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| Gospel Music |
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Convention gospel music and community gospel singing
are two variations of an American heritage with direct
roots in colonial New England and indirect roots
reaching to the Italian Renaissance. Community gospel
singing is a folk phenomenon that allows individuals to
reenact the process of community through artistic
expression by singing religious hymns and reaffirming
social bonds through the informal festival of a picnic
among neighbors. |
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Gospel music was a major venue for creative folk
expression in rural Southern agricultural communities
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. The folk art form was spread by singing
masters who toured rural America with evangelistic
fervor teaching musical fundamentals to young audiences.
Community singing and its more formal cousin, convention
gospel music, also constituted the first instance of
mass musical participation across geographic and
cultural lines in American popular culture and presaged
more modern forms of mass musical participation such as
country music and rock-and-roll. Texas community singers
still gather on weekends in towns around the state in a
nondenominational setting to sing religious hymns. |
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| Singings consist of two types, both
of which employ four-part harmony. Each genre is further
characterized through the use of shape notes for musical
notation. Shape notes are a method of musical notation
adapted for sight-singing choral arrangements. They
reduce the tones of the scale to specific shapes such as
circles, triangles, trapezoids, or squares. Those shapes
represent relationships between the root note "do" and
the subsequent notes of the melody. As an alternative
notation to the usual type, shape notes convey the tonal
relationships of sound through shape in addition to
positions on lines and spaces. Shape-note music enables
singers to move the root note, or key, up or down to fit
individual vocal ranges. |
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The seven-shape-note tradition is a nineteenth-century
development from the original fasola, or four-note
solmization, which was imported from the British Isles
and proved popular in colonial America. The four-note
system—or fasola—continues today under the name sacred
harp music, which generally uses minor scales, relies on
one songbook only, and groups singers by their voice
parts. Sacred harp melodies have been traced back 900
years to Medieval Europe, although the lyrics were
subsequently changed or updated to reflect religious
themes. Sacred harp also relies on a similar set of
republished songs and exhibits remarkable continuity
over time. Sacred harp is generally confined to the
eastern parts of Texas and areas of the South. |
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The second type, hymnody, employing seven shape notes,
attracts greater audiences and is popular statewide. It
became a dynamic vehicle for gospel songwriters in the
late nineteenth century and attracted a growing body of
new compositions that demonstrated greater musical
sophistication than their fasola cousins.
Seven-shape-note songbooks exhibit the musical
versatility that appealed to young people at singing
schools and were responsible, therefore, for the growing
popularity of the tradition. The first Texas community
singing using seven shape notes reportedly occurred in
December 1879. Itinerant teachers representing the A. J.
Showalter Company of Dalton, Georgia—including company
founder A. J. Showalter—ventured west to Giddings,
Texas, and conducted a rural music school that lasted
for several weeks. At least two individuals from that
initial school learned enough over the next year to
continue as teachers of the seven-note method in Texas
and were subsequently employed by the Showalter Company. |
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| Though community singings are
relatively unstructured, convention gatherings display
formal organization. Generally, a convention is a
gathering of participants from several communities.
Conventions occur on the county, regional, and state
levels. In 1936, as community gospel music approached
its peak popularity, singers from several southern
states gathered at the behest of songbook publishers to
stage the first national gospel-singing convention in
Birmingham, Alabama. The national convention continues
to this day, rotating among various small towns
nationwide but usually staged in the South. In Texas,
national conventions were staged at Plainview (1968) and
Stephenville (1987). |
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A convention president manages the singing in a
formal but sensitive manner. Individuals are called
from the audience to lead the class or congregation.
They choose the song and piano player, and lead the
singing. Convention presidents try to allow all who
want to lead a singing the opportunity to do so
during gatherings, which typically occur on Saturday
afternoon and evening and reconvene on Sunday.
Convention singing depends on newly-published
convention books, which participants purchase to
take home. |
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Without the support of songbook publishers,
convention singing would not have achieved its
widespread popularity. In early conventions—those taking
place about 1900—quartets demonstrated the musical
ideals of harmonic gospel singing. Within a decade,
songbook publishers, beginning with the Vaughan Music
Company of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, asked the better
groups to represent their companies. While skillfully
demonstrating the music form in its ideal, quartets were
good advertising for songbook publishers. |
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| The technique of using quartets as
advertising was put into widespread use by the
Stamps–Baxter Music and Printing Company in Dallas,
which had a dozen quartets on the road in the 1930s.
After World War II the Stamps Quartet Music Company was
represented by more than thirty-five quartets in the
South. In Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, some
quartets aligned themselves with Texas music companies. |
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Gospel music and the ability to sing it were spread
through the rural singing-school tradition, which
depended on itinerant music teachers. Singing schools
using the seven-shape-note system spread rapidly in
Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia after 1900; became common
in East Texas during the World War I era; and reached
widespread audiences in West Texas as the 1920s came to
a close. |
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Local churches hosted annual community singing
schools, rotating among denominations, although in West
Texas the community itself put up funding for the
school, which was usually supplied through an auction of
baked goods. A typical ten-day singing school began at 9
A.M. and lasted until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Teachers
reviewed musical rudiments. If an individual worked
hard, he could master the scale and direct a song at the
end of the two-week session. Meanwhile, there was daily
practice from the new convention books that the teacher
provided. At the end of the session, the community was
invited to hear the class in a recital. One sidelight of
a community singing school was that churches developed
choirs and the overall level of musical competence
improved. |
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| The gospel music movement peaked in
the mid-twentieth century, largely through the influence
of Texas-based musical publishing companies including
Stamps–Baxter and the Stamps Quartet Music Company, both
headquartered in Dallas. Robert Henry Coleman, longtime
song director at the First Baptist Church of Dallas,
became one of the world’s largest publishers of hymnals
during the first half of the twentieth century.
Producing more than thirty songbooks, he distributed
copies all over the world. His music editor, Baylus
McKinney, composed many songs that were published in
Coleman’s hymnals. In Coleman, Texas, gospel performer,
singing-school teacher, and publisher Robert Sterling
Arnold founded the National Music Company in 1937 and
served as owner and operator until his death in 2003. He
published annual shape-note convention songbooks and
composed more than 400 songs himself. Other prominent
twentieth-century songbook publishers included Vaughan
Music Company in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and the
Tennessee Music and Printing Company in Cleveland,
Tennessee. |
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| Quartets like J. D. Sumner and the
Blackwoods became so successful financially that they purchased
the Stamps Quartet Music Company. Similarly the Blackwoods and
the Statesmen purchased the James D. Vaughan Music Company in
1964. The publishing end of the companies declined rapidly after
the purchase, and rights to the Vaughan Company were sold
subsequently to the Church of God. Similarly, Zondervan, a
religious publishing company in Michigan, purchased the
Stamps–Baxter Music and Printing Company and eventually moved
the operation to Michigan. |
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Radio was also a major factor in the spread of gospel music.
One feature of the 1936 Texas Centennial celebration in Dallas
was a series of radio studios in hexagonal glass booths at the
fair grounds. Rural folk were fascinated. They had heard radio
broadcasts but had never seen one. Stamps–Baxter quartets
performed several live broadcasts at the State Fair of Texas.
KRLD in Dallas, impressed with the reception, decided to try a
noonday program in the fall of 1936. V. O. Stamps entreated
listeners to write in if they liked the music. Within a week
KRLD was deluged with mail. The KRLD broadcasts, sponsored by
American Beauty Flour, became noontime staples in Texas.
Eventually, live gospel singing expanded into the morning hours
at 6:45 A.M. and occupied a 10 P.M. evening slot. At noon during
the summertime, it was possible to walk down any street in Texas
within broadcast range of KRLD and hear the Stamps Quartet
singing. |
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By 1938 the Stamps–Baxter singing normals in Dallas became so
popular that V. O. Stamps hosted an All Night Singing at the end
of the three-week class session in June. KRLD carried the first
broadcast, which was held in the Cotton Bowl. At midnight FCC
limitations were lifted. KRLD turned up the wattage, and the
broadcast went international. Soon, V. O. Stamps and his
quartets were traveling to Del Rio and providing wire recordings
to radio station XERA for international broadcast. |
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| The mid-1930s saw the rise of a highly
popular gospel quartet with the Carter Quartet on WBAP
radio in Fort Worth. Composed of Dave “Dad” Carter, his wife
Carrie, and daughters Rosa and Effie (renamed “Rose” and
“Anna”), the Carters were raised in the singing-school tradition
and sang a variety of songs on the air, but their gospel numbers
soon caught on as audience favorites. The quartet became known
as the Chuck Wagon Gang (a name selected by sponsor Bewley
Mills) and soon devoted its popular radio broadcasts exclusively
to gospel tunes. The group became successful Columbia recording
artists—one of the few white gospel groups in the nation to
secure a major record label in the years before World War II.
Remarkably, the quartet remained with Columbia until 1977.
Drawing largely from shape-note songbooks published by
Stamps-Baxter, they were instrumental in bringing those songs to
a large listening audience, and the Chuck Wagon Gang was the
first to record, for example, the favorite “I’ll Fly Away” in
1948. The group also stood out as an early gospel quartet that
featured guitar rather than piano as the prominent instrument.
Their appeal crossed over to country music radio stations as
well. |
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The Singing Wills Family, originally from Hall County, Texas,
was another popular gospel quartet that emerged during the
1930s. A core lineup eventually consisted of twins Bob and Betty
Wills, along with siblings Calvin, Lou, and others. The group
went through various personnel changes through the years as
various members branched off into other groups, including the
Bob Wills Family, The Inspirationals, and the Junior Wills
Family. Their popularity secured them their own television
program, the Wills Family Inspirational Hour, which became the
first full-color gospel syndicated television program in 1965.
Versions of the Wills Family as well as the Chuck Wagon Gang
continued performing in the early twenty-first century. |
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| In the 1950s established country star Stuart
Hamblin gave up his hard-drinking lifestyle and dedicated his
life to Christ. His decision resulted in a number of successful
country gospel songs reflecting his newly-discovered faith. He
wrote and recorded the highly successful “It Is No Secret (What
God Can Do),” “This Ole House,” and others. He hosted his own
radio show, The Cowboy Church of the Air in the early 1950s. |
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The African-American gospel tradition in Texas has made
significant contributions to the genre’s ongoing development far
beyond the borders of the state. Black sacred harp singing had
fully evolved with its own distinct styles and procedures by the
first half of the twentieth century and continued, mainly in the
rural churches of East Texas, through the mid-twentieth century. |
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Some of the early field recordings brought black gospel
performers to wider listening audiences. Columbia Records
recorded eighteen songs by Washington Phillips in Dallas from
1927 to 1929. Phillips, of Freestone County, had a short but
very successful recording career that helped influence a
generation of African-American gospel singers. “Take Your Burden
to the Lord,” his first 78 rpm, sold more than 8,000 copies in
1928. |
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Pianist and singer Blind Arizona Dranes (of mixed
African-American and Mexican-American descent) developed a
unique “gospel beat” style of playing the piano that drew upon
an interesting combination of barrelhouse, ragtime, and blues.
Matched with her powerful voice, the performer played in Deep
Ellum and was discovered by the OKeh label. She became a top
star for OKeh and recorded in Chicago in 1926 and Dallas in
1928. Her releases included “My Soul Is a Witness for the Lord.” |
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| During the 1930s several pivotal
African-American groups influenced gospel music and a new
generation of performers. The Soul Stirrers, which traced its
beginnings to a quartet formed by Silas Roy “Senior”
Crain in Trinity, Texas, in the mid-1920s, came together in
Houston around 1934 and by the mid-1930s consisted of the
definitive lineup that included Crain, J. J. Farley, Rebert
Harris, and James Medlock. The Soul Stirrers introduced
innovations into what had been old-fashioned Jubilee harmonies.
With the pairing of Harris and Medlock, they became the first
gospel group to use two lead singers. They also introduced
ad-libbing lyrics, repeated background words, and they moved in
time to the music—all elements that made the group distinctive
from other gospel ensembles. They regularly performed on radio
with the Stamps-Baxter Quartet in 1939 and through the 1940s and
1950s enjoyed notable success in their recordings and shows.
When Harris left the Soul Stirrers in 1950, a young Sam Cooke,
influenced by Harris’s style, took his place and performed
steadily with the group until 1956 when he made the change to
pop. The Soul Stirrers have been credited as pioneers of the
contemporary gospel quartet sound as well as significant
influences in the development of R&B and rock-and-roll. As such,
they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. |
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| Another group, the Pilgrim Travelers,
organized in Houston and toured with the Soul Stirrers in the
late 1930s. They added their own unique stamp to their gospel
performances with their “walking rhythm,” a percussive
foot-tapping that made for crisply-choreographed shows that were
popular with audiences. They remained in demand through the
1940s and 1950s with such numbers as “Jesus Met the Woman at the
Well” and “The Old Rugged Cross.” |
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| An Austin group, the Paramount Singers,
formed in 1936 and included James Medlock (who went on to the
Soul Stirrers) and Ermant Franklin, Sr., whose son Junior
Franklin became a celebrated gospel singer in his own right in
the 1950s and 1960s. Junior Franklin eventually helped form a
version of the Mighty Clouds of Joy in Los Angeles which
garnered two Grammy awards and other honors. |
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| Austin resident, A. C. Littlefield, became
lead singer for the Starlight Singers, which later changed its
name to the Bells of Joy. As lead vocalist, Littlefield gained
distinction on their 1951 release, “Let’s Talk About Jesus,”
which became a hit on BillBoard’s R&B charts. The song generated
a million record sales—the most ever sold by a black gospel
group up to that time—and started a long and successful career
in gospel for the Bells of Joy up to the twenty-first century. |
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| The city of Austin also played a highly
significant role in the broadcasting of black gospel music.
Radio announcer Elmer Akins, a gospel music promoter and
performer, developed a Sunday morning radio show, Gospel Train,
on KVET in the late 1940s. The program celebrated fifty years on
the air in 1997. Akins also organized the Austin Quartet
Association which showcased area talent. African-American
Austinite Virgie DeWitty directed the Bright and Early Choir
radio program on the Texas Quality Network from 1938 to 1940 and
subsequently wrote more than 100 spirituals, anthems, and gospel
songs, especially four-part harmony for choirs. |
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| Probably the most significant Texas record
label in the field of African-American gospel music was Don
Robey’s Peacock Records, established in 1949 out of Houston. The
label’s very successful gospel division provided a steady
foundation of sales that helped support Robey’s other musical
enterprises at the time, with recordings by such
African-American gospel groups as the Bells of Joy, Sensational
Nightingales, Dixie Hummingbirds, and the Mighty Clouds of Joy.
Robey also owned the subsidiary Song Bird label—also a gospel
holding. |
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| The latter half of the twentieth century
brought great change to the field of gospel music as the genre
transitioned from its role as a local social activity to a more
commercial medium. As people moved to urban centers after World
War II, the singing school declined in popularity. Convention
gospel music was primarily a phenomenon of rural America. In
this new audience milieu, quartets discovered they no longer
needed sponsorship from songbook publishers and achieved
popularity on their own as entertainment acts. The Statesmen
Quartet, for example, added flourishes such as exuberant
singing, arm waving, hand clapping, and electric modification
that entertained new audiences. Although this was alien behavior
for traditional convention quartets, the new stage business
attracted interest. |
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| By the end of the twentieth century, the
seven-shape-note tradition of gospel singing had become an
isolated niche inside the greater market of gospel music.
Although a national convention for gospel quartets attracted
thousands of devotees and participants from across the United
States during the course of a week, the National Singing
Convention drew fewer than a thousand for a weekend meeting
somewhere in the South. In Texas the black sacred harp singing
tradition had virtually disappeared. The trend paralleled
musical expression in modern America. Music had evolved from a
communal folk activity in which many participated into an art
that supported individual musical specialists who reached mass
audiences through technological means such as radio, recordings,
and the Internet. |
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| In the early twenty-first century,
convention gospel music and community singings, however, still
occurred across the state. Gospel festivals took place in such
communities as Rockport, Wimberley, Stephenville, Salado, and
McKinney, and the National Quartet Convention held the first
American Gospel Music Festival in Dallas in May 2007. The South
Texas Gospel Music Association, based in San Antonio, promotes
performers and events, while the Texas Gospel Music Museum and
Hall of Fame, founded in 1985 and headquartered in Arlington,
honors those who have influenced gospel music in Texas. |
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