Early Black Gospel Music: The Blues in Sacred Dress

In preparing for Master Chorus Eastside’s Out of Africa concert, a celebration of African and African-influenced American music, I came across some wonderful Youtube videos of early gospel singers.  It set me thinking about the difference between old-style black gospel (early 20th century), and the modern version that has become so popular.  And I learned a couple of things I didn’t know.

Black gospel music owes much to two influences, both “outsider” in essence: the late 1800s Holiness movement and, surprisingly, the blues.  In its early years black gospel was really the sacred counterpart of the blues.  The blues can be traced back to the rural South  in the 1890s.  Blues are a lament, often about relations gone awry between a man and a woman, sung by a loner, an outsider, dealing with trouble.  The Holiness movement was Pentecostal-style, ecstatic, often noisy worship that flourished outside the mainstream black denominations.  In early black gospel the trouble is still there, but the Jesus who also suffered provides solace.

Listen to this 1925 recording of Bessie Smith, one of the great blues singers of the past, singing St. Louis Blues, an early blues hit.  Listen to the tempo, the blue and bent notes, the lamenting voice.

Now listen to the Heavenly Gospel Singers in Jesus Walked This Road Before, from 1978: same tempo, same singing style, same kind of lament, this time sung by a quartet who turn suffering and trouble into a virtue.

These men represent a tradition that I suspect has mostly faded away.  They saw their heyday in the 1920s-1940s when African American composers, led by Thomas A. Dorsey, a former blues pianist who played for Bessie Smith, brought gospel music, along with some elements of the Pentecostal Holiness movement, into mainstream black denominations.  Modern black gospel has mostly moved away from this tradition; while remaining sacred in subject it has been shaped more by the concert hall and entertainment music than its gritty blues beginnings.

MCE is performing a modern black gospel number at our concert, Praise His Holy Name by Keith Hampton.  We love it; it is bright, energetic and lots of fun to perform.

But that early gospel number, sung by those four men from deep in their being, wrapping the experiences of a lifetime around their lament, really moves me.  It is elemental, soulful...earthy!

Enjoy one more sacred blues number by the Heavenly Gospel Singers.

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside