Rock my soul

Soul Stirrers

As you can tell if you have been paying attention, I have been on an early black gospel bent of late. This particular style of gospel was popular from the forties through the mid fifties, when many of the musicians passed over to more secular music and doo wop. It culminated in what were known as the "bird" groups.

I had an interesting path finding this music, notwithstanding the fact that I am pretty much a nonbeliever. I guess the road that got me here started way back when, when insomnia filled nights got me hooked on the old cigar smoking and fire breathing minister Gene Scott. From the pyramids to the most arcane biblical precepts, Scott was amazing!

And when he got pissed at the audience he would light a cigar and say, play it again. And you would get this.  The Statesmen Quartet playing I wanna know over and over again. What can I tell you, the band had a great sound.

I ended up really digging the sound of Hovie Lister's band. Jake Hess was reportedly Elvis's greatest influence and no one sang bass like the Big Chief.

But when I started really researching their sound I realized quickly that like most popular white music of the era, it was actually poached from black music. Listen to the Jubalaires, the Golden Gate Quartet, the Larks and you will quickly see how their phrasing was copped by the white gospel bands lock, stock and barrel. In fact it influenced popular music throughout America. Listen to this 1928 version of Will the Circle Be Unbroken by J.C. Burnett with its unusual, original and forgotten lyrics.

I find a couple things very interesting about this music, whose slave era antecedents and iconography mirror the tribulations of the ancient hebrews. It is mostly old testament. I find this curious but maybe understandable. Perhaps the blacks and the jews both felt very like strangers in a foreign land, a land where the dominant culture was white and christian. And as someone told me recently, blacks and jews both suffer really well!

The particular style of black acapella music that I have been enjoying so much the past few weeks is called jubilee style. It is also called flatfoot, reflecting a restrained fervor, limited improvisation and close harmonies. An author I read likened it to an early style of rap but it is far more musical to my ears.

I started looking in to the genre recently, in a most preliminary fashion. The acknowledged father of modern black gospel is Thomas Dorsey. But it stretches much farther back, to slave times. It had its roots in both the blues and what were known as spirituals. Spirituals were broken down into sorrow songs and jubilee songs. Many of these songs were said to impart hidden messages during the emancipation that a deliverer was nearby. You can understand the hope for deliverance much like the ancient hebrews who's stories the songs recount.

Before 1865, negro spirituals had a unique occurrence called the ring shout. Many songs in the slavery era had a covert meaning. This from negro.spirituals.com.

After regular a worship service, congregations used to stay for a “ring shout”. It was a survival of primitive African dance. So, educated ministers and members placed a ban on it. The men and women arranged themselves in a ring. The music started, perhaps with a Spiritual, and the ring began to move, at first slowly, then with quickening pace. The same musical phrase was repeated over and over for hours. This produced an ecstatic state. Women screamed and fell. Men, exhausted, dropped out of the ring.

In the 1920's the blues was amalgamated with music from the sanctified or "holiness churches", where people were called to testify. Many of the artists were also traveling preachers. I am sure that things got pretty intense.

In any case these late 40's, early fifties tunes are very rhythmically sophisticated, quite musical and expertly rendered.I hope to keep mining this well.

I hope that you are enjoying this stuff as much as I do.

And a short story: In the late 70's my friend Hank and I took a trip to the Bahamas that was a literal disaster on every front. That is another story. One day we rented a jeep and decided to drive to the poor side of the island and get away from it all. It was Haiti type squalor, the back side of Freeport, the people were miserable. It started raining and we were miserable too. We had to get out of the squal and stopped in front of an old church of some kind, seeking respite from the hard rain and the general depression of the particular trip.

We stood under the eaves and the most angelic music I have ever heard, from the poorest people I have ever encountered, came drifting into our ears and souls. It was a day I practically got religion and I learned something about the human spirit. The sweetest sounds I have ever heard.