A large body of American religious song with texts that reflect aspects of the personal religious experience of Protestant evangelical groups, both white and black. Such songs first appeared in religious revivals during the 1850s but they are more closely associated with the urban revivalism that arose in the last third of the 19th century. Gospel music has gained a place in the hymnals of most American Protestants and, through missionary activity, has spread to churches on every continent. By the middle of the 20th century it had also become a distinct category of popular song, independent of religious association, with its own supporting publishing and recording firms, and performers appearing in concerts. Although earlier uses of the terms ‘gospel hymn’ and ‘gospel song’ can be found, their use in referring to this body of song can be traced to P.P. Bliss’s Gospel Songs (1874) and Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs (1875) by Bliss and Ira D. Sankey. Other terms sometimes used include ‘gospel music’ and simply ‘gospel’.
HARRY ESKEW/JAMES C. DOWNEY (I), H.C. BOYER (II)
1. Gospel hymnody and American revivalism.
2. Gospel music and the popular commercial tradition.
Gospel music, §I: White gospel music
Although gospel hymnody has developed stylistic diversity over the past century and a half, it bears many traits typical of American popular song. The texts of gospel hymns are generally subjective or hortatory, are often addressed to one’s fellow man and centre upon a single theme which is emphasized through repetitions of individual phrases and a refrain following each stanza. The poems deal with such subjects as conversion, atonement through Christ, the assurance of salvation and the joys of heaven; their character ranges from the militant and didactic to the meditative and devotional. The music is generally composed for a specific text, and there are few instances of the exchange of tunes between different texts. Similarities to certain forms of the camp-meeting spiritual (see Spiritual, §I, 2) may be found, but more often the music of gospel hymns is related to marches or to popular secular songs of the theatre or parlour. The gospel hymn is strophic in form, and its music is characterized by simple, major-key melodies with a correspondingly simple harmonic vocabulary (occasionally coloured, in later examples of the genre, by chromatic passing ‘barbershop’ harmony) and a slow rate of harmonic change. Typical rhythmic traits include frequent repeated patterns, often with dotted quaver and semiquaver figures – devices common in popular secular song of the later 19th century. Most gospel hymns are published in four-part settings; although they are predominantly homophonic, a certain variety of texture is achieved in many of them through the use of ‘echo voices’ (e.g. rhythmic imitation of the soprano and alto by the tenor and bass). A late 19th-century gospel hymn illustrating most of these traits is Come unto me, and rest (ex.1).
Gospel hymnody may be viewed as the culmination of various American musical, social and religious developments of the earlier 19th century. It was foreshadowed in such collections as Joshua Leavitt’s The Christian Lyre (1831), a compilation containing spirituals, traditional hymn tunes and texts, and newly composed religious poems set to popular melodies from both Europe and the USA, in a mélange that is a compromise between the exuberance of the camp-meeting spiritual and the more ‘respectable’ hymn style of composers such as Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings. They in turn were influenced by the emerging popular hymn tradition: Mason’s ‘Harwell’ (1840, to the text ‘Hark, ten thousand harps and voices’), for example, has I–IV–V harmonies, frequent dotted rhythms and a recurrent refrain. Gospel hymnody also drew ideas from popular secular song, such as that of the Civil War era. George F. Root, composer of popular Civil War songs, also composed sacred music in the gospel hymn idiom: his Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching in fact provided the music for Jesus loves the little children, a Sunday school hymn still in use. Another influence upon gospel hymnody was the rise of evangelistic singers. Philip Phillips, perhaps the first such singer to receive international acclaim, appeared in several thousand ‘services of sacred song’ from the late 1860s, including an extensive tour described in his Song Pilgrimage Around and Throughout the World (1882). The appearance of gospel hymnody was thus more the culmination of earlier developments than the appearance of a new idiom.
Up to the mid-1870s the mainstream of gospel hymnody flowed through hymn collections for use in Sunday schools, which had developed as a useful and popular means of teaching and spreading the gospel to children. Although Mason had been the first to compile a collection of hymns with music for Sunday schools (The Juvenile Psalmist, 1829), it was his student William B. Bradbury who took the lead in composing hymns and compiling collections for the rapidly growing Sunday school movement. Bradbury’s settings of the texts ‘Jesus loves me’ (1802) and ‘He leadeth me’ (1864) are basically in the same idiom as the hymns that in the 1870s became known as gospel hymns. Among the most successful collections after Bradbury’s were those of two Baptists, Robert Lowry and William Howard Doane. Lowry is probably best known for his Shall we gather at the river? (1865); Doane collaborated with Lowry in Sunday school collections with such typical unecclesiastical titles as Pure Gold (1871) and Brightest and Best (1875).
After the Civil War secular song styles impinged ever more strongly on the hymns: the gospel songs of John R. Sweney are hardly distinguishable musically from parlour songs of the mid-19th century, and such hymns as William James Kirkpatrick’s Jesus saves (1882) are closely related to Civil War marches. Lowry’s Where is my wandering boy tonight? (1877) was sung in revival services, music halls and temperance meetings, and Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? (1878) by Elisha A. Hoffman later became a marching song for the Salvation Army.
The leading poet of early gospel hymnody was Fanny Jane Crosby, who began in the 1800s to build a corpus of several thousand gospel hymn texts, including those of the popular hymns Jesus, keep me near the cross (1869) and Blessed assurance (1873).
The gospel hymn emerged as a major force in the religious music of the USA during the revivals led by the evangelist Dwight L. Moody and his musical associate Ira D. Sankey. Hymns previously used largely in Sunday schools now became associated with urban revivalism and were known as ‘gospel hymns’.
Much of the evangelistic work of Moody and Sankey was related to the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA, the first American branch of which was formed in Boston in 1851), an organisation which, together with the Sunday school, encouraged the use of the popular hymns of Bradbury, Lowry, Sweney and others. Following their meeting at a YMCA convention at Indianapolis in 1870, Moody hired Sankey to direct the music of his church in Chicago. When the opportunity came to hold evangelistic meetings in Great Britain in 1872, Moody first sought the musical services of Philip Phillips, who was already well known there. Phillips declined, and Moody then invited Philip P. Bliss, a talented singer and leading composer of gospel hymns. Only after Bliss’s refusal did Moody turn to the less experienced Sankey, who by the end of the tour achieved international fame. In the mass meetings of Moody and Sankey the gospel hymns were often introduced by Sankey, who sang solos and accompanied himself at the reed organ. Gospel hymnody functioned essentially as a simple and unsophisticated means of communicating the evangelistic message, as indicated by a slogan used to advertise their meetings: ‘Mr Moody will preach the gospel and Mr Sankey will sing the gospel’.
The success of the Moody-Sankey meetings from 1873 in Great Britain and the USA was described by McLoughlin (1959) and Pollock (1963); musically, they established gospel hymnody as an accepted means of evangelism and as the first authentic American music, apart from minstrel-show songs, to gain popularity in Great Britain. In response to requests for the songs used at their meetings, Sankey first published them in a 16-page pamphlet with words only, Sacred Songs and Solos (1873), to be used along with Phillips’s Hallowed Songs (1865). In 1874 Bliss compiled with D.W. Whittle a songbook entitled Gospel Songs for use in evangelistic meetings. After Sankey’s return to America in 1875, he and Bliss merged their compilations in the publication of Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs, followed in 1876 by a second volume of Gospel Hymns. After Bliss’s death in 1876 this series continued to volume vi (1891) and Gospel Hymns Nos.1 to 6 Complete (1894), the latter containing 739 hymns with music. Sankey was assisted in the later editions by James McGranahan and G.C. Stebbins. Sankey, more important as a compiler and popularizer of gospel hymnody than as a composer, is best known for his tune for The ninety and nine (1874).
Bliss produced words and music to some of the most popular gospel hymns: Hold the fort, for I am coming (1870), Wonderful words of life (1874) and The light of the world is Jesus (1875). Not limited to the gospel hymn idiom, Bliss also composed in other religious styles, as in his music to More holiness give me (1873) and ‘Man of Sorrows!’ What a name (1875). Daniel Webster Whittle, an evangelist who had used at various times the musical services of Bliss, McGranahan and Stebbins, wrote many gospel hymn texts, such as There shall be showers of blessing (1883) and I know whom I have believed (1883), both with music by McGranahan. Stebbins and Daniel Brink Towner were also associated with Moody’s mass evangelism. Stebbins’s Jesus is tenderly calling today (1883) and Have thine own way, Lord (1907) are among his best-known hymns; more than 2000 songs are attributed to Towner, who exerted a strong influence on gospel hymnody as head of the music department (from 1893) of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
After the death of Moody in 1899 a number of American evangelists achieved varying degrees of success in mass revivalism; these included Samuel Porter Jones, Benjamin Fay Mills, John Wilbur Chapman, Reuben Archer Torrey and William Ashley (‘Billy’) Sunday. Following the pattern established by Moody, each evangelist had his own professional musicians. Among the musicians associated with these evangelists, Charles McCallom Alexander and Homer Rodeheaver made particularly important contributions to the development of gospel hymnody.
Alexander introduced a new informality to revival services, leading the singing with wide sweeping arm motions, using a piano rather than an organ for accompaniment and lightening the atmosphere with jokes and entertaining banter. He also represented a new commercialism among gospel hymnodists, becoming a man of considerable means through the income from his popular (and strictly copyright-protected) collections, which included such well-known songs as His eye is on the sparrow (1905), One Day (1910), and Ivory Palaces (1915), all still in use. Rodeheaver, active in musical evangelism from 1904, achieved fame in his 20-year association with the evangelist Billy Sunday, beginning in 1909. Rodeheaver’s approach to music in evangelism was similar to Alexander’s; he sought to make the musical service informal, congenial and enjoyable. Rodeheaver’s song leadership was enhanced by his vocal and trombone solos. Although many gospel hymns of Sankey’s era continued to be widely used by Rodeheaver, the trend was towards lighter, optimistic, semi-sacred music, as in the popular Brighten the corner where you are, with its ragtime syncopation and bass arpeggios (ex.2). To those who criticized his use of such a song, Rodeheaver replied:
It was never intended for a Sunday morning service, nor for a devotional meeting – its purpose was to bridge that gap between the popular song of the day and the great hymns and gospel songs, and to give men a simple, easy lilting melody which they could learn the first time they heard it, and which they could whistle and sing wherever they might be.
In 1910 Rodeheaver began publishing gospel hymn collections, establishing one of the largest gospel music publishers and his own recording label, Rainbow Records. The Rodeheaver Company’s most famous copyrighted gospel hymn is George Bernard’s The old rugged cross (1913). Although he himself composed a few gospel hymns, Rodeheaver was fortunate to obtain the services of several more talented gospel hymnists, such as Charles H. Gabriel, Bentley DeForest Ackley and Alfred H. Ackley.
In the period following World War I professional revivalism declined, and no new evangelist emerged until Billy Graham achieved a wide following beginning in the 1950s. Gospel music continued to flourish, however, with new sponsors. A new gospel hymnody gained acceptance in the rural American South as a distinct kind of popular country music (see §§2 and 3). Radio was the principal outlet for composers and continued to be important even after televised religious programmes became widespread in the 1970s. Differences between the sacred and secular forms vanished as religious programmes became a part of home entertainment.
During this period the heartiest of the older gospel hymns were assimilated into denominational hymnals, particularly those of Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist bodies, but also of smaller fundamentalist denominations and nondenominational groups. H.H. Todd compiled The Cokesbury Hymnal (1923) for Methodists. Robert H. Coleman published collections containing gospel hymns that were used by most of the Baptist churches in the South and Midwest; many of these were edited by B.B. McKinney, who in 1935 became music editor for the Sunday school board of the Southern Baptist Convention, and in 1940 compiled the Broadman Hymnal, which sold over eight million copies. New denominations in the southern states, formed during the surge of revivals during the Reconstruction period, published their own hymnals, which contained both earlier gospel hymns and new works, many written by composers whose training had been in rural singing schools and conventions.
But the revivalist tradition of gospel hymnody was maintained chiefly by fundamentalist institutions founded by the revivalists, such as Bible schools and colleges, youth organizations, nondenominational church congregations and summer church assemblies (such as those held at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, a village founded by the Methodist camp-meeting association in 1869). Many of these involved a number of important hymnodists, and they spread new gospel hymnody through radio programmes, phonograph recordings, and films. Wendell Phillips Loveless, director of the Moody Bible Institute radio station in Chicago (WMBI) from 1926, introduced a number of new hymns and ‘gospel choruses’ modelled on those of Alexander. His own works tend to be unison songs with lush piano accompaniments; chromaticism and many seventh and ninth chords typical of the contemporary popular song literature often appear, as in his Altogether lovely (1951) (ex.3). Norman John Clayton wrote music for the ‘Word of Life’ programmes of the radio evangelist Jack Wyrtzen from 1942; he also compiled over 30 collections of gospel songs, which, like those of Loveless, bore little musical relationship to the hymns of the Moody-Sankey era. Another radio evangelist, Charles E. Fuller of the ‘Old Fashioned Revival Hour’, returned to the older gospel hymns sung by a trained choir.
John Willard Peterson, a graduate of the Moody Bible Institute, was the most prolific composer of the period. He used a rich harmonic idiom for settings in the melodic style of popular love lyrics of sentimental devotional texts; he also developed a form of church cantata in the same style, and while his works of this type have contributed little to the solo and hymn literature they have become standard concert pieces in churches that use gospel hymns as the principal congregational music.
Billy Graham (b 1918), assisted by the singers Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea, was the only modern revivalist to gain national prominence during the second half of the 20th century, but his meetings produced no significant new gospel hymn literature. The congregational singing is reminiscent of the Moody-Sankey revivals (from which in fact come most of the hymns), although Shea often sang folk hymns such as How great thou art and the spiritual He’s got the whole world in his hands.
Gospel music, §I: White gospel music
Popular gospel music, written for distribution through agencies other than denominational or evangelical bodies, may be used in religious services, but its origin and principal use suggest an economic rather than a religious motivation. Early in the 20th century urban gospel hymnody merged with the tradition of Shape-note hymnody that had been widespread in the rural American South since the mid-19th century. Through the Ruebush-Kieffer publishing firm in Dayton, Virginia (later Dalton, Georgia), and the efforts of A.J. Showalter, gospel songs were issued in shape-note editions and circulated widely, in Georgia and Tennessee especially. This coincided with a powerful revival movement among Southern fundamentalists, and in the Pentecostal sects established at the time the new gospel hymnody found ready acceptance.
James D. Vaughan, a Nazarene Church layman, began publishing gospel songbooks in seven-shape notation in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, in 1890. He trained male quartets to give concerts of gospel songs, teach singing schools and sell his publications, and he also made recordings for the developing Southern market. In 1928 he established the first radio station in Tennessee for the purpose of broadcasting his music.
The Stamps-Baxter firm of Dallas, following the pattern set by Vaughan, became extremely successful and soon dominated gospel publishing in the South. From 1926 they ran a school for singers, sponsored travelling quartets, broadcast gospel music continuously on station KRLD in Dallas and published hundreds of collections, so designed as to become rapidly obsolete. Their editors solicited and purchased rights to thousands of new gospel songs by hymnwriters from all over the South. In 1936 the Stamps Quartet was the biggest success at the Texas State Fair. Their theme song, Give the world a smile each day, is typical of the new southern gospel style; it contains tag lines in accompanying voices, chromatic lower-neighbour notes and passing notes, and, in the refrain, a walking bass lead and hocket-like interjections (ex.4). The rhythmic vitality, uncomplicated harmony, and simple texts of the Stamps-Baxter music, along with its easily learned seven-shape notation, led to its becoming the most popular form of music in the rural South. Piano accompaniment in a conservative ragtime style was later added to the songs, blurring even further the distinction between sacred and secular.
Gospel music was heard in revival meetings, but its popularity and distribution were dependent on singing conventions and commercial publishing houses. The ‘Fifth Sunday Singings’, afternoon concerts sponsored by singing conventions in months that had five Sundays, included performances by travelling quartets promoting their latest collections, local quartets, ladies’ ensembles and large congregations. The practice became the principal musical activity in rural communities, gradually replacing the shape-note tradition. It was the independence of the rural gospel singers from organized revivalism that allowed the music to develop freely in the social milieu of the rural South and encouraged the establishment of a support structure of publishers, performers and promoters. This form of gospel music contributed most to the emergence of a ‘pop gospel’ (sometimes called ‘bluegrass gospel’ or ‘hillbilly gospel’) style within country music at the time of the early recordings of Southern music (see §3).
Gospel music, §I: White gospel music
The origins of white gospel performance styles are inextricably bound up with the new type of fundamentalist revival that occurred within white communities after the Civil War. Moody led the first big revival of this kind during the Reconstruction period of the 1870s, impelled by the conviction that social reform should be accompanied by moral and spiritual regeneration. But Moody, and later white evangelists such as Sunday, discouraged the emotional outbursts that had characterized pre-Civil War revivals and replaced the ‘fire and damnation’ preaching of earlier generations with compassion and sentimentality. The songs and hymns used in their services were intended, in the words of Sankey, ‘to implant the gospel in the hearts of the people’. The style of performance favoured by Moody and Sankey was one that emphasized sweetly blended, ‘happy’ voices, rather than harshly passionate singing or extreme displays of emotion. This style was continued by other evangelists and is still part of the performance practice in many of their services. But new elements and new combinations of elements were also added during the 20th century.
Rural gospel music was usually performed in the emotionless, deadpan manner of the mountain folksinger, who employed a nasal, ‘white’ tone without vibrato, and extensive sliding between pitches. It was thus an adaptation of gospel song to the traditional Southern white vocal style, which partly accounts for its wide acceptance, though its incorporation of elements of black gospel music further broadened its appeal. Some white gospel groups, such as Ernest Phipps’s Holiness Quartet, accompanied by fiddle and guitars, were successful in combining 20th-century Kentucky hillbilly style with pre-Civil War white spirituals, as in I want to go where Jesus is (Vic. 20834, 1927). Other white gospel songs recorded in the 1920s and 30s were sung in the prevailing Appalachian folk style used for plaintive or sentimental secular ballads.
During the 1930s the stylistic blend of sacred and secular was given further impetus in the recordings of the Carter Family, who drew upon a wide range of ballads, sentimental tunes, cowboy songs and mountain songs to impart to their hymns and gospel songs the particular flavour of the Blue Ridge country. Their music was usually for two or three voices (without a bass part), sung to an accompaniment of guitar, fiddle and mandolin or banjo. Songs such as Sweet heaven in my view (Decca 5318, 1936) and You better let that liar alone (Decca 5518, 1937), sung with a nasal timbre, had the same harmonies and rhythmic swing that typified their secular counterparts. Hillbilly and later country singers generally included a number of religious pieces in their performances, and most ‘cowboy’ singers also recorded sacred songs. The stylistic blurring meant that textual content was often the main point of differentiation between sacred and secular songs, although a sweeter tone and often a more sentimental delivery (in gestures and facial expressions) were considered appropriate to the sacred songs. Mindful of their audiences’ possible disapproval of their recording secular music, many gospel groups and individual singers recorded their sacred and secular pieces under different names. Thus the Delmore Brothers, who recorded secular songs to guitar-duet accompaniment in the 1940s, also recorded, with Grandpa Jones and Merle Travis as the Brown’s Ferry Four, such sacred songs as Will the circle be unbroken? (King 530, 1945) and When the good Lord cares (King 662, 1946). In all their recordings the Delmores’ blues-style guitar playing showed black influences, as did many of the songs they sang. Many other country singers recorded sacred songs in a gospel style.
The rural gospel quartet tradition merged with that of the singing families in the 1940s, and the ‘all-night singing’, a gospel concert patterned after the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ travelling show, became popular among Southern audiences. In the early 1950s the Blackwood Brothers won Arthur Godfrey’s television talent-scout competition, and the singers Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis emerged with gospel quartet backup groups, thus focussing national attention on the popular gospel tradition. The complete secularization of the rural gospel sound is exemplified by such groups as the Oak Ridge Boys, the Statler Brothers and the Gatlins.
As the more extreme forms of black gospel singing developed and black gospel quartets became more widely known, many white groups attempted to imitate them. They assimilated some of the rhythmic drive of the black style, but little of its frenzied technique. White gospel performance has mainly drawn on the close harmony of barbershop quartet singing, on country guitar playing, on hillbilly intonation, on urban crooning techniques and sometimes on the passionate style of black gospel.
For bibliography see end of §II.
The appearance of black gospel music coincided with the beginnings of ragtime, Blues and jazz, and with the rise of the Pentecostal churches at the end of the 19th century.
Gospel music, §II: Black gospel music
Hymnody in the black American churches derives from both black and white sources. Among the black sources are the camp-meeting spirituals extemporaneously composed by slaves during ‘after service’ or ‘brush arbor’ meetings in the early 1800s, the mid-century ‘sorrow songs’ (e.g. Steal away, Go down, Moses and Swing low, sweet chariot) and the bolder, more affirmative ‘jubilee spirituals’ of the post-Emancipation period (such as In that Great Gettin' Up Morning and Git on board, little chillun) (seeSpiritual, §II). White sources include hymn texts ranging from those of Isaac Watts to examples by Fanny Jane Crosby, as well as the diverse anonymous texts of the folk-related shape-note hymnals; tunes were also borrowed from many white sources but transformed by black American styles of rhythm (syncopation and reaccentuation), pitch (flexible inflection and blue notes), harmonization (quartal and quintal harmony) and performance (e.g. call-and-response delivery).
The first, and for a long time the most important, hymnal published for use by black congregations was A Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns Selected from Various Authors (1801). The first edition contained 54 hymn texts and the second (published the same year) 64, to be sung to popular hymn tunes of the day. Besides hymns by such well-known poets as Watts, Charles Wesley, John Newton and Augustus Toplady, there were a few by Richard Allen and members of his congregation; some, including When I can Read my Title Clear, Am I a soldier of the cross and There is a land of pure delight, are still popular. Later editions of the hymnal show a change of character. The third edition (1818) contained 314 hymns, as against only 15 in the first, and the more homely and folklike camp-meeting songs were mostly eliminated. Spirituals were excluded from the fourth edition (1876) but were reinstated in later ones (1892–1954). The influence of the collection was widespread, especially among congregations of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (which expanded rapidly during the 19th century), but also among black congregations of other denominations. Another early hymnal was Peter Spencer's African Union Hymn Book (1822), but its use was limited almost exclusively to the congregation of the church for which it had been published.
After the American Civil War efforts were made to improve the quality of hymnody and its performance in many black American churches. These efforts were often ambivalent. The influence of the Fisk Jubilee Singers was strong: they sang black melodies, but in arrangements and with vocal production heavily indebted to white models. Similarly, a number of hymnals were published that contained spirituals and other black hymns (now sometimes called ‘plantation melodies’) alongside revival and gospel hymns by white composers, all in bland, homogeneous choral arrangements. The most important was A Collection of Revival Hymns and Plantation Melodies (1883) distributed widely in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, New York and the deep South, especially Louisiana and Georgia. Of its 170 hymns, 150 are set to music; the authors of the texts are cited but the composers are unidentified. Among characteristic examples of camp-meeting and later black spirituals are Go down, Moses, and Roll, Jordan, roll (with a later version of the tune in the pioneer collection Slave Songs of the United States, published in 1867).
Late in the 19th century there began to emerge a new type of black sacred music, the gospel hymn, in which sophisticated, spiritual-like texts, incorporating simile and colourful imagery, were set to music in the white hymn tradition represented by Lowell Mason and later composers, but ‘African-Americanized’, particularly in their use of syncopation. One of the first hymnals to incorporate this music was The Harp of Zion (1893), which was almost immediately adopted by the all-black National Baptist Convention; it was at once republished unaltered as The National Harp of Zion and B[aptist] Y[oung] P[eople's] U[nion] Hymnal and became widely used by black Baptists over the next 25 years.
Gospel hymnody among black congregations increased considerably under the influence of the powerful religious movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that gave rise to various fundamentalist Pentecostal ‘holiness’ and ‘sanctified’ churches, especially after the meetings of the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles (1906–9). The composer most closely identified with this movement was the Methodist minister Charles Albert Tindley of Philadelphia. His gospel hymns addressed themselves to the needs of poor, oppressed and often uneducated black Christians: We'll understand it better by and by, published in Soul Echoes (1905), is typical, with its verse-and-refrain construction (the closing phrase of each being identical), its basically pentatonic melody and its simple harmonies (ex.5). Other popular gospel hymns by Tindley include Leave it there (1910) and Stand by me (1905). He is also well represented in Gospel Pearls (1921), which includes gospel hymns by Thomas A. Dorsey, Lucie Campbell and E.C. Deas, along with older white and black hymns and spirituals; the collection was compiled for Baptist use but was soon adopted by black congregations of other denominations.
In the 1930s and 40s, under the influence of Dorsey, Campbell, W. Herbert Brewster and Roberta Martin, gospel songs and spirituals became an integral part of congregational song in black churches (a parallel development was the addition of a gospel group or choir to the traditional ‘senior choir’ in many churches). This trend continued during the postwar period, and church hymnody submitted to the influence of the ‘contemporary’ style of gospel music, exemplified by the extremely successful recording by Edwin Hawkins of a 19th-century white Baptist hymn, Oh Happy Day (1969). Gospel music was officially recognized as the principal new medium of black hymnody in The New National Baptist Hymnal (1977), which included a large number of songs by such gospel hymnodists as Tindley, James Cleveland and Andrae Crouch. Contemporary gospel influences were also apparent in the works published for congregational singing by the black Catholic priest Joseph Rivers, including Bless the Lord (with Henry Papale and Mark Trotta, 1964) God is love (with Papale, 1964), and My God is so high (with Edward Stanton Cottle and Trotta, 1970).
In the early 1980s several hymnals were issued which continued to reflect the previous decade's ecumenical attitudes towards a wide spectrum of black religious music. The United Methodist Church's Songs of Zion (1981) included hymns by such rising gospel composers as Margaret J. Douroux and J. Jefferson Cleveland. As a supplement to its official hymnal, the Episcopal Church published a concentrated but varied collection of spirituals, choruses and gospel songs, Lift Every Voice and Sing (1981), and in 1982 the Church of God in Christ, the largest of the black Pentecostal denominations, issued Yes, Lord!, containing a rich selection of black sacred songs. Later publications included the African Methodist Episcopal Church's AMEC Bicentennial Hymnal (1984), Lead Me, Guide Me: the African American Catholic Hymnal (1987), The Hymnal of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (1987) and Lift Every Voice and Sing II: an African American Hymnal (1993) of the Episcopal Church.
Gospel music, §II: Black gospel music
(ii) Instruments and singing techniques.
(iii) Quartets, other solo ensembles and choirs.
Gospel music, §II, 2: Black gospel music: Performance
The basic performance style of 20th-century black gospel music originated in Memphis in about 1907, when the founders of the Sanctified Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, inspired by a revival they had attended in Los Angeles, instituted their own services, characterized by speaking in tongues (glossolalia), shouting, trances and visions, and suitably emotional music, often improvised and sung in a highly charged style (see Singing in tongues). Performances by skilled songleaders evoked from the congregation bodily movement (swaying, head-shaking), rhythmic responses (hand-clapping, foot-stamping) and occasional shouted interpolations in the tradition of 19th-century ring-shouts and circle dances.
The songleaders were the ministers and preachers or singers with authoritative voices developed out of the necessity to cut through the vociferous responses of large congregations. Among the first to gain renown were several blind singers, including Connie Rosemond, for whom Lucie Campbell wrote Something Within Me for the National Baptist Convention in Newark (1919); Blind Willie Johnson, known for his blues guitar technique and powerful ‘church’ style of singing; Gary Davis; and Blind Mamie Forehand, known for her ‘sanctified’ singing, accompanied by her blind guitarist husband, A.C. Forehand (Honey in the Rock, recorded in 1927). The most famous of the blind singers was Arizona Dranes; her thin but intense soprano influenced many later singers, and her piano style was a model for that of the first gospel songs recorded by Dorsey (e.g. I shall wear a crown, 1928).
By the mid-1920s gospel preachers were also making popular recordings, among them J.C. Burnett's The Downfall of Nebuchadnezzar and Emmett Dickinson's Sermon on Tight like that (1930). Other singers who became known through recordings were Sallie Saunders (Shall our cheeks be dried, 1926) and Bessie Johnson (1902–84), who remained active into the 1980s (Before this time another year, 1959).
During the 1930s black gospel singers, often appearing in concerts independent of church affiliation but nevertheless called ‘revivals’, tended to use the piano rather than the guitar as their principal accompanying instrument, and to emphasize in their singing long melismas alternating with short, staccato exclamations. The growth of gospel music during this decade was reflected in the establishment of the Thomas A. Dorsey Gospel Songs Music Publishing Company, the first publishing house dedicated to black gospel music; the founding by Dorsey of the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses (1932); the appearance of Clara Hudmon with a small choir at Radio City Music Hall, New York, and at the Chicago World's Fair in 1939; and the first gospel song to become a best-selling record, Sister Rosetta Tharpe's Rock me (1938), a jazzy version of Dorsey's Hide me in thy bosom. Other popular singers of the era were Ernestine B. Washington (c1914–1983), Willie Mae Ford Smith and the trumpet-playing preacher Elder Charles Beck; Mahalia Jackson, considered by the 1950s to be the queen of gospel singers, first came to public attention in the 1930s.
The recording of gospel music received fresh impetus in the 1940s. The most important singer-composers were Theodore R. Frye (I am sending my timber up to heaven, 1939), Roberta Martin (Try Jesus, 1943; God is still on the throne, 1959), Kenneth Morris (Yes, God is real, 1944), W. Herbert Brewster (Move on up a little higher, 1946; Surely, God is able, 1949), Robert Anderson (Prayer Changes Things, 1947), Herman James Ford (This same Jesus, 1948) and Virginia Davis (I call him Jesus my rock, 1949). In most of their works a simple, infectious refrain contrasts with a verse that is less exuberant but supported by richer harmonies. Among the singing preachers of the period were Samuel Kelsey and Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux; newly popular singers included Brother Joe May and Madame Marie Knight. Their singing style was characterized by long, repetitious melodies, with hand-clapping and foot-stamping; they moved through their audiences shaking hands, embracing individuals and shouting along with their respondents.
By the 1950s centres of gospel music performance had been established in such cities as Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York and Birmingham, Alabama. Concerts were no longer restricted to churches and schools but took place in concert halls and stadiums and on television. Extravaganzas (often called ‘anniversaries’), involving 15 to 20 artists or groups and lasting four to six hours, were presented; even small towns boasted one or more recognized gospel soloist, quartet or choir. The principal artists were Edna Gallmon Cooke, Margaret Allison and the Angelic Gospel Singers, and J. Robert Bradley; their repertory included songs (with sophisticated melodies and harmony) by James Cleveland (Grace is sufficient, 1948), Alex Bradford (Too Close to Heaven, 1953), Dorothy Love Coates (He's right in time, 1953) and Doris Akers (Lead me, guide me, 1955).
Cleveland became known in the 1960s as the ‘crown prince’ of gospel music. The decade also saw the emergence of Marion Williams (fig.2), one of the first lyric sopranos of gospel music, Inez Andrews, known especially for her high-pitched wailing, the singing preacher Shirley Caesar and the gospel storyteller Dorothy Norwood. Cleveland and Norwood were important songwriters, as were James Herndon and Andrae Crouch. Musicals based on black gospel music and performers began to appear (Black Nativity, 1960; Tambourines to Glory, 1963), and continued to be produced in later decades (Don't bother me, I can't cope, 1970; Your arm's too short to box with God, 1976; The Gospel at Colonus, 1983).
In the 1970s gospel music moved away from the sanctified-church style of call-and-response, choral refrain and ‘spirit possession’ towards more elaborate harmony, cultivated vocalism and timbres inspired by popular music. The new style (termed ‘contemporary’ gospel) appealed to a wider audience, although it lost some of its association with the origins of gospel music in the black churches. Crouch was its leading exponent; others were the brothers Edwin and Walter Hawkins, Beverly Glenn, Margaret J. Douroux and Elbernita ‘Twinkie’ Clark.
The growth of gospel that began in the 1980s had its roots in the Edwin Hawkins recording of Oh Happy Day in 1969. The number of singing groups, recordings and venues for performances grew so rapidly that gospel could no longer be classified as traditional or contemporary. In addition to the older style still espoused by such groups as the Angelic Gospel Singers and F.C. Barnes with Janice Brown (The Rough Side of the Mountain, 1988), three newer styles now existed. ‘Sanctuary contemporary’, combining rhythm and blues with gospel, was performed in church services and concerts; ‘urban contemporary’, a mixture of jazz, rhythm and blues, hip hop and gospel, was heard on soul radio stations or seen in gospel television broadcasts; ‘devotional gospel’ was meditative and less ecstatic than other types of gospel.
The choir with a soloist (representing a preacher and congregation) became the preferred sound, and even soloists and small groups would record with choirs to reproduce the volume of a church service. The ‘sermonette and song’, introduced by Willie Mae Ford Smith and perfected by James Cleveland, became the favourite vehicle for song, and melodies and harmonies grew more expansive in the style of popular songs and ‘soft’ soul. Rhythm, through layered pulses, adopted the classic jazz riffs of Basie and Ellington, while the extended 7th and 9th chords of the bop era replaced the diatonic chords of Dorsey and Roberta Martin (as in Timothy Wright's Come, thou almighty King, 1994). The response to gospel singing changed from soft weeping, fainting and speaking in tongues to that of a rock concert, with applause in recognition of vocal pyrotechnics. And, as in rock concerts, high-volume amplification now became a part of the performance.
Whereas in the 1950s to the 70s gospel concerts were held only rarely in such concert halls as Carnegie Hall or Alice Tully Hall, the 1980s gospel music moved to such surroundings as Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl and Symphony Hall, Boston, and an annual gospel concert is held at the White House. Gospel music became a regular occurrence on television and has also been featured on the soundtrack of popular films including Do the Right Thing (1989), Ghost (1990) and Mississippi Masala (1991). Recording companies such as Arista and Warner Brothers have produced several gospel stars.
Gospel music, §II, 2: Black gospel music: Performance
The first instruments used to accompany gospel music in the early 20th-century black churches were percussion, including bass and snare drums, triangles, tambourines, and even washboards played with wire coat-hangers; the tambourine was eventually the most commonly used. The banjo was used until the 1920s, when it was replaced by the guitar. At the same time the piano also came into use; the style of gospel pianists combined the syncopations of ragtime with left-hand octaves derived from the stride style of jazz piano playing and hymn-like chords in the right hand. By the 1950s the electronic organ (nearly always a Hammond organ) had been widely adopted instead of the piano. Other instruments to appear occasionally in gospel music are the trombone, trumpet and saxophone.
Until the 1970s the typical vocal timbre was full-throated, even strained or hoarse; many female singers were shrill in their upper registers. These qualities were partly the result of singing at the extremes of the range and attempting, without amplification, to project over an instrumental accompaniment as well as the singing and shouting of a congregation or audience. Since the 1970s and the rise of contemporary gospel the singing has been characterized by a smoother, purer tone. Most singers begin performances of a song in their middle range but, as the ‘spirit descends’, seek the heightened emotional intensity of the extremes of their compass. All use considerable vibrato, and frequently intensify song texts by inserting extra words or phrases; thus ‘Lord, I'm tired’ may become ‘Lord, you know I'm so tired!’. Comparable improvisatory elaborations are also made in melody and rhythm.
Gospel songs are usually performed in a slow or moderate tempo, although the type known as a ‘shout’ is sung very fast. Slow-tempo songs are characterized by the soloist's long melismas, punctuated by a background group or choir; moderate-tempo songs are delivered more percussively, often in call-and-response fashion. A common feature of traditional and contemporary gospel song performance is the vamp, over which a solo singer improvises textual and musical variations while a background group reiterates a single phrase. The vamp was introduced into gospel music by Mahalia Jackson (e.g. in Move on up a little higher, 1947) and Clara Ward and the Ward Singers (Surely, God is able, 1949), and is especially notable in Edwin Hawkins's Oh Happy Day (1969).
Gospel music, §II, 2: Black gospel music: Performance
Vocal ensembles have played an important part in the gospel music tradition. From the 1910s many black churches fostered male quartets (or larger ensembles of soloists), which performed for a fee in various public places, offering a wide repertory of black sacred music – spirituals, refrain songs and gospel songs.
Stylistically the male quartets have passed through five periods. The ‘folk’ period (c1910–30) was marked by a refined style of close, unaccompanied harmony based on that of earlier groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers but coloured by blue notes and emotionally charged vocal mannerisms. Notable exponents were the Excelsior Quartet (Walk in Jerusalem just like John, 1922) and the Silver Leaf Quartette (I can tell the world, 1928).
During the ‘gospel’ or ‘jubilee’ period (c1930–45) quartets adopted the vocal and physical mannerisms associated with holiness congregations, and even some melodic and rhythmic devices borrowed from jazz. The singers repeated refrains to heighten emotional response, exploited imitative part-writing and sometimes mimicked instrumental sounds, such as those of a jug or string bass. Among the first quartets to adopt this style were the Norfolk Jubilee Singers (My God's gonna move this wicked race, 1927) and the Blue Jay Singers (Brother Jonah, 1932); the most famous, however, was the Golden Gate Quartet, which sang in the close barbershop harmony of earlier quartets but also incorporated gospel techniques (Golden Gate Gospel Train, 1937).
The period from about 1945 to 1960 is considered the ‘sweet gospel’ era. The style was characterized by a close-harmony background that provided a rhythmic foil for a mellow tenor or light baritone lead singer; the songs were based on the call-and-response technique. An instrumental accompaniment of two guitars, and occasionally a piano, became standard. There was an increase in physical action: the lead singer often jumped from the stage into the audience, which was encouraged to join in the performance by clapping in rhythm. Songs tended to be longer, and some ‘quartets’ were expanded to six or seven members. The leading groups were Rebert H. Harris and the Soul Stirrers (formed 1934), who introduced falsetto singing into the quartet style (He's my rock, my sword, my shield, 1946); Ira Tucker and the Dixie Hummingbirds (formed 1928), with Tucker initiating a cascading tenor vocal delivery that was much imitated (One Day, 1947); the Swan Silvertones, formed in 1938 (I've tried, 1947); and the Pilgrim Travelers, formed in 1945 (Mother bowed and prayed for me, 1951).
The ‘hard gospel’ quartet period (1960–70) was perhaps rooted in the ‘anniversaries’ of the 1950s. Prominent performers then had included the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, led by Clarence Fountain (formed 1939), and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, led by Archie Brownlee (formed 1939). Both groups were dominated by their leaders, and cultivated growls, screams and thigh-slapping for rhythmic accentuation. Other groups followed their lead towards a hard gospel style, the most popular being the Sensational Nightingales, led by Julius ‘June’ Cheeks (formed 1945), and the Swanee Quintet.
By about 1970 the hard gospel style seemed to have run its course, partly owing to Brownlee's death in 1959 and Cheeks's decline. But there were also the demands of a new multi-racial audience, which preferred a less strident vocal style, closer to that of popular singers. The groups that satisfied these preferences most successfully were the Mighty Clouds of Joy (formed 1960), led by Joe Ligon (Everybody ought to praise his name, 1980), the Jackson Southernaires (Too Late, 1970) and the Williams Brothers.
The only male group bearing a direct relationship to the unaccompanied male groups of the 1920s to 50s to achieve popularity after 1980 was Take 6, comprising six students from Huntsville, Alabama. They sang traditional gospel music in close parallel harmony reminiscent of such earlier jazz groups as the Four Freshmen and the Hi-Los, and achieved huge international acclaim for their first recording (1988); they remain the most successful crossover black gospel group in history. Other male groups who gained wide acceptance include the Winans, five brothers who adopted a heavy rhythm and blues style and were among the first gospel groups to include rap in their performance (It's Time, 1994). The five-member group Commissioned was heavily influenced by the Winans; its leader, Fred Hammond, left to organize his own singers, Radicals for Christ (RFC), who moved closer towards rhythm and blues and hip hop (Glory to Glory to Glory, 1995).
An important development in the unaccompanied quartet movement began in South Africa during the 1970s. Inspired by the Golden Gate Quartet on its several trips to the townships, the Church of Christ of South Africa oversaw the formation of several male quartets. These groups have retained the smooth singing style of the 1930s and 40s and confine their repertory to hymns, including only a few black American gospel songs (e.g. the Kings Ambassadors, Have a little talk with Jesus, 1964). While choirs have not adopted black American gospel, groups of six and seven singers have added synthesizers as accompaniment (Friends First, Call and Response, 1993).
Other solo ensembles (not exclusively male) made their appearance in the late 1920s. One of the first such groups was the Pace Jubilee Singers, formed in 1926 by Charles Pace; they adopted a style of delivery not unlike that of the Fisk Jubilee Singers but with piano accompaniment, and emotional outpourings from their leader, the contralto Hattie Parker. The group was particularly successful with its recordings of songs by Tindley (e.g. Stand by me, 1928). Further ensembles active in the 1920s were the Tindley Gospel Singers (an all-male group also known as the Tindley Seven) and the Johnson Gospel Singers.
The number of these groups, which appeared mainly in Baptist churches and at the National Baptist Convention, gradually increased during the 1930s. Dorsey formed the Dorsey Trio in 1933 in order to perform his own songs. The success of the Bertha Wise Singers inspired Roberta Martin to form with Theodore R. Frye the Martin-Frye Quartet (1933, renamed the Roberta Martin Singers in 1935); initially an all-male group (except for Martin as accompanist), it was later joined for a short time by Sallie Martin and by the mid-1940s was firmly established as a mixed ensemble. Another well-known group was the all-female Ward Trio (Gertrude Ward and her daughters, formed in 1934) which, with the addition of non-family members in the early 1940s, became the Ward Singers led by Clara Ward (see fig.2). The Ward Singers served as a model for the Sallie Martin Singers and the Original Gospel Harmonettes (both formed 1940); after Dorothy Love Coates joined the latter group in 1945, and especially after she began to record with them in 1949, the Harmonettes became gospel ‘superstars’. Other important groups formed in the 1940s were the Davis Sisters of Philadelphia, accompanied by the pianist Curtis Dublin (1945), and the Brewster Ensemble of Memphis (1946).
The 1950s marked a new peak of group popularity. Among the many new ensembles were the Specials (later the Singers) formed by the pianist-composer Alex Bradford (1951); the Caravans, led by Albertina Walker and accompanied by James Herndon (1952); and the Stars of Faith, led by Marion Williams (1958). The Staple Singers, formed in 1948, came to prominence during this period before turning to secular music in the 1960s. Several family duos were established, including the Gay Sisters, with Mildred Gay as pianist (God will take care of you, 1951), the Boyer Brothers (Step by step, 1952), the Banks Brothers, with Jeff Banks as pianist (I've got a witness, 1953) and the O'Neal Twins (I'd trade a lifetime, 1967).
In the 1960s the ‘contemporary’ gospel style influenced group singing, and the new leading group was Edwin Hawkins and his Singers. The Jessy Dixon Singers also performed the more harmonically adventurous new songs, while the Barrett Sisters of Chicago maintained the traditional gospel style but included arrangements of such light classics as Ethelbert Nevin's The Rosary. Important new groups in the 1980s and 90s were Bobby Jones and New Life, the Anointed Pace Sisters and the Richard Smallwood Singers. Smallwood extended the sound world of gospel music by employing characteristics of European Baroque and Classical music (Textures, 1987).
Choirs have been an important part of the gospel music tradition since 1931, when Dorsey and Frye formed a gospel choir at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Chicago. The following year Dorsey organized the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses to encourage the formation of such choirs. Under his influence Glenn Tom Settle reorganized the choir of Gethsemane Baptist Church in Cleveland in 1937 as Wings over Jordan, which became nationally known through radio broadcasts, and the St Paul Baptist Church choir, directed by J. Earle Hines, became the first gospel choir to have a hit recording (We sure do need him now and God be with you, 1947).
Until the 1960s the repertory of gospel choirs emphasized works for four-part mixed chorus, but the Angelic Choir of the First Baptist Church in Nutley, New Jersey, led by James Cleveland, gave prominence to the solo singer, the choir being relegated to an accompanimental role (It all belongs to my Father, 1962). Cleveland made further changes, eliminating the choral bass part, adding bass guitar and drums as accompanying instruments, extending the use of the vamp technique, and perfecting the ‘sermonette and song’, in which choral passages alternated with chanted recitation by the soloist. The most successful recording in the new style by Cleveland and the Angelic Choir was Peace, be still (1963). The Southwest Michigan State Choir, led by Mattie Moss Clark, was also influential in the mid-1960s (Salvation is Free, 1965). In 1968 Clark, Cleveland and other choir directors established the Gospel Music Workshop of America (GMWA) to set (and raise) standards of gospel choir performance. It soon became the largest organization in black church music, and by the end of the 20th century it had a membership of 20,000 in 47 states.
The
Voices of Hope, a 100-voice choir formed by Thurston Frazier in Los Angeles in
1957, moved away from the so-called Cleveland style and restored the emphasis
on the more cultivated sound of a full choir (We've come this far by faith,
1967). This change in style was carried even further by Edwin Hawkins, who
directed the second gospel music recording to become a hit – an arrangement for
the Northern California State Youth Choir of Oh Happy Day (1969).
Hawkins's style was characterized by smooth vocal sonorities, instrumental
accompaniments of orchestral dimensions, melodies indistinguishable from those
of soul music or even jazz, unusual keys (e.g. D
, G, E and B) and texts that were often secular. Andrae
Crouch, though seldom associated with black gospel choirs, was also an influence
on the ‘contemporary’ style of the mid-1970s. Cleveland and his Southern
California Community Choir also made some temporary excursions into
contemporary gospel style. The contemporary and traditional styles were
synthesized by the Walter Hawkins Love Center Choir, led by Hawkins's former
wife Tramaine with Hawkins at the piano (Love Alive, 1975), and other
groups such as Harold Smith and the Majestics, Donald Vails and the Choraleers
and the Charles Fold Singers. In the late 1970s gospel choirs that adopted the
style of Walter Hawkins were established by Roman Catholic, Episcopal and
United Methodist congregations.
An important expansion began in the early 1970s with the establishment of gospel choirs in such colleges and universities as Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, where a National Black College Gospel Choir Festival was organized in 1972. Later, choirs were formed at other, predominantly white institutions including Mount Holyoke College and Harvard University. In 1980 a National Collegiate Gospel Choir Festival, sponsored by the Black Caucus of the Music Educators National Conference, was held in New York. By the 1990s the gospel choir had become a fixture in higher education establishments throughout the USA.
The black gospel movement in England gained momentum during the 1980s. Inspired by the visits of Mahalia Jackson and the Ward Singers in the 1950s and 60s, the Church of God in Christ and other Pentecostal denominations began to establish choirs in the 1960s. Coached by Mattie Moss Clark, James Cleveland, Jessy Dixon and other directors from the USA, gospel choirs began to spring up throughout London and Liverpool. Among the first were the New Jerusalem Choir and the Majestic Singers. In the early 1990s popular gospel choirs were the London Community Gospel Choir (Inspiration and Power, 1996) and the London Fellowship Choir. The soloist Nicky Brown won the award for the best British gospel song in 1995 and the Wades, inspired by the Winans, are considered the most popular male group (A Touch of Heaven, 1995).
See also Latin america, §III, 4; Shape-note hymnody; Soul music; and United States of America, §II, 2.
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L. Mason: The Juvenile Psalmist (Boston, 1829)
W.B. Bradbury: Bradbury's Golden Chain and Shower (New York, 1863)
P. Phillips: Hallowed Songs (Cincinnati, 1865)
W.F. Allen, C.P. Ware and L.M.K. Garrison: Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867/R)
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R. Lowry and W.H. Doane: Gospel Hymn and Tune Book (Philadelphia, 1879)
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H. Date and others: Pentecostal Hymns nos.1 and 2 Combined (Chicago, 1894)
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E.S. Lorenz, I.B. Wilson and H. von Berge: New Gospel Quartets for Men's Voices (Dayton, OH, New York and Chicago, 1923)
H.H. Todd: The Cokesbury Hymnal (Nashville, TN, 1923)
W.A. Townsend: The Baptist Standard Hymnal (Nashville, TN, 1924)
E. Boatner and W.A. Townsend: Spirituals Triumphant Old and New (Nashville, TN, 1927)
I.H. Presley: Pentecostal Holiness Hymnal (Franklin Springs, GA, 1938)
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H. Rodeheaver, G.W. Sanville and B.D. Ackley: Church Service Hymns (Winona Lake, IN, 1948)
C.N. Nelson: Youth Sings (Mound, MN, 1951)
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J.W. Peterson: Crowning Glory Hymnal (Grand Rapids, MI, 1964)
A. Crouch and the Disciples: Keep on Singin' (Waco, TX, 1972)
B. Gaither and G.Gaither: Let’s Just Praise the Lord (Alexandria, IN, and Nashville, TN, 1974)
R.L. Davis and others: The New National Baptist Hymnal (Nashville, TN, 1977)
J.J. Cleveland and V. Nix: Songs of Zion (Nashville, TN, 1981)
I.V. Jackson-Brown: Lift Every Voice and Sing (New York, 1981)
G. Ross and M.M.Clark: Yes, Lord! (Memphis, 1982)
L.F. Benson: ‘The Offset: the “Gospel Hymn”’, The English Hymn (London, 1915/R), 482–92
E.H. Pierce: ‘“Gospel Hymns” and their Tunes’, MQ, xxvi (1940), 355–64
B.L. Riddle: Gospel Song and Hymn Playing (Nashville, TN, 1950)
C.E. Gold: A Study of the Gospel Song (diss., U. of Southern California,1953)
M.L. McKissick: A Study of the Function of Music in the Major Religious Revivals in America since 1875 (diss., U of Southern California, 1957)
E.K. Emurian: Forty True Stories of Famous Gospel Songs (Natick, MA, 1959)
W.G. McLoughlin: Modern Revivalism (New York, 1959)
E. Peach: The Gospel Song: its Influences on Christian Hymnody (diss., Wayne State U., 1960)
L. Gentry: A History and Encyclopedia of Country, Western and Gospel Music (Nashville, TN, 1961/R, enlarged 2/1969)
W.J. Reynolds: Hymns of our Faith (Nashville, TN, 1964)
‘The World of Religious Music’, Billboard, lxxvii (23 Oct 1965)
J.C. Downey: ‘Revivalism, the Gospel Song and Social Reform’, EthM, ix (1965), 115–25
W.J. Reynolds: A Survey of Christian Hymnody (New York, 1965)
J.C. Downey: The Music of American Revivalism 1740–1800 (diss., Tulane U., 1968)
D. Crawford: ‘Gospel Songs in Court: from Rural Music to Urban Industry in the 1950s’, Journal of Popular Culture, xi (1977–8), 551–67
C. Wolfe: Tennessee Strings (Knoxville, TN, 1977)
S.S. Sizer: Gospel Hymns and Social Religion: the Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Revivalism (Philadelphia, 1978)
R. Anderson and G. North: Gospel Music Encyclopedia (New York, 1979)
J.C. Downey: ‘Mississippi Music: that Gospel Sound’, Sense of Place: Mississippi, ed. P.W. Prenshaw and J.O. McKee (Jackson, MS, 1979)
H. Eskew and H.T. McElrath: Sing with Understanding (Nashville, TN, 1980)
M.R. Wilhoit: A Guide to the Principal Authors and Composers of Gospel Song in the Nineteenth Century (diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1982)
M. Burnim: ‘Gospel Music: Review of the Literature’, Music Educators Journal, lxix/9 (1982–3), 58–61
V.A. Cross: The Development of Sunday School Hymnody in the United States of America, 1816–1869 (diss., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1985)
E.J. Goodspeed: The Wonderful Career of Moody and Sankey in Great Britain and America (New York, 1876)
D.W. Whittle, ed.: Memoirs of Philip P. Bliss (New York, 1877)
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G.F. Root: The Story of a Musical Life (Cincinnati, 1891/R)
F.J. Crosby: Memories of Eighty Years (Boston, 1906, 2/1908)
I.D. Sankey: My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns (Philadelphia, 1907/R)
J.H. Hall: Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers (New York, 1914)
H.C. Alexander and J.K. Maclean: Charles M. Alexander (London, 1921)
G.C. Stebbins: Reminiscences and Gospel Hymn Stories (New York, 1924/R)
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C. Ludwig: Sankey Still Sings (Anderson, IN, 1947)
R.M. Stevenson: ‘Ira D. Sankey and the Growth of “Gospel Hymnody”’, Patterns of Protestant Church Music (Durham, NC, 1953/R), 151–62
W.G. McLoughlin: Billy Sunday was his Real Name (Chicago, 1955)
W.G. McLoughlin: Billy Graham, Revivalist in a Secular Age (New York, 1960)
J.C. Pollock: Moody (New York, 1963)
J.R. Baxter and V. Polk: Gospel Song Writers Biography (Dallas, 1971)
G.W. Stansbury: The Music of the Billy Graham Crusades, 1947–1970 (diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1971)
J.W. Peterson and R. Engquist: The Miracle Goes On (Grand Rapids, MI, 1976)
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G.R. Ricks: Some Aspects of the Religious Music of the United States Negro: an Ethnomusicological Study with Special Emphasis on the Gospel Tradition (diss., Northwestern U., 1960)
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J.O. Patterson, G.R. Ross and J.M. Atkins: History and Formative Years of the Church of God in Christ (Memphis, 1969)
P. Williams-Jones: ‘Afro-American Gospel Music: a Brief Historical and Analytical Survey, 1920–1970’, Development of Materials for a One Year Course in African Music for General Undergraduate Student, ed. V.E. Butcher (Washington DC, 1970), 199–239
V. Synan: The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement (Grand Rapids, MI, 1971)
J. Lovell: Black Song: the Forge and the Flame (New York, 1972)
H.C. Boyer: ‘An Overview: Gospel Music Comes of Age’, Black World, xxiii/1 (1973–4), 42–8, 79–86
J.R. Washington: Black Sects and Cults: the Power Axis in an Ethnic Ethic (New York, 1973)
R.M. Raichelson: Black Religious Folksong: a Study of Generic and Social Change (diss., U. of Pennsylvania, 1975)
P. Williams-Jones: ‘Afro-American Gospel Music: a Crystallization of the Black Aesthetic’, EthM, xix (1975), 373
I.V. Jackson-Brown: ‘Afro-American Sacred Song in the Nineteenth Century: a Neglected Source’, BPM, iv (1976), 22
L. Levine: Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York, 1977)
R. Anderson and G. North: Gospel Music Encyclopedia (New York, 1979)
I.V. Jackson: Afro-American Religious Music: a Bibliography and Catalogue of Gospel Music (Westport, CT, 1979)
W.T. Walker: Somebody's Calling my Name (Valley Forge, PA, 1979)
A. Heilbut: ‘New Signs on the Gospel Highway’, The Nation, [New York] ccxxx/18 (10 May 1980); repr. as ‘The Secularization of Black Gospel Music’, Folk Music and Modern Sound, ed. W. Ferris and M.L. Hart (Jackson, MS, 1982), 101–15
M.W. Harris: The Rise of Gospel Blues: the Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church (New York, 1992)
B.J. Reagon: We'll Understand it Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers (Washington DC, 1992)
H.C. Boyer: How Sweet the Sound: the Golden Age of Gospel (Montgomery, AL, 1995/R)
V. Broughton: Too Close to Heaven: the Illustrated History of Gospel Music (London, 1996)
A.H. Fausett: Black Gods of the Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1944)
S.C. Drake and H. Cayton: ‘A Joyful Noise unto the Lord’, Black Metropolis: a Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York, 1945, 3/1993), 622–7
W.H. Tallmadge: ‘Dr. Watts and Mahalia Jackson: the Development, Decline and Survival of a Folk Style in America’, EthM, v (1961), 95–9
J. Godrich and R.M.W. Dixon: Blues and Gospel Records 1902–1942 (Hatch End, nr London, 1963, enlarged 3/1982 as Blues and Gospel Records 1902–1943) [discography]
C.J. Hayes: ‘The Gospel Scene: the Post War Gospel Records’, Blues Unlimited, nos.3–68 (1963–9)
E.F. Frazier: The Negro Church in America (New York, 1964)
P. Oliver: Spirituals and Gospel Songs (Milan, 1968)
W.H. Tallmadge: ‘The Responsorial and Antiphonal Practice in Gospel Song’, EthM, xii (1968), 219–38
B.A. Rosenberg: The Art of the American Folk Preacher (New York, 1970)
T. Heilbut: The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (New York, 1971, 3/1985)
E. Southern: ‘Musical Practices in Black Churches of Philadelphia and New York, ca. 1800–1844’, JAMS, xxx (1977), 296–312
S. Barber: The Choral Style of the Wings over Jordan Choir (diss., U. of Cincinnati, 1978)
K.L. Rubman: From ‘Jubilee’ to ‘Gospel’ in Black Male Quartet Singing (thesis, U. of North Carolina, 1980)
I.V. Jackson-Brown: ‘Developments in Black Gospel Performance and Scholarship’, Black Music Research Journal, x (1990), 36–42
D. Seroff: ‘On the Battlefield: Gospel Quartets in Jefferson County, Alabama’, Repercussions: a Celebration of Afro-American Music, ed. G. Haydon and D. Marks (London, 1985), 30–35