Making a joyful noise: Music or ministry?

New Crisis, The, Sep/Oct 2000 by Petrie, Phil W

When Crisis was helping to foster the Harlem Renaissance, a new music was creeping into Harlem and other urban areas. Hardly any of the Renaissance writers and musicians wrote or commented then on the new "gospel" music until it was entrenched in black churches. Now the music is an icon of American popular culture. It has leaped over its traditional religious walls. As the music moves beyond its incubator-the church-some wonder where it is going. But, of course, that's how it started.

The Beginnings

Thomas A. Dorsey (1899-1993), composer of such standards as "Peace in the Valley" and "Take My Hand, Precious Lord," is considered the "father of gospel music." The son of a minister, Dorsey also accompanied on piano two legendary blues singers, Ma Rainey (1886-1939) and Bessie Smith (1894-1937), and arranged and composed blues, such as his popular tune "I Like It Hot Like That." His penchant for bouncy tunes and bawdy lyrics did not keep him from attending the annual meetings of the National Baptist Convention. A minister's son, he knew the compositions of the Rev. Charles A. Tindley (1851-1933), composer of "We'll Understand It Better By and By" and "Leave It There," and considered Tindley the "father of gospel music." But at the 1921 National Baptist Convention in Chicago, he heard A. W. Nix's electrifying rendition of "I Do, Don't You." It brought the house down and inspired Dorsey to write only religious music.

He abandoned his brash lyrics but not the jazz rhythms and blues flavor of his songs. Naturally, the "old guard" conservatives branded this melding of the sacred (spirituals and hymns) and the secular (blues and jazz) as "the devil's music" and banned it from their choir lofts.

With pioneer singers such as Sallie Martin (1896-1988) and Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith (1904-1994) propagating his music, Dorsey stayed the course long enough to write more than 800 songs and to hear his music ascend from the first-row pews (where some ministers would let him sing) to the choir loft, where it previously had been banned.

Other composers, such as Lucy Campbell ("Something Within") and Dr. Herbert Brewster ("Surely God Is Able"), picked up the torch, and the way was lit for another generation to take control.

The Legendary Singers

Dorsey was a planter; the fruits of his harvest were the exceptional singers who sowed the gospel seed around the country-Roberta Martin, Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward and James Cleveland are a few.

Roberta Martin (1907-1969) was based in Chicago. Her influence on the music was huge. First, there were the songs that became stalwarts in black churches across the nation: "Grace"; "The Failure's Not in God, It's in Me"; "God Is Still on the Throne"; and "Since He Lightened My Heavy Load." Martin also had a penchant for adapting spirituals. With her group, the Roberta Martin Singers, she made classics of "Ride on King Jesus," "Listen to the Lamb" and "Didn't It Rain Children." Her singers were well-trained and topflight soloists in their own right. Several started their own groups, passing the Martin tradition along. Robert Anderson, for example, left the group to form his own. His backup group, the Robert Anderson Singers, eventually became the Caravans.

Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) had been, in the language of today's youths, "all that" in gospel long before she signed a lucrative contract with Columbia Records in the 1950s. Her star continued to rise, landing her on the Ed Sullivan Show and providing the opportunity for her to sing just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. (Interestingly enough, she sang Dorsey's "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at King's funeral in 1968.) Although Jackson received opportunities to perform in secular venues, she steadfastly refused.

In contrast, Clara Ward (1924-1973) and the Ward Singers took the opportunity, as Ward put it, "to take God's words to His people wherever they were--even in night-- clubs." Ward had both flash and substance. Her recording of "Surely God Is Able" was the first-ever million-seller postwar gospel record. Ward affected the career of gospel great Marion Williams (Williams sang with the Ward Singers) and influenced both Little Richard and Aretha Franklin.

James Cleveland (1931-1991) was considered by many gospel enthusiasts to be "The King of Gospel." He received four Grammys, the last awarded posthumously for the album "Having Church." That's ironic because his voice, rough and raspy, could not be considered one of great quality. Nevertheless, Cleveland mesmerized his audience. He brought a standard of excellence to gospel when he organized, in 1968, the Gospel Music Workshop of America, the largest gospel convention in the world. Many of his compositions are now standards.

Legendary singers of the '50s and '60s included Edna Galmon Cook and Brother Joe May. Although not quite fittiny the category of pioneers, the following contemporary artists are sure to be seen as legendary singers or composers: Shirley Caesar, Daryl Coley, Andrae Crouch, Tramaine Hawkins and the late Thomas Whitfield.