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Numerically, the male quartets always dominated the Golden Age of
Gospel Music but there were many female groups travelling the
same hard road. Albertina Walker and the Caravans ruled
the roost but back further Clara Ward and the Ward
Singers and Dorthy Love Coates and the Gospel
Harmonettes were the main female groups of that early period
in Gospel Music.
The Ward Singers - At the National Baptist Convention in
1943, Mother Getrude Ward of Philadelphia introduced her 14-year
old daughter Clara and caused a sensation that carried through
two decades. The fabulous Ward Singers were far and away the most
successful female group of gospel's golden age, tearing up
churches by the hundred with an intoxicating repertoire of old
Watts' hymns matched with the pick of the new Dorsey and Brewster
songs.
At their peak during the 1950s they were the ultimate female
gospel stylists, blessed with a vocal chorus that for eleven
years included the illustrious voice of Marion Williams,
a Holiness singer out of Miami.
Clara Ward died on January 16th 1973, when she was still only 48.
Said her old friend James Cleveland, 'Giants fall and
little chips grow. Many young persons who were inspired by her as
I was, will pick up and carry on like Clara would have wanted
them to.'
The Caravans - Organized originally in 1952 as the backing
chorus for Robert Anderson (striking out on his own
after leaving the Roberta Martin Singers), their early
recordings focussed on the powerful lead voice of Albertina
Walker on traditional songs like What A Friend We Have
In Jesus and Blessed Assurance. When the famed
contralto Bessie Griffin moved up from her native New
Orleans to join the Caravans in Chicago, Albertina stepped aside
to let Bessie lead on most songs, including Since I Met
Jesus and Ain't That Good News.
With evangelical dynamite added to the Caravans in the shape of
Shirley Caesar, the group was unbeatable on the road.
Albertina Walker, the woman who launched more gospel careers out
of one group than anyone else, is now at last finding her own
mass audience and now proudly wears the title of the
'Queen of Gospel Music'. (1995)
Dorothy Love Coated and the Gospel Harmonettes were perhaps the main female challenge to the double supremacy of Clara Ward and Albertina Walker. Dorothy spent two long periods as leader of the Gospel Harmonettes, taking a three-year break in 1959. The rigors of the gospel life, the punishment she imposed on herself through performance and the miseries inflicted by southern racism were constantly undermining her spirit. But she never let any of that beat her. When the Civil Rights movement swept the South, she threw herself into the local campaigns of Martin Luther King, marched the streets of Birmingham and accepted jail as an honor. When she returned to gospel with a reorganized Harmonettes, her abrasive spirit was more than re- charged and she captured a mass audience with defiant lyrics of faith and struggle:
Where others were as docile off stage as they were frenetic on, Dorothy Love Coated lived out her righteousness to the full, commanding a special sort of respect from Black audiences. Without any of the Wards' clowning or costumes of hairdos, she rivalled their popularity by becoming a trusted spokeswoman and a heartfelt performer. There is a specific injustice in the comparative obscurity of the Gospel Harmonettes.
