Chicago Gospel
Chicago Gospel is the product of the Great Migration.
From the 1910s, African Americans from the South arrived at Chicago, and found themselves alienated and rejected by the middle-class “silk-stocking churches.”
Their jazz and blues were deemed obscene and devilish, but day by day they earned their place. They changed the hymns and anthems sang solely from above the neck. They brought Black worship, Black spirituals, Black gospel to flourish.
The Birth of Gospel — A Chicago Stories Documentary
This 55-minute documentary traces the growth of Chicago Gospel, from its roots in the deep south before the Civil War to its popularity during the Civil Rights Movements, until now. It illustrates the lives of Thomas Andrew Dorsey, the Father of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson, the Queen (or Priestess) of the music, and other heroes of Chicago. It also maps out Bronzeville, the Pilgrim Baptist Church, and other city landmarks. Viewing it in the context of OEDIPUS AT COLONUS, it tells another story of blessings, legacy, and catharsis.
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WTTW's film website:
Dorsey speaks & sings in an interview:
“Spiritual songs are unwritten, spontaneous outbursts of emotions back in the days of slavery. Gospel songs come from Spirituals. They are written songs of good news.” - Thomas Dorsey to Studs Terkel
Mahalia Jackson: the Queen (1911-1972)
So much can be said about the “Queen of Gospel Song.” Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she listened to blues singers Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, and Enrico Caruso. When she was 16, she went to and settled in Chicago, joining the Greater Salem Baptist Church choir. Her voice made her the soloist, and earned her national popularity in her tours in the 1930s, and the 1950s America was crazy about her.
Beyond her groundbreaking record sells and international fames (her “Silent Night” was one of the all-time best-selling records in Denmark), Jack’s songs were the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement. She was the one who said to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” in Washington, D.C. in 1963. Yet before Dr. King stepped up to the podium, her singing “I Been ’Buked and I Been Scorned” to the crowd of 200,000 might have already brought them to church.
"How I Got Over"
"Amazing Grace"
With MLK at D.C.
From Studs Terkel Radio Archive
“Gospel music is nothing but singing of good tidings -- spreading the good news. It will last as long as any music because it is sung straight from the human heart.” - Mahalia Jackson
Excerpt of Ellison on African American church and community (highlight on Jackson 22'-27')
“Mahalia sings with passion, optimism, and belief…She is singing ‘dancably.’”
“The church was the largest institution which we had and the most vital during slavery. It’s about the only one which could be recognized, and combined…many functions which were not properly those of the white churches of the time.”
“People didn’t have shows. They didn’t have theater. A lot of things were lacking within the Negro community. And among a basically illiterate people, there was a strong liking for drama, for action, and for language.”
“Still today, if you look for the best Negro dramatists, you’ll find that they’re Negro preachers. It takes place on Sunday and it’s a drama which is tied up with man’s deepest fears and hopes and so on.”
“And you had the singing as an integral part of the ceremony, and it was a group thing where everyone took part, usually spurred on by someone who was expert at singing, who was a specialist so to speak, to use the anthropological terms.
“You’d have a person like Mahalia who is a kind of priestess. She was a priestess in the Negro church just as Bessie Smith was a priestess when she sang the blues among those people who really knew them and felt them. She stood there and evoked these emotions, evoked these images, evoked this sense of life. This is a very important thing. Of course, this woman just knocks me out. There’s something that sounds through the voice, there’s something which goes beyond the mere technique and eloquence of phrasing, although she has all of these things.”
More Samples & Playlists
Wrote in late-18th century by John Newton, who was a former captain of a slave trade ship, and later became a priest in the Church of England and an abolitionist.
The ensemble sung it in 2 ways: first as Newton’s composition of a western choral hymn, and second an African American interpretation, with more vocal improvisation.
Performned at 2020 Sing For Water Festival in the U.K.
The lyrics “Ise Oluwa ko le baje o,” loosely translate as “The creator’s work can never be destroyed.”
More on West African Chants
Original aurther unknown, the leader calls, “I’m a soldier,” and the congregation responds, “in the army of the Lord.”
wfmt Spotify Playlist: Celebrating the Blackness and Black Artistry of Gospel Music (link to article)
Terkel hosted many musical giants on his radio show including Willie Dixon, Thomas Dorsey, John Lee Hooker, Son House, Brownie McGhee, Memphis Slim, Koko Taylor, Sonny Terry, Big Mama Thornton and Josh White as well as discussing the role of the music with scholars, artists and people from other walks of life such as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes.
WTTW Documentary Stamp-Thru
ROOTS OF GOSPEL (4'20'')
Pre-Civil War American South: Spirituals
Slaves from different African tribes spoke different languages. But they could sing, and thus understand one another. They had no instrument, pen or paper. The leader would start singing, and the others followed.
They went into Christianity, and created a new theology. The pulpits of the enslavers said, be docile, be obedient. But they were going to speak the truth of Bible.
Post-Civil War: Blues and Jazz
African Americans, emancipated but still working as sharecroppers and strangled by the Jim Crow Laws, started their own churches and their blues music, which, along with all music, was sacred.
The influential, Black-owned Chicago Defender newspaper inspired the Great Migration, especially to “the promised land” of Chicago. Among them was the 17-year-old Thomas Andrew Dorsey.
EARLY IN CHICAGO (14'03'')
Middle-Class Black Churches
The network of African Methodist Episcopal churches welcomed the working-class Black migrants, who, nevertheless, found themselves at odd with these “silk-stocking churches.” There, everyone appeared respectable. Hymns and anthems were sung only by the choir while the congregation remained silent in their winter fur coats.
"Barrel Houses" vs High Altar
Dorsey, a blues piano player, was one foot in the church, one foot in the blues joint. His music was chastised as devilish, and he could only earn a living by playing in bars and parties. But at times of losses and despair, he always felt the spiritual calling. He wrote his “Gospel blues.”
“If you see my savior, tell him I’m on my way, tell him I’m coming home some day.” -- Thomas Dorsey's "If You See My Savior"
ARTISTS ASSEMBLED (35'10'')
NCGCC
Despite the middle-class churches’ rebuke, people loved the embodied, participatory experience of gospel music. By 1930, a group of gospel singers, the “Dorsey Disciples,” assembled around him and they co-founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses.
Among these artists Sallie Martins, Magnolia Butts, Willie May Ford, Roberta Martin, and Mahalia Jackson, incredible female organizer and entrepreneurs.
Mahalia Jackson: the Queen of Gospel
Mahalia Jackson and Thomas Dorsey met in 1928. See more of her at the end of the page.
GOSPEL CHORUS (40'03'')
1931: Rev. J. H. L. Smith from Bermingham, Alabama, became the first migrant pastor at a landmark Protestant Church in Chicago. At Ebenezer Baptist Church, he organized the first gospel choir with Dorsey and Theodore Frye.
1932: Rev. Junius C. Austin, paster of the Pilgrim Baptist Church, joined force to change Pilgrim out of its old “silk-stocking.” He invited Dorsey to direct the second gospel choir in Chicago at the Prilgrim, while Frye continued directing at Ebenezer. Dorsey stayed and led the choir for 40 years. Since then, Dorsey had written more than 100 songs. And Gospel chorus bloomed in Chicago.
Yet also in 1932, Dorsey lost his beloved wife Nettie and their first-born son in childbirth. He played the piano, and sang. “Precious Lord Take My Hand,” debuted at the Pilgrim Baptist Church, was his personal testimony. It was also the Black national anthem of mourning.
1934: the First Church of Deliverance aired its first service on the radio with a choir of 200. Its Midnight Service stormed over Bronzeville’s nightlife.
1950s - 70s: Mahalia Jackson took gospel beyond the church, and took church to the people.