The Church
The role of the church remained central to blacks in America
once they were emancipated. With emancipation, a just and equal
freedom was elusive and largely nonexistent. Jim Crow laws remained
as a given in the South and a huge exodus of blacks migrated to the
industrialized North (and continued until the 1970s), which promised
jobs and more freedom. To a very limited degree jobs were found, but
only jobs that whites did not want. More freedom was granted to them
only, as some historians argue, because the North lacked the
tradition of a fully organized and functioning racist tradition, and
because virtually the entire organized abolitionist tradition existed
in the North. The former abolitionists switched from advocating
emancipation to advocating fair treatment for recently freed blacks.
With this political and social backdrop, the church evolved as a
religious sanctuary from the eyes of slave holders to a sanctuary
where black culture and music could thrive. In this atmosphere
churches were used as meeting places for black town forums with, at
times, more of political than religious agendas.
Gospel music was changing rapidly. As once rural blacks
migrated to large cities in the North and South, and with the advent
of a growing black economy an emerging urban sophistication, gospel
music turned it's back on some of the cruder forms of harmony,
melody. and structure. Whites portraying blacks nationwide in
minstrel shows whetted the appetite for white audiences who desired
to hear the real thing. Beginning in 1871 the black Fisk Jubilee
Singers, who were students of the all black Fisk University in
Nashville, Tennessee, traveled widely in America internationally with
great success singing spirituals. Also, the late 1800s Ragtime was
developing into what later a 1917 San Francisco newspaper music critic called "jazz" (alternately spelled "jass").
Gospel music had influenced blues and jazz, and now, by the early
1900s, blues and jazz were in turn, influencing gospel music. for
instance, the syncopated rhythms of ragtime firmly entered many of
church performers approach to existing and newer songs. Many
traveling singing preachers began to accompany themselves with piano
and guitar. The guitar became a popular form of accompaniment due to
the practicality of ease of mobility. Since blues pianists and
guitarists were common nationwide, the singing preachers began to
adopt the chordal and melodic styles of many of bluesmen and women.
Blues and jazz was the popular rage, and served as the spice for
black musical palates, while gospel was the religious staple.
The more theatrical and prosperous traveling preachers and performers
sang in revival tents and as guests in churches and missions for the
homeless. Many of them traveled with an entourage of musicians and
small choirs.
White music publishers recognized that the antebellum style
of black jubilee and spirituals were rapidly fading and began to
widely publish a huge amount nineteenth century sheet music. This
brought a potentially dying form of gospel music into the white
parlors and churches which were loved either for the beauty of the
music or or baser nostalgia of the good old days of antebellum South.
After the Civil War, it had become the norm for black
churches to factionalize into various denominations according to the
region and predominant white denominational influence. The more
conservative black Methodist and Separatist Baptist churches from
their inception preferred the sedate hymns of English composer Isaac
Watts (1674-1748). Blacks embraced Methodism early on since white
Methodists readily adopted some of the black camp meeting songs, and
repetitive choruses. In addition these white Methodists mimicked the
black style of disjointed affirmations, prayers, and pledges. Still,
both black and white Methodists and black Separatist Baptists
services were musically tame in comparison to the emerging black
Holiness and Four Square churches. These churches retained the
unrestrained "country" element found in lesser sophisticated
congregations, and relates more directly in musical form, intensity,
and attitude found in various blues forms of the day and later in
rhythm and blues, rockabilly, and rock and roll.
The invention of recorded cylinders and records overshadowed
sheet music sales of gospel music and much more rapidly spread gospel
music into white and black homes (who could afford them), and even
more so in the early 1920s on the radio, but the concept of singers
attaining a "Star" status hadn't yet developed until post W.W.II.
The Influence of T.A. Dorsey
Since a brief history is the aim of this article, it is
impossible for me to cover the subject of musical idioms that evolved
from gospel music even with a modicum of success. For this reason,
click here to view graphically a flow chart showing what I feel is
too large of a subject to cover here.
The term "Gospel" existed before W.W.II, but other terms such
as "anthems", "spirituals", and "jubilees" were more common. After
W.W.II a former blues musician and son of a preacher (who used to
accompany the widely popular blues singer Bessie Smith), Thomas A.
Dorsey, converted back to the church and turned his considerable
talents to writing religious music. T.A. Dorsey, best known for "Precious Lord, Take My Hand", is of a pivotal post W.W.II importance
when we consider the three elements of his business acumen:
He is the first black man to start a black owned music publishing
company in America. Although he published his own music and others,
he had the acumen to include singer Sallie Martin as a partner. He
wrote the songs and secured the rights to other songs. Sallie Martin
then became a glorified sales rep. She traveled from coast to coast
performing and selling music sheets to black churches. It is
Dorsey's distinctive style of writing that the majority of choirs use
today. A combination of the old hymnody of Watts, and of the African "call and response" sung in country churches.
This distinctive style of religious music he insisted should
be called "Gospel". He wanted to disassociate what he felt was a
modern style of black religious music from the days of slavery and
the distasteful nostalgia of antebellum South. Surprisingly the
gospel term stuck retiring "anthems", "spirituals", and "jubilees" as an anachronism of past black religious music.
Secondly, he was the first black promoter on a large scale to
promote the better choirs, quartets, and solo singers in and, more
importantly, out of the church. With much controversy among the
faithful, he was the first to advertise the religious concerts, and
charge money to see them. (The first on record were the Fisk Jubilee
Singers. It is also interesting to note that black Historian W.E.B.
DuBois sang with and promoted the Fisk group one summer in the late
1800s). By doing this, T.A. Dorsey had helped create a star system.
