EVERY VOICE AND SING!
EPISODE FOUR: “A Different Drummer”
(00:00:01) “THIS PROGRAM IS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC
BROADCASTING, AND THE FORD FOUNDATION.” (00:00:06)
HOST Opening:
(00:00:07) Hello, I’m Michele Norris, and this is EVERY VOICE AND SING!” a look at the
Choral Music Legacy of the HBCUs-- the Historically Black Colleges and Universities of the
United States of America…
(“Morgan State Choir...”Precious Lord”…Up...under…)
M. NORRIS:
In this Episode—A Different Drummer—we will look at the birth and rise of what’s now known
as Gospel Music, primarily through the life and determined efforts of Thomas A. Dorsey...
( “Morgan State Choir...Precious Lord”…Up...under…)
DR. HORACE BOYER:
Thomas Andrew Dorsey is considered the father of gospel music, and we always celebrate the
great trials and tribulations that he went through to get the world to recognize this music. But
what most people don’t realize is that by the time that Mr. Dorsey came into gospel, a kind of
gospel had been in existence for almost 20 years.
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Horace Boyer is author of “How Sweet the Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel” and he is
Professor Emeritus of African American music and music theory at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst.
(“Swan Silvertones,Thank You Jesus”…Up...under…)
DR. HORACE BOYER:
The gospel quartets and gospel in the black community has a very . interesting birth. Because in
1905, there are so many black college jubilee singers out in the world that they’re taking money
from each other. And by 1905, Fisk University says listen, we’ve got to bring our Jubilee Singers
off the road, 9, 12, 15 people are charging us too much money. So they got the idea of sending
out a quartet. The Fisk Jubilee Quartet. Then Hampton got a Quartet...
(Morehouse Quartet …Up Full…and back under…)
DR. CEDRIC DENT:
College campuses is where quartets naturally formed, coming out of the choir tradition. And so I
think that to this day, Take 6 owes a lot to the quartet tradition from which we grew.
M. NORRIS:
Cedric Dent’s PhD is on the harmonic development of black religious quartet singing. He and
Mark Kibble do most of the arrangements for their Jazz-influenced Gospel Group Take-6.
(TAKE 6”You Can Make It-Go On”…Up/under…)
SOT DR. CEDRIC DENT:
The first gospel music that really sort of began to take the country by storm, started with quartets.
Which again, of course we trace back to the college choirs.
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Boyer...
DR. BOYER:
In 1915, in Bessemer, Alabama, we get the beginning of black gospel quartets. What had
happened was these boys who had been to college came back home. However, they were not
singing before college audiences. They were not singing before white audiences. They were
singing before black church audiences, and in the black church, we say Amen, Hallelujah, Sing it,
so that they began to change their singing to elicit and to generate this kind of singing.
(KSU “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep”Up Full/Under…)
DR. DENT:
It was for years, from, I’d say about the 1920s to the 1940s that it was the gospel quartet, the male
quartet, that was the most prominent style of gospel music. Now Mark can tell you about who a
lot of these groups were...
(Swan Silvertones “Only Believe” Up Full ...back Under…)
MR. KIBBLE:
Wow. The Swan Silvertones come to mind.
(Swan Silvertones “Only Believe” Up Full ...back Under …)
M. NORRIS:
But there was also another equally powerful source for the early Black Gospel Music...Dr.
Boyer...
SOT BOYER:
We go back to April 9th, 1906. In the 300 block of Azuza Street in Los Angeles, California when
the Holy Ghost fell with William Joseph Seymore and his band of Pentecostal Holiness People,
and from that kind of setting, we get the beginning of gospel music. We get a return to the kind of
music that the slaves were singing. Stuff like [sings] I’m a soldier, in the Army in the Lord,
Soldier, in the Army.
Well, the Baptists weren’t singing that at that point.
(SOT: OAG SUSPENSE THEME-2 IN/ under…)
The Methodists weren’t singing it. It was the Sanctified People, it was the Holiness Church, it
was the Apostolic Church, that was singing it.
M. NORRIS:
This other side of the two-pronged Gospel Root would later be very significant. But, between the
1890s and the 1920s, few people had time to notice how one genre of black music was
developing...
DR. LENA McLIN:
Because everything that we were programmed in was Yassir, No sir, Yassir Boss...
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Lena McLin is the author of the music textbook, Pulse, the History of Music, She is also a
classical music composer. She has written about 9 Gospel Songs, and is the niece of Thomas A.
Dorsey.
SOT DR. McLIN:
...and we had our heads down and our spirits up. But you must remember that was a time when
segregation was so prominent, and the Klu Klux Klan was so busy...
(SOT: OAG SUSPENSE THEME-2 UP/ under…)
M. NORRIS:
“Keeping your head down”-- being carefully vigilant, was mandatory. It was a very dangerous
and violent period, especially for African Americans. There were riots across the country.
(NATSOT: RIOT NOISE...UP Full...back under)
Usually, it was a striving black community being destroyed; its economic and political power
targeted by white mobs...
(NATSOT: RIOT NOISE/RIFLE, SMALL ARMS FIRE)
In places like Brownsville, Texas, Chicago, and other cities, armed blacks gave as good as they
got—it was more like race warfare than race riots...
(NATSOT: RIOT NOISE/RIFLE, SMALL ARMS FIRE)
(SOT: OAG BATTLE THEME- UP/ under…)
Other areas—like Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Wilmington, North Carolina did not fare as well...
DR. HEATHER WILLIAMS:
Riots didn’t become associated with black people until the 1960s. Riots before that had been
white people rioting...
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Heather Williams teaches 19th Century African American History at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her latest book, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery
and Freedom recounts the black struggle for education during enslavement and the U.S.
Reconstruction era of the 19th century...
DR. HEATHER WILLIAMS:
And so 1866, you’ve got a major riot in Memphis, Tennessee. You’ve got one also that same year
in New Orleans.... Somehow black people still keep building and they start acquiring wealth....
I just saw a report about the Wilmington Riot in 1896... some people are now calling it a coup d
état because there had been a government elected and some white men decided that that was not
the right government and staged a riot and went into the state house and took control, and there
had been a thriving black community in Wilmington,...
M. NORRIS:
Just as there had been in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921...
And yet, in that same period, despite the adversity, there was this amazing growth of black arts
and culture. It blossomed into the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.
And the musical explosion lasted even longer....
Dr. Horace Boyer...
DR. BOYER:
In 1920, Mamie Smith records “Crazy Blues.” By 1930, Bess is at her peak, Bessie Smith. In the
1930s, Duke Ellington is out there, Count Basie is out there, Lionel Hampton is out there, Andy
Kirk is out there. And then 1930, Dorsey is out there,...
(XFADE to Candi Staton “Precious Lord”)
M. NORRIS:
He’s “out there” but, still not fully locked into his new style of religious music. Mr. Dorsey’s
niece, Dr. Lena McLin...
DR. McLIN:
Because Dorsey was a blues man. Dorsey was Ma Raney, the mother of the blues, he was Ma
Raney’s musical director.... He was Georgia Tom and he wrote over 100 blues and he was really
cooking, and he got his big hit called Tight Like That. And he was a rich man at
8-O’clock that morning, the stock market crashed, and that night, he was a poor man. [laughs]
Mysterious ways. And my grandmother was happy ‘cause she didn’t want him in the blues field
no way.... My grandmother used to stay on him so much about being a sinner. And he would play
those ragtime, honky tonk blues you know, and play for Ma Raney. And he met a girl named
Nettie there, and she was Ma Raney’s costume designer, and they got married, and he would play
the blues...
M. NORRIS:
It was great personal tragedy that brought this son of a Preacher back to the church once and for
all...
DR. McLIN:
He went to direct a gospel choir out of town, and his wife Nettie was at home. They were
expecting a child, and he drove about 50 miles out, and came back. He had a fellow with him.
The fellow said I don’t think I’ll go, I’m gonna stay. And he should have stayed, but she was
asleep and he didn’t pay any attention. And the next night when he was conducting this choir,
they came in and told him that she had died in childbirth, and he was just wiped out. And that’s
how he wrote Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand....
(XFADE Lena into the Candi Staton Version UP FULL)
(XFADE to Morgan State U. Choir, PRECIOUS LORD...under)
DR. HORACE BOYER:
So in that regard, Dorsey, is considered the father of gospel music.... but what he did, he picked
up and made Baptist? Mm? What the Sanctified Holiness Pentecostal people were already doing.
He combined all of this raw refrain material into “Precious Lord, Take my Hand, lead me on, let
me stand.” I mean now that’s the kind of poetry that you can’t get spontaneously, so you see that
Dorsey does begin to refine, give it a certain amount of dignity, take it to the church, take it to the
convention, write it out. I mean the notes. Get it printed. Published it, and then sells it, so he is the
father.
M. NORRIS:
But it was no easy walk-in-the-park for Thomas A. Dorsey and the Gospel Music tradition he
started at the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago in 1932. It was a long, hard, uphill battle...
DR. J. A. WILLIAMS:
Now when we look at the gospel music, we all know that many of originators of this music
started in blues. And jazz.
M. NORRIS:
Dr. James Arthur Williams prefers to be called a teacher. He was a Choral Conductor for a total
of 33 years combined at Stillman College and Wilberforce University...
DR. J. A. WILLIAMS:
...and so the folk in the church got nervous that we were bringing the devil’s music in the church ,
it sort of made them nervous. Dr. Horace Boyer really talks about this.
DR. HORACE BOYER:
Dorsey does one thing that upsets the whole area of black church music. Dorsey adds piano to
gospel music, see. The a cappella, if we had just had a cappella gospel, nobody would be talking
about the blues. Nobody would be talking about jazz. But when you bring that honky tonk piano
in here, the Lord goes to California and leaves Chicago out there by itself and the people just go
bonkers...
M. NORRIS:
Dorsey’s niece, Dr. Lena McLin...
DR. McLIN:
He went all over America and organized gospel choirs in churches. First he was kicked out of
most of them.
[xfade to OAG: “AMAZING GRACE” UNDER]
DR. GARCIA:
During that time, late 19th Century or early 20th Century, the use of the banjo and the guitar and
the percussion instruments, even the piano, were considered to be instruments of the world
because they were associated with the secular black music, ah. what I mean by that is the blues...
M. NORRIS:
Ethnomusicologist Dr. William B. Garcia has a PhD in Choral Music Literature and Conducting.
He is the Director of the Lincoln University Concert Choir in Pennsylvania...
DR. GARCIA:
But initially the gospel music was not accepted in the African American church... because these
churches patterned their worship after the white congregations that they sprang from.... And then
afterwards, that music was really kind of frowned upon. As the spiritual was, initially.
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Horace Boyer....
DR. HORACE BOYER:
All of our music is much more accepted now than it was, but there are still congregations that I
don’t care what kind of gospel it is, it can be smooth gospel, or it can be raucous. It’s not going to
get into some churches, so that, Dorsey had the problem of finding an audience, finding singers,
finding places where this music could be produced, and that he actually did. It took him 30 years.
M. NORRIS:
It took him 30 plus years because the struggle for
acceptance was being waged on more than one front,
more than one level...Dr. William Garcia...
DR. GARCIA:
And they considered the gospel music to be from the holiness Pentecostal group, and at that time,
the Holiness Pentecostal Group were the so-called “lower class” of African Americans, because
the ones that were middle class and above were attending the United Methodist and the AME
church and the Baptist and they didn’t sing that kind of music.
(5 BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA“By and By”...UP/Under)
M. NORRIS:
This is Every Voice And Sing! I’m Michele Norris...
00:19:45.............FIRST SHOW BREAK............00:19:45
(00:20:15)(5 BLIND BOYS --“By and By”... Under)
M. NORRIS:
(00:20:15) For many in the different church denominations from the late 19th century on, the
“style” of worship was obviously tightly connected to the “class” of those engaged in the worship
service.
And due primarily to what became known as the “great migration,” “class” was becoming quite
significant.
The mass movement north had begun to put poorer, so called “lower class” newly arrived Blacks
in much closer contact with the already well-established members in the Northern Black
Churches.... It would soon cause problems... Again, some necessary background:
(SOT: OAG UPDATED SUSPENSE THEME)
From 1915 through the 1930s, assaults on black political rights, property, even their lives
continued non-stop, especially in the South...
DR. HEATHER WILLIAMS:
Ida B. Wells started to realize that white men were lynching black men and they were making a
claim that black men were raping white women. And Ida B. Wells started investigating and
realizing wait, there’s some economic issues here, this isn’t about rape.
M. NORRIS:
Author Heather Williams, on the early days of crusading journalist Ida B. Wells and her
campaign against Southern whites who attempted to terrorize black men...
DR. HEATHER WILLIAMS:
To actually kill men who were doing well economically and again, as in slavery, you beat people
in public, here you hang people in public, or you shoot them to say to other people, stop this
striving. There’s a place for you.—slavery’s over, but this is a society that we have in the South.
It’s Jim Crow and we’ve put that in place,
M. NORRIS:
In Chicago, the Black-owned newspaper, The Chicago Defender had run its own campaign in
support of anti-lynching laws. It had also waged a successful migration campaign warning of the
dangers for Blacks in the South, and pushing job opportunities in the North. Since it was
circulated nationally, Blacks, who were already leaving, began to flee the Deep South in droves.
The rapid increase in the black population of these northern cities, especially Chicago, was a
major “sea change.”
The Chicago Defender dutifully tried to advise its readers to help teach the new arrivals how to fit
into their new surroundings...
[XFADE TO OAG: FAMILY THEME UNDER]
VOICE #1:
“...SEEK TO INSTRUCT THE MIGRANTS. AS TO THE DRESS, HABITS AND METHODS
OF LIVING
NECESSARY TO WITHSTAND THE RIGORS OF THE NORTHERN CLIMATE. AS TO
THE EFFICIENCY, REGULARITY AND APPLICATION DEMANDED OF WORKERS IN
THE NORTH. EVERY RACE MAN OWES THIS TO HIMSELF AS WELL AS TO THE
NEWCOMERS, FOR WHAT AFFECTS ONE AFFECT[S] US ALL...”
M. NORRIS:
Thanks to the Defender’s migration campaign, Chicago’s Black population increased by 50 per
cent between 1916 and 1918- just 2-years! There was a noticeable jump in the Black Church
population. The storefront Pentecostal and Holiness churches increased markedly. But the old
line, established Black churches—Baptists, Methodist and AME church-memberships increased
even more dramatically. Problems were inevitable... As author Michael W. Harris writes in The
Rise of Gospel Blues, his biographical work on Thomas Dorsey and his music:
(OAG: FAMILY THEME ...UNDER)
VOICE #2:
“BECAUSE OF THE SOCIAL BACKGROUNDS OF THE LEADERSHIP AND THE URBAN
LOCALE OF THESE CHURCHES, A DISTINCT NORTHERN ETHOS—CLASSICAL
MUSIC, NON-DEMONSTRATIVENESS, SUBDUED PREACHING—ENJOYED AN
UNCONTESTED PROMINENCE. AS EARLY AS 1920, HOWEVER, THIS OLD-LINE
SPIRIT WAS THREATENED BY THE SHEER SIZE OF THE SOUTHERN INVASION.”
M. NORRIS:
The newly arrived migrants came from places like Georgia and Mississippi. They were usually
poorer, from more rural backgrounds. They preferred a much livelier, more demonstrative form
of worship; much closer to what the Holiness and Pentecostal churches were doing; closer to the
new musical style being pushed by Thomas A. Dorsey...
DR. HORACE BOYER:
Thomas A Dorsey actually didn’t start in a small church.
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Horace Boyer....
DR. HORACE BOYER:
He began gospel in the very prestigious Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago.... This is 1932, and
Dorsey was invited to start his gospel choir there. Reverend Austin saw—now this is one of the
important mainline churches in Chicago, but Reverend Austin brings it in, and, there was a head
of the music department at Pilgrim Baptist Church was a man named Edward Boatner, who’s a
very important composer. Edward was so mad, when they brought that toe-tapping music in
there, he left.
(XFADE TO ARETHA FRANKLIN,”PRECIOUS LORD)
M. NORRIS:
Edward Boatner may have left, but many of the “old-line” members of Pilgrim Baptist stayed.
They were not happy with Reverend Austin’s alliance with Thomas A, Dorsey and his new “toetapping” style of Gospel music. ..
Dorsey had been offered an entry platform, but the struggle for acceptance of his music had only
just begun.
The music’s link to the so-called “lower class” Holiness and Pentecostal churches was just one
hurdle. The other major obstacle he faced, at Pilgrim and other mainline churches, was rooted in
moral, and doctrinal beliefs...
DR. OSTERMAN:
I think it was a moral issue of mixing the sacred and the secular and that became problematic for
those who were morally conscious.
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Eurydice Osterman is on the faculty of Oakwood College, a 7th Day Adventist school with a
rich music tradition near Huntsville, Alabama. She was Conductor of the Oakwood College Choir
for 12 years.
DR. OSTERMAN:
And the moment he crossed the line and tried to connect the two, it created a disturbance in the
church. And I think it was from a moral sense, that it was problematic for the churches, because
the environment in which the blues and jazz and all of these other secular forms had been born
were so different. The lifestyle of those who patronized those types of places...
M. NORRIS:
But Dorsey was sincere in his re-conversion and return to the faith of his Baptist-Minister
Father....Dr. Boyer...
DR. HORACE BOYER:
Mr. Dorsey told me this, because I interviewed him. He said a preacher came to him and said, Mr.
Dorsey, you are not as sick in body as you are in mind. If you’ll stop playing the devil’s music,
and play the Lord’s music, you’ll be all right. That was in 1929, and Mr. Dorsey told me this in
1964. And he said I’ve never been sick a day since.
M. NORRIS:
But his use of the musical language of the joints and clubs that showcased this secular music was,
and still is, anathema to many equally sincere believers.
Dr. Osterman...
DR. OSTERMAN:
I think his conversion was a very sincere conversion.
.... And while it may have been an ingenious creation, still music speaks louder than words
because music goes directly to the emotions. So long before words are filtered through your
master brain to determine whether they are sacred or secular, the music has already decided and
has sent the message of what that is. And so when he combined them, people were hearing
sacred words, but they were hearing secular music.
M. NORRIS:
Reverend Eugene Palmore is a Program Coordinator in the Arts Ministry at Marble Collegiate
Church in New York City. He’s a graduate of Morehouse College and he sang in its glee club
under the direction of Wendell Whalum.
[xfade Aretha TO Morgan State U’s...”PRECIOUS LORD”]
REV. PALMORE:
Thomas Dorsey was a blues pianist. His wife died. He didn’t know how to deal with it. He sits
down and he writes Precious Lord, Take My Hand. Is he going to use Bach’s language? No, he
doesn’t have Bach’s musical vocabulary. Is he going to use Chopin? Is he going to use anybody
else but his own language? No. He has to use what’s available to him. So he takes his blues and
puts on top of the blues a sacred appeal. An appeal to God, a prayer, you’re going to criticize him
for that...
[MORGAN STATE U”PRECIOUS LORD” UP...XFADE TO OAG: BATTLE THEME
UNDER]
M. NORRIS:
The criticism, objections and resistance would continue for years. And even as these musical
battles were being fought within the Black churches, the Black struggle for full freedom and first
class citizenship continued in the larger society....
It was a constant struggle: from those racial clashes in what James Weldon Johnson dubbed the
Red Summer of 1919, the anti-lynching campaigns and battles against racial discrimination
continued, right into the Thirties and early 1940s....
Washington, DC, the nation’s Capital, was symbolic of the country’s failed treatment of its
formerly enslaved black population. In that 1919 Red Summer, one of the bloodiest riots took
place there. 20-years later, in 1939, one of the most public examples of the ongoing
discrimination against blacks also occurred....
(MARIAN ANDERSON”GOSPEL TRAIN” UP...UNDER)
M. NORRIS:
Marian Anderson was one of the greatest Contraltos to grace any international concert stage....
She was a world-renowned Artist; and was the first African American to both entertain at the
White House-- for President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt--and solo
at the New York Metropolitan Opera…
(ANDERSON: “Motherless Child” UP,,,UNDER)
M. NORRIS:
In 1939 the D.A.R. or Daughters of the American Revolution- denied Marian Anderson the right
to perform in concert at Constitution Hall in the heart of Washington, DC.
This affront to such an Artist outraged many, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs.
Roosevelt helped arrange for an alternative concert site.
(ANDERSON “Motherless Child” UP...UNDER)
M. NORRIS:
On Easter Sunday, 1939, Marian Anderson performed in concert at Washington DC’s Lincoln
Memorial, before an audience of over 75-Thousand people.
[ANDERSON “Motherless Child” to End...]
[TUSKEGEE CHOIR...”Steal Away”...UNDER...]
M. NORRIS:
The DAR continued its discriminatory practices at Constitution Hall into the early 1950s.
Interestingly enough, the African American group they first “invited” to perform at Constitution
Hall was the Tuskegee Concert Choir under the direction of William Levi Dawson.
[TUSKEGEE CHOIR ”Steal Away” UP...UNDER...]
M. NORRIS:
African Americans were divided on whether the Tuskegee Choir should perform, since the DAR
made no promises about changing its discriminatory policies against Black Artists....
Mr. Dawson elected to perform, but the Tuskegee Choir’s appearance was boycotted and picketed
by large numbers of African Americans and other anti-discrimination groups...
Discrimination was a national problem, and African Americans fought it on a national level...
It was this type of activism against all forms of racial discrimination that eventually played a
major role in gaining the inclusion and acceptance of Gospel Music across the board—from the
Black Churches, to the Black Colleges...
[SMALLWOOD “LIVE IN DETROIT: OVERTURE”IN/under]
M. NORRIS:
Ethnomusicologist, Dr. William Garcia...
DR. GARCIA:
But that was the beginning of all of that... in the ‘60s with the revolution taking place on the black
college campus and many white colleges campuses where the study of African American history
and African history became very important, then these gospels choirs sprang up...
At first it was not accepted.
DR. W. H. CALDWELL:
A lot of the choral directors just didn’t have the background...
M. NORRIS:
Dr. William Henry Caldwell is Director of Vocal and Choral Activities at Central State
University in Ohio...
DR. W. H. CALDWELL:
Because they don’t understand it they’ll try to suppress or say, you know, this is beneath me or
I’ve studied at this place and that place, why should I do this? And that’s the wrong attitude to
take because it’s still great music.
Now there’s good gospel and there’s bad gospel. All gospel music is not great. So I select gospel
music based on the let’s say, the way I can use it within my choir. Richard Smallwood, for
example, I love his arrangements...
[KSU CHOIR “Holy Thou Art God”UP/under]
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Roland Carter is now the Ruth S. Holmberg Professor of American Music at the University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga. Prior to that, he spent almost a quarter of a century as Director of the
Hampton University Concert Choir.
DR. CARTER:
Black college choirs, concert choirs, would not touch a piece of gospel music.... As a student at
these institutions, we were told we couldn’t play that. We would get kicked out of the practice
rooms if they heard gospel music coming out of there—oh absolutely.
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Boyer... on his personal experience with that musical struggle...
DR. HORACE BOYER:
I go to Bethune Cookman College and the choir director, Thomas Daniel Demps finds out that by
this time my brother and I are recording artists gospel singers, and even though I had a music
scholarship, he would not let me sing in the choir, lest I taint the choir. So my whole freshman
year I didn’t sing in the choir. I’m a music major....
But I had to prove to him that gospel did not get in my way....
Warner Lawson, was head of the choir, fabulous choir at Howard University. And he said there
will never be any gospel music in this department as long as I live. By 1969, Warner Lawson was
dead, and Richard Smallwood organized the gospel choir at Howard University. ...
[KSU CHOIR “Holy Thou Art God”UP/UNDER]
[XFADE TO OAG: BATTLE THEME-2 UNDER....]
M. NORRIS:
Richard Smallwood and a group of Howard University students commandeered their campus Fine
Arts building for a full week in the late 1960s...
SOT: REV. RICHARD SMALLWOOD:
(00:00:55) My name is Richard Smallwood. ...
I am a musician. I am a recording artist. I’m a writer. And I’m a minister and I do gospel music...
I think the thing that I wasn’t prepared for was the bias against black music.... Now granted, I
loved classical music because I grew up on it. But the only courses that were offered at the school
of Music at that time, were courses in European Music, you know. You could talk about Bach,
Chopin, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Bartok, whoever, but you couldn’t even play
gospel music in the practice area....
We were not being offered the type of African American courses that we wanted, not only in
music, but just in general. And so we at the school of music decided we wanted a jazz band, we
wanted a jazz department, we wanted to be able to sing gospel, you know, the whole nine yards....
We decided that we would take over the Fine Arts Building.... We wouldn’t let anybody in the
building....
And I remember sitting and playing and all of us singing gospel music from sun up to sundown,
‘til I had blisters on my fingers. We wouldn’t let any of the teachers in. We wouldn’t let anybody
in until the dean would listen to our requests. And he said, I don’t want to hear it. And we said,
OK, we’ll sing and we’ll play until you do. And that’s what we did.
M. NORRIS:
Their militancy paid off. Howard University incorporated African American courses into its
curriculum; a Jazz Music Department was formed, and the Howard Gospel Choir was born.
REV. RICHARD SMALLWOOD:
And I remember we insisted that we sang on the first graduation after we had been formed, and I
remember we got up to sing, a lot of the faculty got up and walked out. You know. It was like,
you can go anywhere you want to. We’re here to stay. We’re not going anywhere, you know. So
that’s how it was...
M. NORRIS:
It is still going strong today.
[KSU CHOIR “Holy Thou Art God”UP/UNDER]
M. NORRIS:
This is Every Voice And Sing! I’m Michele Norris.
00:40:00.............SECOND SHOW BREAK............00:40:00
(00:40:30)[KSU CHOIR “Holy Thou Art God”UP/Under]
REV. EUGENE PALLMORE:
Richard Smallwood has influenced the choral sound in gospel music more than anybody in the
last 25 years...
M. NORRIS:
Reverend Eugene Palmore...
REV. EUGENE PALLMORE:
He’s a classically trained musician. With degrees in music composition and theory and he adds
his spin and his take to gospel music.
M. NORRIS:
But a long line of Gospel Artists flow from the early Gospel Quartets through Thomas A. Dorsey
to Richard Smallwood and beyond...
Take-6 member, Dr. Cedric Dent...
[SOT: TAKE 6... “You Can Make It-Go On” IN/UNDER]
DR. CEDRIC DENT:
James Weldon Johnson, who wrote Lift Every Voice and Sing,.. he once wrote in an article years
ago that in the 1920s quartet singing was so popular that he said just pick up any four black guys
off the street, have one start singing the melody, and the other 3 will naturally find the other parts.
Now that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it does suggest how popular quartet singing was in the
‘20s, 1920s.
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Horace Boyer...
DR. HORACE BOYER:
In 1919, we get the Silver Leaf Jubilee gospel quartets. In 1926, we get the Bluejay....and then in
1930s, we get the Bertha Wise Singers, who inspired Roberta Martin... and then in 1927, Mahalia
comes from New Orleans into Chicago and joins the Johnson Brothers. In 1935, Clara Ward and
the Ward Singers of Philadelphia are formed when Thomas A. Dorsey comes to their place. We
get the Soulstirrers. And the Soulstirrers are coming in from Texas.
(SAM COOK/HEM OF HIS GARMENT UP...UNDER)
M. NORRIS:
Reverend Eugene Palmore...
SOT REV. PALMORE:
00:15:44 – Sam Cook and the Soul Stirrers, coming out of that gospel quartet tradition, and of
course, he moves into the secular world, yes.
But he’s not going to abandon where he was born and the things that have nurtured him to this
point. A change is going to come, I was born by the river in a little tent. It almost sounds like
Moses. And just like the river, I been runnin’ every since.
(SAM COOKE:CHANGE IS GONNA COME...UP/UNDER)
He is speaking about a social condition. But undergirding that there seems to be this connection
to faith in God.
(CHANGE IS GONNA COME...UP/UNDER)
M. NORRIS:
Dr. William Caldwell...
DR. CALDWELL:
I grew up singing in the Baptist Church, at Easton Star Baptist Church in Demopolis, Alabama
and I grew up listening to Mahalia Jackson and the Blind Boys and those quartets and things that
were prevalent throughout the South at the time... I would hear them every Sunday morning on
the local radio station... gospel music.
M. NORRIS:
Horace Boyer...
DR. HORACE BOYER:
Naturally we get Sister Rosetta Tharp... We get the original Gospel Harmonettes from
Birmingham, Alabama. The Dixie Hummingbirds, Greenville, South Carolina. relocate to
Philadelphia. Incidentally, they’re still singing.
(DIXIE HUMMINGBIRDS”GOD’S RADAR” UP/UNDER)
In the 1950s, we get the Caravans. Albertina Walker, and Shirley Caesar,...
(SHIRLEY CAESAR “MAY NOT BELIEVE” UP...under)
PASTOR S. CAESAR:
Well, my name is Pastor Shirley Caesar. I’m the pastor of the Mount Calvary Word of Faith
Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.
M. NORRIS:
We were able to get a brief backstage interview with Pastor Shirley Caesar as she prepared for a
New York City Concert in May of 2006...
PASTOR S. CAESAR:
I’ve been Pastoring totally 15 years...
I heard artists like Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharp... a lot of those older groups, in fact I
grew up under their singing ministry....
During slaving time, and during the times that they were trying to press through their hard times,
it was those Negro Spirituals, even Amazing Grace and Blessed Assurance that comes out of the
Caucasian background, but still it gave them that strength, and that fortitude to want to make it
out of what they were going through. And when they were not allowed to have their own drums,
they made their own beat. The women did the soprano clap,[high claps] and the men did the bass
clap[low claps]. And they would pat their feet with the bass and the soprano clap and they made
their own music. Some people said that it started with blues, I would rather think that they had to
hold onto their faith, and that faith had to come from God himself, and ah, so gospel music is as
old as God is.
(CISSY HOUSTON “I Want To Thank You” UP... UNDER...)
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Emily “Cissy” Houston fully agrees. A Singer of many musical genres, Cissy Houston is
Minister of Music at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey...
DR. HOUSTON:
We consider that all the same. You know, spirituals, and gospel, all of it derives from each...
including jazz and all that business. All comes from the same place.
(CISSY HOUSTON “I Want To Thank You” UP...UNDER...)
DR. HOUSTON:
The words are different. The feeling is the same. As far as I’m concerned.... That doesn’t mean
because I might sing secular music that my love isn’t as strong as yours or anybody else’s....
(“I Want To Thank You” UP...UNDER...)
M. NORRIS:
Her singing career began with her family Gospel Group, the Drinkard Singers. Long before her
daughter Whitney’s rise to stardom, Cissy Houston had songs on the Soul, Pop, Rhythm & Blues
and Gospel Charts...
DR. HOUSTON:
That’s what my shows are about. Love. Anything that I’m doing, whether it’s secular, whether
it’s gospel, whether it’s jubilee, whatever it is, I’m always talking to God.... and I try to choose
songs that display God. God’s love and His forgiveness, I think that’s the important thing.
M. NORRIS:
Her musical life has come full circle. She started in
Gospel when not that many Artists were singing it.
Now it’s once again her main focus. And it’s reputedly
the largest, fastest growing and most popular
musical genre in the world... Dr. Boyer...
DR. HORACE BOYER:
And I must tell you, James Cleveland brought us to our present position of popularity. James
Cleveland sang in the choir under Thomas A. Dorsey at Pilgrim Baptist. And Dorsey was great
inspiration to him. James thought of the idea of public concerts. He follows Dorsey and organized
the convention.
[REV. JAMES CLEVELAND “Shine On Me”....Up/Under]
M. NORRIS:
Dorsey had taken a cue from the National Baptist Convention, and started his own Gospel Music
Conventions in the 1930s. The Reverend James Cleveland followed Dorsey’s example in a big
way when he founded the Gospel Music Association of America in 1967, and began holding
national conventions. This organization would be a catalyst to propel Gospel Music to its
phenomenal rise in the coming decades.
[REV. JAMES CLEVELAND “Shine On Me”....Up/Under]
[XFADE TO WILBERFORCE “HAPPY DAY” UNDER]
M. NORRIS:
But if James Cleveland was the key individual who spread the flame of Gospel Music worldwide,
just about everyone we spoke with named one Group and one song as the indelible Watershed of
Gospel Music...
(Wilberforce Choir/”Oh Happy Day” UP... under)
DR. HORACE BOYER:
In 1969, Edwin Hawkins, puts out Oh Happy Day.
MARK KIBBLE/TAKE-6:
When Oh Happy Day came out. Here we go, you know.
REV. R. SMALLWOOD:
Edwin Hawkins-- O Happy Day hit.
DR. ROLAND CARTER:
Oh Happy Day. Edwin Hawkins.... Before Oh Happy Day, black college choirs, concert choirs,
would not touch a piece of gospel music.
(Wilberforce Choir/”Oh Happy Day” UP... under)
M. NORRIS:
Dr. Boyer...
DR. HORACE BOYER:
Well, that’s like a 2x4 in the history of gospel. That’s a structural point. Because then we go into
what is called “contemporary gospel.” We begin to consciously combine elements of popular
music in with that and of course that leads the way to the Wynans in Detroit, and the Clark
Sisters, who come from Detroit. And then in 1988, we get these 6 boys from Oakwood College in
Huntsville, Alabama, Take 6...
(SOT: TAKE 6”You Can Make It-Go On”…Up... under)
DR. HORACE BOYER:
and then round 1997, or somewhere in there, maybe a little earlier than ’97, we get Kirk Franklin.
PASTOR S. CAESAR:
We borrowed from the blues. The blues have certainly gotten much from us. And now, gospel is
borrowing now from the hip hop, and that’s because of a young singer by the name of Kirk
Franklin.
M. NORRIS:
The Reverend Kirk Franklin was not the first to use
Rap to preach and reach a younger Hip-Hop generation of Christians using their musical
approach to Gospel Music. He will certainly not be the last. Reverend Eugene Palmore...
REV. PALMORE:
You have somebody like Kurtis Blow going back to this church, to do this Hip Hop thing, which
attracts young people. And for someone to say that they don’t want Hip Hop or they can’t
stomach Hip Hop embracing gospel or gospel embracing Hip Hop which is really what it is. Or
Hip Hop adding its voice to gospel, then ..., you’re not being true to the message...
[KURTIS BLOW Up/Under... XFADE TO ”PRECIOUS LORD”-Morgan State Choir]
M. NORRIS:
But that’s a dialogue about the “message” we’ll need to spend more time exploring...
One thing is certain, this Hip Hop generation moves to a different drum-beat, and Drummer, just
as Thomas A. Dorsey did over 70-years ago... Dorsey’s triumph is as ground-breaking, as
gargantuan as the battle he had to wage.... Dr. Lena McLin…
DR. McLIN:
He established it all over the world, gospel music, and his Precious Lord is in over 300 languages.
And he became the father of gospel music.
[Morgan State “Precious Lord” UP.....UNDER and XFade to Richard Smallwoods’s “The
Highest Praise” under]
M. NORRIS:
Pastor Shirley Caesar...
PASTOR S. CAESAR:
It all comes out of the heart, and the loins of God....
And now, hey, gospel music has gone to a brand new dimension, if you will. I don’t think that it
will ever just be Amazing Grace again. It will never, ever go back to just Blessed Assurance, and
the Old Rugged Cross.... We have ahh, this wonderful, wonderful blessing of gospel music of all
forms...
[Richard Smallwoods’s “Highest Praise”UP... CONCLUDE]
M. NORRIS:
I’m Michele Norris, thank you for joining us.
(OAG:piano: Lift Every Voice And Sing! In/Under)
THIS PROGRAM WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC
BROADCASTING, THE FORD FOUNDATION, AND, IN PART, BY SUPPORT FROM
JAZZ-88.3FM WBGO RADIO IN NEWARK, NEW JERSEY...
"EVERY VOICE AND SING!” is a Production of EVT Educational Productions.
HOST AND NARRATOR: Michele Norris
Writer-Producers: Ann S. Hayward and Eric V. Tait, Jr.
Audio Design and Engineering: Duke Markos
Technical Producers: Jonathan Blakley, Keith Gonzales, David Tallacksen and Steven A.
Weiss...
Researchers: Jackie Farmer and Lynn James...
Production Associates: Marcos Alvarado, Elizabeth Jarvis and Lobi Redhawk
Additional Musical Underscoring composed, arranged and performed by,
ONAJE ALLAN GUMBS.
ADDITIONAL VOICES: Keith Gonzales, and, Raymond Peterson.
Advisors: Dr. Roland Carter, the Ruth S. Holmberg Professor of American Music at the
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and,
Dr. James Arthur Williams, Choral Conductor and Educator, now retired.
Audio Consultant: Don Alameda.
IN-KIND SERVICES PROVIDED BY: the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, New
Jersey.
Our thanks to the following vocal groups:
The Dixie Hummingbirds, the Kentucky State University Concert Choir-Quartet, the Morgan
State University Concert Choir, the Morehouse Glee Club-Quartet, Take-6, the Tuskegee
University Concert Choir, and, the Wilberforce University Concert Choir.
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Cephas Bowles, Thurston Briscoe, Willex Brown, Jr., Nicole Franklin,
Louise Meriwether, and Jonathan Weaver.
The Executive Producer of “EVERY VOICE AND SING!” is
Eric V. Tait, Jr.
For more information about this Series and the Choral Music Legacy of the Historically Black
Colleges and Universities, visit us at: www.evted.org.
(OAG: Lift Every Voice And Sing! to its last note)(00:59:00)
END OF EPISODE FOUR
EVT, JR.