of popular Holiness songs. Small jug bands accompanied at least a few of the groups associated with Memphis’s Holiness groups—Reverend Bryant’s Sanctified Singers and the Holy Ghost Singers. Perhaps
the most dramatic and musically moving of these performers was Arizona Dranes. Her OKeh recordings of “Bye and Bye We’re Going to See the King” and “I’m a Witness” are masterpieces of this genre. Black sanctified music is characterized by dramatic vocals, the use of instruments (stringed and horns) not usually associated with sacred traditions, cooperative vocal ensembles that eschewed close harmony for collective improvisation, and a fierce spontaneity.
Because of the popularity of the guitar—due to its portability, the ability of its strings to bend for flatted tonalities, and its relative low cost—a small group of guitar evangelists became part of rural black music. The truth is that nearly all rural black musicians played sacred music; some specialized in it, and a handful of them were recorded beginning in the 1920s. Rev. Edward Clayborn, whose recordings for Vocalion are characterized by a pronounced duple meter and a strong regular rhythm punctuated by his slide guitar, preferred homiletic pedantic songs: “Everybody Ought to Treat Their Mother Right” and “Men Don’t Forget Your Wives for Your Sweethearts.” Blind Joe Taggart, thought to be from South Carolina, roamed the southeastern states preaching and singing. He was occasionally accompanied by a fiddle and second guitar on his recordings. Other evangelists from this period—Blind Roger Hayes, Blind Willie Davis, Blind Mamie Forehand, Blind Gussie Nesbit—seemed attracted to the profession by a love for God and music and because of their physical liabilities, too. (The options for visually handicapped blacks born near the turn of the century were as limited as their educational opportunities.)
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MUSICAL EXAMPLE
Pentecostal sects can be found throughout the United States. They are growing rapidly, although not as quickly as other fundamentalist churches. In predominantly black neighborhoods they often hold services in small storefront churches. Many parts of the rural South are dotted with Pentecostal churches, though they tend to be strongest in the Deep South. This recording was done on location at the First Independent Holy Church of God—Unity—Prayer in Marion, Alabama, in 1954. The church was founded and fronted by Elder Effie Hall, who leads her small congregation on this piece.
Title “Don’t Let His Name Go Down”
Performers Elder Effie Hall and Congregation
Instruments guitar, percussion, tambourine, and four voices
Length 1:24
Musical Characteristics
1. It has a simple, syncopated rhythm.
2. The mix of voices and instruments produces a rich homophonic texture.
3. The song stays on the dominant chord with some subdominant harmony heard in the singing.
4. The background singers primarily sing in unison.
5. A fervent, improvised feel propels the chorus.
Oh, don’t let His name go down! (repeat)
Chorus: I’m goin’ to do what I can, hold up His hand
Don’t let His name go down!
Well, don’t let His name go down! (repeat)
Chorus (substitute “all” for “what”)
His name is holy and sanctified! (repeat)
Chorus
(Repeat the first verse)
Glory!
This selection is from Smithsonian Folkways 2658.
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Mississippi guitar evangelist Rev. Leon Pinson appeared at the Festival of American Folklife. Courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
Blind Willie Johnson, born about 1902 near Marlin, Texas, was one of the finest rural black musicians to record and arguably the most accomplished guitar evangelist. He spent much of his life as a street singer and came to the attention of Columbia officials in 1927. A virtuoso guitarist and an arresting vocalist with an exceptionally wide range, Johnson sang to the accompaniment of his slide guitar. A female singer named Willie B. Harris participated in several of his sessions, serving as a wonderful foil to his singing, which ranged from a sweet falsetto to an emotive growl. Their repertoire included many of the most familiar gospel songs: “Let Your Light Shine on Me,” “John the Revelator,” “You’ll Need Somebody on Your Bond,” and “I Know His Blood Will Make Me Whole.” His recorded masterpiece, “Dark was the Night—Cold Was the Ground,” however, is a solo piece in which his slide recalls the holy moaning of a Baptist church service. “You’ll Need Somebody on Your Bond” is a vocal duet with his wife, Angeline, and is underpinned by his delicate slide guitar:
Well, you gonna need somebody on your bond,
You gonna need somebody on your bond,
Now it’s way, at midnight,
When Death comes slippin’ in your room
You gonna need ah, somebody on your bond.
PREACHERS ON RECORD
Preachers became the first and arguably the most vitally powerful voices to reach the faithful. One of the clearest, most widely recognized voices belongs to Rev. J. M. Gates of Atlanta, the spiritual forefather for Martin Luther King. Gates’s initial May 1926 Columbia release, “Death’s Black Train Is Coming,” proved so wildly successful that the company immediately released its session mate, “I’m Gonna Die with the Staff in My Hand.” The Gates phenomenon continued, and by year’s end he had visited the studios of Pathe, Plaza, OKeh, Victor, Vocalion, and Gennett. Most of these recordings were accomplished in New York City studios, though Reverend Gates did stay at home for his first session and for one in November 1926.
Rev. J. M. Gates’s success illustrates the power and influence of the electronic media in promoting traditional music. In the spring of 1926 he was a very popular Baptist preacher with a large and devoted congregation in Atlanta, Georgia. Less than one year later Gates had recorded nearly eighty selections that mixed small group singing with his own preaching. Gates visited New York City on two occasions for marathon sessions, where he recorded many of the same titles/themes—“Baptize Me,” “Death’s Black Train Is Coming,” “Dying Gambler,” “I Know I Got Religion”—because they were powerful sermons and popular themes. Many of these selections were marketed by title only; the artist was not always listed. Thus Gates’s most striking themes were repeated at least in part because of the pressure of record companies to sell product. These factors all worked to propel a respected local religious leader into the forefront of the nationwide race record industry in a staggeringly short period. Reverend Gates’s popularity proved long-lived, too, for he continued to record, albeit sporadically, until 1941.
Rev. J. C. Burnett, a Kansas City preacher, soon followed Gates into the Columbia studios. His sermon on “The Downfall of Nebuchadnezzar” sold exceptionally well; apparently record buyers were moved by his interpretation of Daniel 4:14 and his hoarse emotive preaching. Burnett proved to be popular and stayed with Columbia Records for about three years; he recorded again after the close of World War II. While few of the early preachers enjoyed the long-lasting success that greeted Reverend Gates, nearly seventy of them continued to be documented by record companies throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. By the close of the prewar record era in 1943 these preachers had recorded some 750 sermons on a wide variety of subjects ranging from biblical passages to moral issues such as drinking, drugs, and fidelity, to topical statements about floods, tornadoes, and the flight of Lindburgh. Reverend Burnett warned his listeners of gambling’s dangers in a 1927 sermon, “The Gambler’s Doom,” that strayed from his usual biblical stories:
I have seen the gambler standin’ with his cards in his hand. And the fifty-two cards in the deck represent the fifty-two weeks in the year. And the 365 spots on the cards, represent the 365 days in the year. And the highest cards, my friends is the Ace; represents God on high over all. And the deuce represents Jesus’ law “one of you could seek me and then you would find me.” And the trey represents the three Godheads of the Trinity.
One of Gates’s most pedantic sermons on a topic of everyday problems urged his listeners to “pay your furniture man”—who collected weekly or monthly for furniture purchased on time-payment plans.
GOSPEL QUARTETS
More palatable folk music continued to predominate the mass media as the United States entered World War II. Led by the Golden Gate Quartet, both secular and sacred vocal quartets were beginning their rise to prominence. The Gates (as they were usually referred to) pioneered the jubilee style of quartet singing in Norfolk, Virginia. This modern “neo-jubilee” singing has little to do with Reconstruction jubilee groups; it represents an aesthetic innovation that profoundly affected black American sacred music. Jubilee singing incorporated new lyrical and musical ideas. Their lyrics often told a semilinear story based on Bible parables, such as the Gates’s well-known versions of “Job” and “Noah.” Unlike blues or the earlier spirituals, which tend to be nonlinear and cohere through emotional connections, jubilee songs are closer to sermons or nodal ballads in their ability to relate a story. Jubilee groups also featured a lead singer, whose dramatic but smooth cante-fable style clearly foreshadowed popular Motown singers like Smokey Robinson or Levi Stubbs. The pumping percussive bass helped to create the propulsive polyrhythms and carefully accented syncopations that characterize jubilee quartet singing. By way of their popular Bluebird and Columbia recordings and their NBC radio network broadcasts, the Golden Gate Quartet disseminated this music from the New York base throughout the entire country. This happened over a three-year period, profoundly affecting the course of black religious music for the next decade.