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Selected ReadingWhile many white musicians gravitated toward country, folk, and old-timey music to express their spirituality outside of traditional Christian hymns, Black Gospel music drew heavily upon the traditional spirituals that had been passed down from the days of slavery, picking up its more driving rhythmic emphasis from blues and early jazz. Composer and singer Thomas A. Dorsey crystallized the style in 1932 with his epochal "Take My Hand, Precious Lord," and went on to compose a great many songs that later became standards.
When performed in the churches, the music was traditionally sung by a choir, with individual soloists sometimes taking the spotlight; this often happened in a form known as "call and response," in which either the choir or the soloist would repeat and/or answer the lyric which had just been sung by the other, with the soloist improvising embellishments of the melody for greater emphasis. As the music developed, these soloists became more and more virtuosic, performing with wild emotion (and, in the South, physicality) in order to properly express the spiritual ecstasy the music was meant to evoke.
The music was quite egalitarian in terms of gender, as both male and female performers — Brother Joe May, Rev. James Cleveland, Mahalia Jackson, the Clara Ward Singers, etc. — gained wide renown among both black and white audiences. The small-group format was also prevalent, with major figures including the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, the Soul Stirrers, the Swan Silvertones, and the Dixie Hummingbirds; in general, these groups placed a greater premium on smooth vocal harmonies, although some performances could approach the raucous energy (if not quite the huge sound) of a choir-with-soloist group.
As the years progressed, black gospel and black popular music influenced and borrowed from one another, reflecting the gradual change of emphasis toward R&B; black gospel also had an enormous impact on the development of soul music, which directed gospel's spiritual intensity into more secular concerns, and included a great many performers whose musical skills were developed in the church. As a recognizable style unto itself, black gospel music largely ceased to develop around the 1970s; progressing racial attitudes had helped black popular music reach wider audiences (and become more lucrative) than ever before, and tastes had turned towards the earthy hedonism of funk and the highly arranged, sophisticated Philly soul sound.
The former wasn't quite appropriate for worship, and it wasn't all that practical to duplicate the latter in church services. However, the traditional black gospel sound survived intact and was eventually augmented by contemporary gospel (an '80s/'90s variation strongly influenced by latter-day urban R&B); plus, singers like Whitney Houston continued to develop within its ranks.
The modern gospel style is barely sixty years old, but it continues a tradition of singing, preaching, and shouting familiar to generations of Black people. Any gospel singer, even the "hippest," can summon up feelings of nostalgia for a simpler time when everybody believed and participated in the old-time religion.
The singers are evoking a real experience, acting, as it were, as the custodians of tradition. In so doing, they can induce a camaraderie that quickly draws together a churchful of strangers. "You know I didn't always come from Chicago," the lead for the Pilgrim Jubilees tells a crowd. "Didn't always have it so easy. My brothers and I grew up in a little three-room shack in Houston, Mississippi. We didn't have much back then, church, but we had a family altar. Aw, you all don't know what I'm talking about ..." everybody laughs because everybody does.
Another of gospel's most striking traditional resources is the male quartet. Self-styled "gospel groups" are a recent phenomenon, but quartets were traveling and singing church music long before Thomas A. Dorsey and Sallie Martin helped dream the traveling groups into existence. Black neighborhoods are filled with men who discuss quartet with the same expertise and partisanship they extend to boxing or basketball, down to the smallest details of local origin.
By 1950 there were dozens of gospel hits heard everywhere in Black neighborhoods, on street corners, through open windows, down alleys, in bars and restaurants. A whole generation grew up listening to the:
Trumpeteers' "Milky White Way,"
the Georgia Peach's "Shady Green Pastures,"
the Angelic Gospel Singers' "Touch Me Lord Jesus,"
Mahalia's "Move On Up a Little Higher,"
the Martin Singers' "Old Ship of Zion,"
the Pilgrim Travelers' "Mother Bowed,"
The Ward Singers' "Surely God Is Able,"
the Five Blind Boys' "Our Father"
and the Bells of Joy's "Let's Talk About Jesus."
To the gospel lover, Soul and Rap are for the children. Gospel, like blues and jazz, is the music of grown-ups. The music of feeling.
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