75. Billboard, 18 March 2000, 78.
76. Jon Mark, "AI?'lericak Inner Hillbilly," U.S. News and World Repon, 12
April 1999, 146.
77. Kaen Schwmer, "The World According to Garth," Newsweek, 6 M~~~~
1998,66.
78- Neil Strauss, "Some Urbsn Renewal for Country Music." New York Times,
20 Oct. 1999.
79. Schoemer, "The World According to Garth," 66.
80. lbid.
8 1. Marks. "America's Inner Hillbilly,^ 146.
82.Joli ense en, n e Nashville Sound: authentic it^ Commcr,-jajkalion,and country
Music (Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press and Vanderbilt Univ. press,
1998).
83. bid., 9.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid., 168.
86. lbid.
87. kid.
88. Ibid.
89.
A- Peterson. Creating COuntty Music: Fabric&ng Authenticity (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago press, 1997). 233.
90. Ibid., 5-6.
91. Ibid., 75.
92. ibid., 14-7,
140.
93. Ibid., 50-51.
94. Ibid., 208-9.
95. Billboard, 7 Aug. 1999, 67.
96. Howell, 124.
97. Ibid., 130.
98. Ibid.
99. Wertheim, "The Fast Lane," 30.
100. Ibid.
"Heir Gordon," Forbes Magmine, 14 Dee. 1998, 188.
102. Wertheim. "The Fast Lane," 30,
103. Detroit Nev~s,22 June 2000.
Susan Moran, "Hearing ourselves in Country Music," American J J ~ ~ ~ :raphics 20 Ouly 98): 32.
105. Hagstrom, The NASCAR Way, ii7&79.
lo6. Howell, Fmm Moonshine to Madison Avenue, 116.
107. Detroil News,20 Aug. 1999.
108. lbid.
Performance,Faith, and
Bluegrass Gospel
An Anthropological Journey with
Jerry and Tammy Sullivan
Jack Bernhardt
0
From Brewton northwest to Goodway, Alabama, State Road 41 seems an
ordinaly stretch of southern roadway, its two-lane black top snaking lazily
past swaying stands of loblotly piie and baking fields of plowed red clayAging mobile homes and small frame houses signal an economy of modestscale tmck farming and lumbering today, lumber camps and subsistence
farming in the recent past.
The setting is a warm April Sunday in the season of Pentecost. Jerry
and Tammy Sullivan and their bluegrass gospel band are on the ro:ld again,
leaving one church and bound for the next on the first leg of their first tour
of 1993. Our bus, a geriatric Greyhound converted a hundred thousand
miles ago into a roomy motor home, rolls steadily t ~ ~ aGoodway,
rd
where
the band will attend services and perform a benefit singing at the homecoming of the Church of the Lord Jesus. Inside, the bus is a rolling joy
explosion. A tape of last night's slnging at the Pleasant Hill Holiness Church
in Brewton's Wlldfork community blares from a boom box perched precahously on the dashboard. Jerry and his young bandmate, John Paul
Cornier, revel in the thrill of an especially tasty guitar lick or 2 passionate
turn of phrase rendered by Tamn~yin her powerfd, textured contrzito.
The concert was an artistic success, enjoyed by all who attended.
Heasant Hill Holiness Church is a humble house of worship in a remote section of the piney woods in rural Escambia County Ten miles north
52
.
Jack Bernhardt
a f t to right, John Paul Cormier, Tammy Sullivan, and Jerry Sullivan singing at
he Church of the Lord Jesus in Goodway, Alabama, on April 18, 1993. (Jack
3ernhard t collection)
)f the Florida Panhandle, the church reflects the community it serves-a
,mall, working-class congregation that once made its living in the dense
orests that tower majestically above both sides of County Road 67. Scarred
.cres of clear-cut land attest to the ongoing importance of lumbering here,
)ut the lumber camps that provided employment earlier in the century
lave vanished and been replaced by single-story frame houses and mobile
tomes sparsely scattered along the road, looking out upon modestly landcaped lawns.
While the Pleasant Hill singing was an artistic success, it was a finanial chsappointment. The Saturday night concert drew only forty-two people.
: was an older crowd, averaging around sixty years of age, retired and
ving on fixed incomes or working at manual labor occupations. The
ullivans were playing for a "love offering," a pass-the-plate arrangement
lat depends on generosity, or on the ability of the audience to contribute,
the artists are to cover expenses and make a living wage. When the col.ction plate was tallied at the end of intermission, the love offering totaled
Perforinance, Faith, and Bluegrass Gospel
53
a mere $72. The pastor, a truck driver by occupation, asked the audience
to dig deeper, hoping to help defray the cost to the Sullivans of diesel fuel,
which was selling for around $1.21 a gallon. At the end of the evening, thc
pastor handed Jerry an envelope containing $107.41. Never mind a Living
wage: On this night the Sullivans would not recover the money they had
spent on luel for a bus that got five miles to a gallon, on salaries, and on
meals for four musicians, a bus driver, and a guest anthropologist on tour.
Earlier on the tour, I might have dismissed the Pleasant Hill Holiness
singing as an aberration-an atypimlly poor congregation or just an off
night-but my knowledge of this evangelical subculture expanded as we
proceeded on our two-week tour along the back roads of the deep South.
Along the way, the Sullivans would play for auhences that were better off
financially than the one at Brewton; but they also took their music to less
fortunate communities, performing in churches with memberships as few
as fifteen persons and Sunday offerings scant as $14. The Sullivans' ministry, I was beginning to understand, is a calling that bears no relation to the
"Gospel of Wealth" theology that scandalized the evangelical coinmunity
when the excesses of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's PTL Club and other
televangelical enterprises were made public in the 1980s (Shepard 1989).
Ethnography and the Culture of Gospel Music
Unlike the high-tech, middle-class constituents of Pat Roberston, Jimmy
Swaggart, and Jerry Falwell, the Sullivans and their audience remain rooted
in southern folk culture and are brought together through their mutual
embrace of a musico-religious tradition originating in the nineteenth century. Gospel music is one of the most enduring cultural expressions in the
American South, and musical ministries are among the most popular means
for evangelizing the Gospel. With origins in the Great Revivd and the camp
meetings that stirred the souls of nineteenth century southerners (Bruce
1974), gospel music has evolved into a multi-million-dollar-a-year industry and a significant musical expression of faith. The importance to rural
Americans of gospel music was understood by Bill Monroe, who made
songs of faith a major ingredient of the bluegrass music he developed between 1938 and 1945 (Rosenberg 1985). Fellowing Monroe's lead, most
bluegrass bands today and in the past have incorporated gospel songs into
their repertoires, and some, like the Sullivans, have chosen bluegrass gospel as their sole musical expression.
Gospel songs, like testimony and prayer, resonate on many levels, and
I
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tive religious involvement began in the early 1940s with Jerry's brother, the
late Ar-ur Sullivan. Arthur suffered from a congenital heart defect, and in
1939 he suffered a heart attack and slipped into a coma. According to Jerry
Sullivan, two holiness preachers walked five miles from St. Stephens to the
Sullivans' home and prayed overnight for Arthur's recovery. In the morning, Arthur emerged from the coma, recovered, and announced that he
would dedicate his life to the Lord. Soon afterward, he helped build a brush
arbor in a field near his home and invited preachers to the community to
hold services and revivals. He eventually took to the pulpit as a minister in
the Assemblies of the Lord Jesus and brought his parents, siblings, and
children into the faith. A charismatic preacher, Arthur was often invited to
lead revivals and to preach for church communities throughout the South,
where he remains a legend in evangelical circles.
In 1949Arthur Sullivanbuilt Victory Grove Church in Wagarvllle. Victory Grove serves as the family's home church and is pastored by Arthur's
son, Glenn Sullivan. While the doctrine of the Assemblies sets Oneness
Pentecostals apart from their Trinitarian counterparts and marks them as a
relatively exclusive branch of Christianity, it does not appear to influence
the way in which the Sullivans conduct their lives or compose their gospel
songs, which are ecumenical in message. Encouraged by Arthur, several
members of the Sullivan family learned to play acoustic instruments, and
they often accompanied Arthur for street sermons, revivals, church services, and Sunday radio broadcasts. Arthur was preaching from the pulpit
one Sunday in 1957 when he suffered a heart attack and died. His work
and death are celebrated in "Sing Daddy a Song," one of the family's most
popular compositions, written by Jerry Sullivan in 1961.Arthur was Jerry's
sibling, but with a twenty-year digeerence in their agesJerry regarded Anhur
as his "spiritual father." The title of the song refers to that relationship,
which is also acknowledged by other members of Jerry's nuclear and extended family Arthur is celebrated in family lore and, as the song narrates,
he is honored with this and other songs at the familyh homecomings:
Chorus:
Let5 sing a song for Daddy, he left us a long time ago
Though it broke our hearts when God called him he5 happy
in heaven I know
His parting words when he left us, 'Remember me when I 2m gone
When you have a family reunion, please sing Daddy a song
Before Daddy died he taught us many gospel songs that we sing
And under God's great inspiration, my how his voice would ring
He never grew tired of helping or correcting us when we were wrong
When you have a family reunion, please sing Daddy a song
Qeny, SpokenlChaned) He was workid so hard when God called him
trym' to prepare the way
For us children to sing for Jesus til we leave here and join him one day
He died while preaching a sermon tellin' the sinful to turn from their
wrongs
A great man of God, our Daddy, and we proudly dedicate him this song
Chorus
Following Arthur5 death, the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers continued their musical ministry traveling the back roads and sening the back-.
woods churches from the Florida Panhandle to rhe East Texas plains. The
core band consisted of Arthur's sons Emmett and Enoch, along with Enoch's
wife, Margie, although it often featured other musicians, includinglw Cook,
Carl Jackson, Marty Stuart, and Jerry's brother, Aubrey. Jeny made a living
playlng secular bluegrass, rockabilly, and rhythm and blues and had served
a two-year hitch in the army before rejoining the Sullivan Family in the late
1950s. He wrote songs and played bass with the Sullivan Family-until
- a.
near-fatal traffic accident forced him to discontinue his travel with the band
in 1977. Two years later, Jeny and his thirteen-year-old daughter, -Tammy,
whose singing style then echoed Margie's old-time gospel sound, began
their career together following the model of backwoods service Jeny had
known for more than twenty years. This model forms the foundation ot
their ministry today (Bernhardt 1995).
The 1993 Washington
County telephone directory lists a total of 150
active churches of different denominations. This calcu!ates to one church
for every 114 of the county's 17,000 residents {Slater and Hall 1992).
- (By
comparison, the Yellow Pages of the 1992 Nashville, Tennessee, telephone
directorv
lists $71 churches for Nashville and its suburbs. With Nashville's
metropolitan area population around 1.1 million, the "Protestant Vatican"
offers approximately one church per 1,148residents.) Victory Grove Church
has a relatively small congregation, and attendance at Sunday or Wednei-
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Performance, Faith, and Bluegrass Gospel
Geertr, Clifford. 1985. "Waddling in." Times iilerar-ySupplement, June 7,623-24.
Harris, Marvin. 1979. Cuhraf Maierialisul: The Stmggk for a Science of Culture.
New York: Random House.
Hinson, Glenn. 2000. Fin in My Bonzr: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African
American Gospel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lawless, Elaine J. 1997. "'1 Was Afraid Someone Like You . . . an Outsider . . .
Would Misundersrand': Negotiating Interpretive Differences Between Ethnographers and Subjects."Journal of Awetican Folklore 105307-14.
. 1988a. God? Peculiar Pcople: Women'sVoices and Folk Tradition in a Pentecostal Church. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentudv
. 1988b. Handmaidens o/ the Lord: Pentecostal Women Preachen and Traditional Religion. Philadelphia: Univ. of P e ~ l v a n i aPress.
Patterson, Beverly Bush. 1995. Sound of the Dove: Singing in Appalachian Primitive
Baptist Churches. Urbana: Univ. of Iltinsis Press.
Reed. David. 1975. "Aspects of the Origins of Oneness Pentecostalism." In Aspects
oJPentecostal Charismatic Origins.Edited by Vinson Synan, 1 4 4 6 8 . Plainfield,
N.J.: h g o s Internationat.
Rosenberg, Neil C! 1985. Blucgrars: A History. Urbanz: Univ. of Illinois Press.
Shepard, Charles E. 1989. Forgiven: f i e Rise and Fall ofJm Bakker and the PTL
Ministry. New York: Atlantic Monthly Prer;.
Slater, Courtenay M., and George E. Hall, eds. 1992. 1992 County and City Extra
Annual Metro, City and County Data Bmh. Lanharn, Md: Beman.
Steward, Julian. 1955. nleoty of Culture Change. Urbana:Univ. of Illinois Press.
Titon, Jeff Todd. 1988. Powerhouse for Cock Speech, Chant, and Song in an Appalachian Baptist Church. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.
Turner, Victor. 1988. The Anthropology of Perjomancc. New York: PAJ.
White, Leslie. 1949. The Science of Cultwe: A Study of Man and Civilization. New
York: Grove.
I
1
Song Titles
'Sing Daddy a Song" (written by Jeny Sullivan). The Suiliva~;llls,Time and Eternity
(iTS 100490) Cassette.
"Brand New Church" (written by Mxty Stuart and Jeriy Sullivan).Jeny and Tamrny
Sullivan. A Joyful Noise (Country Music Foundation CMF-0 16D). CD.
"Steer Me On the Righteous Pathway."Jerry and Tammy Sullivan, "At the Feet of
God" (New Haven 84418-7569-2). [Wrihen by Calrer Stanley and recorded
by the Stanley Brothers under rhe tide ' k t Me \%'a&, Lord. By Your Side." The
origrnal can be heard on The Stanley Brothers. Angel Band. The Classic Mernuy
Recordings (Mercury 3 14-528-191-2).]
Interviews by the Author
April 17,1993. Jerry, Tammy. and Stephanie Sullivan. at W a g a d e , Ala. OR File
at Sourhem FoEklife CoUecrion, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
May 30, 1999. Eiva Suilivan Powell, at Waganrille, Ala.
Performance Tapes
April 16,1993. Salem Baptist Church, Cohay Community, Smith County. Mississippi. On file at Southem Folklife Collection, University of North Carolina at
Chapel HiU.
April 17, 1993. Pleasant Hi Holiness Church, Wildfork Community, Brewton,
Alabama. On fik at Southern Folklife Collection, Universiry of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jerry and Tammy Sullivan Discography
2000. Tornorrow." Ceili (CEIL-CD 2005).
1995. "At the Feet of God." New Haven (8441G7569-2).
1991. "A Joyful Noise."Country Music Foundation (CMF-016D).
Numerous self-produced cassettes, available from the family