One often thinks of gospel music as purely an African-American type of music. But in fact its roots are biracial. White gospel hymns first appeared in the mid-19th century, and the first use of the term “gospel music” can be found in P.P. Bliss’ Gospel Songs (1874). Typically, as Grove’s Dictionary of Popular Music puts it, the texts of these hymns focus on subjects such as “conversion, atonement through Christ, the assurance of salvation, and the joys of heaven” in styles ranging from meditative to jubilant.
White gospel hymns started to become popular in the late 19th century through the rise of evangelistic singers such as Philip Phillips, who toured extensively around the world, and collections of hymns specially meant for use in Sunday Schools. But gospel became a major force in American music largely due to the efforts of evangelist Dwight L. Moody and his partner, singer Ira D. Sankey, who regularly featured it in their revivals, beginning around 1875. In fact, their meetings were often advertised by the slogan, “Mr. Moody will preach the gospel and Mr. Sankey will sing the gospel.” Their formula proved so successful that until about 1930 it was common for evangelists to have their own special professional musician to perform at their revivals. (Billy Graham continued this tradition to the present day.) Meanwhile, the music itself became more informal, incorporating various styles of popular music such as bluegrass and barbershop quartets.
In contrast, black gospel music’s roots come from slave spirituals, the highly emotional services of the Pentecostals, and ragtime and blues as well as hymns. The first hymnal published especially for black congregations appeared in 1801, and in the late 19th century a new type of black gospel hymn began to appear characterized by syncopated, jazz-like rhythms. By the 1930s, gospel songs had become an integral part of black church services, and it also became increasingly common for churches to have a special gospel choir. Unlike white gospel groups, black gospel singers and groups sung in a highly emotional style, frequently accompanying themselves by hand-clapping, swaying, and interpolated shouts, and using percussion instruments, especially the tambourine, was also common.
One of the most important figures in early 20th century black gospel music was Thomas A. Dorsey, often called the “Father of Gospel Music.” Although he began his career accompanying blues singers like Bessie Smith under the name Georgia Tom, Dorsey turned to writing religious music after hearing the music of Charles A. Tindley at a National Baptist Convention meeting. His decision to incorporate elements of the music with which he started his career into his religious music, which more conservative types considered the devil’s music, didn’t make him particularly popular with the church’s old guard at first. But that didn’t discourage Dorsey. “When I realized how hard some folks were fighting the gospel idea,” he is quoted as saying in Score, “I was determined to carry the banner.” When his song “If You See My Savior” became a hit at the 1930 Baptist Jubilee, he turned to writing gospel songs full-time, eventually composing over 800. He also established the first publishing house specifically dedicated to black gospel music, the Thomas A. Dorsey Gospel Songs Music Publishing Company.
Most of the early black gospel performers tended to be either male quartets or female soloists (many of whom, interestingly, were blind). It was Nazarene Church layman James D. Vaughan, founder of the first radio station in Tennessee to specialize in gospel music, who first specifically began training quartets to perform music from his publications around 1890. The most famous gospel quartets were black, such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Mighty Clouds of Joy or the Soul Stirrers, which launched the career of Sam Cooke. But the gospel quartet became so prevalent, particularly in the South, that two of rock music’s earliest stars from that area, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, performed regularly with gospel quartets backing them up early in their careers. The most famous female soloist, Mahalia Jackson, regarded by many as the “queen of gospel singers,” started her career in the 1930s but did not become well-known until two decades later, when she signed a very lucrative recording contract with Columbia and appeared on programs like The Ed Sullivan Show. Black gospel also had a king–James Cleveland, a singer/songwriter whose career began in the 1950s. Although his voice was unusually rough and raspy for a gospel performer, his ability and charisma helped him win four Grammys (one posthumous).
Starting in the late 1920s, mixed groups like the Pace Jubilee Singers began to appear, as well as all-female groups like the Ward Trio (later called the Ward Singers). And the tradition of the gospel choir began in 1931, when Thomas Dorsey formed a choir at Chicago’s Ebenezer Baptist Church and also organized the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses. At first these choirs sang mostly four-part music, but, starting with Cleveland’s Angelic Choir of the First Baptist Church (Nutley, NJ), the choir’s function changed to mostly providing accompaniment for a soloist. Gospel choirs performed at Radio City Music Hall and the 1939 Chicago World’s Fair, recordings began to proliferate beginning in the 1940s, and by the 1950s centers of gospel music had been established in many major cities including Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and New York. In 1968 Cleveland, along with a number of other directors, established the Gospel Music Workshop of America, which by the early 1980s had over 500,000 members, and starting in the early 1970s it became increasingly common to find gospel choirs in colleges and universities. It was also during this time that gospel-based musicals such as Black Nativity and Your Arms Too Short to Box with God premiered, and for the first known gospel gold record to be released: the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “Oh Happy Day” in 1969.
Although no single has approached the commercial success of “Oh Happy Day” to date, gospel music is still enjoying a boom nowadays. According to Gospel Today, seven major recording companies have created and staffed gospel divisions in the past five years, independent labels have increased by 50 percent, total sales revenues have nearly tripled in the past decade, and, with the recent success of Kirk Franklin’s Why We Sing and appearances by artists like Yolanda Adams on TV programs like The Tonight Show, it seems that gospel is definitely here to stay.
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Soul/R&B/Gospel
Rhythm and Blues (R&B) Unlike gospel, whose roots can be traced back to the beginning of the 19th century, rhythm and blues (also called R&B) is a purely 20th century phenomenon. The style started in the late 1930s, but the term didn't exist until 1949, when Jerry Wexler, who would eventually become president of Atlantic Records, coined it. That same year, Billboard began using it as a replacement for the term "race music," which was generally used to describe music by black artists or aimed at black audiences.
Several factors contributed to the growth of R&B: the move of many black Americans to major cities in search of wartime employment, the invention of the electric guitar, and the discovery of the German-invented tape recorder by the music industry, which greatly simplified and improved the recording process. The rise of television in the late 1940s also helped, since it caused many radio station owners, who believed the new medium would make radio obsolete, to sell their stations at bargain prices to owners who geared their programming to urban blacks.
Rhythm and blues grew mainly out of blues from the Mississippi Delta and Chicago, but was also influenced by gospel music and Tin Pan Alley songs. Another big influence was the "jump blues" style of swing bands, particularly saxophonist Louis Jordan's Tympany Five, which he founded in 1938. A typical R&B ensemble consisted of a solo singer, whose style was modeled after the old-style "blues shouter," a rhythm section (usually drums, bass and organ or piano) and a horn section, and in the late 1940s and early 50s it was also common to hear instrumental ensembles with a lead saxophone. In the Midwest and South the style was coarser, influenced by country blues, and featuring the guitar. And pianists such as Nat "King" Cole developed a smoother, ballad-oriented style that came to be known as "club blues."
In the 1950s, although solo singers continued to be popular, R&B recordings began increasingly incorporating doo-wop, a type of close harmony vocal style, and the music began to be aimed at teenagers instead of adults. Chuck Berry and Little Richard were especially popular for the songs they wrote about subjects that reflected their audience's realities and fantasies, like Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen"and "School Days."
Although initially intended for black consumers, R&B recordings proved so popular with whites that eventually record companies began to promote the music to white audiences as well. By 1963, however, so much crossover had occurred between that category and other forms of popular music that Billboard discontinued the R&B chart and combined it with the one for pop music.
Soul Like the term rhythm and blues, the term "soul"was intended as a replacement - for the term "rhythm and blues," as a matter of fact! - by Billboard, beginning in 1969. But the word "soul" had already been around for a while as a black slang term for emotional sincerity or authenticity. (One of the first records to use the word was King Curtis' "Soul Twist" in 1962). Basically, as Grove's Dictionary of Popular Music puts it, "The essence of soul music is that it should convey the performer's strongly felt emotions and perceptions, and evoke similar ones in the listener." Consequently, most soul songs feature impassioned, dramatic delivery often punctuated by sighs, sobs, chanted interpolations or shouts.
At this time, there were three basic styles of soul music: Chicago soul; the Motown sound; and southern soul. The best known Chicago soul artist was Curtis Mayfield, whose style, along with his group the Impressions, was characterized by the frequent use of falsetto and unusual instrumental combinations in the accompaniment; strings, and vibraphone were also common. Although Motown was originally the name of a record company founded in Detroit by Berry Gordy in 1959, it quickly became a term for the type of music featured on its label, which featured memorable melodies, a smooth, straightforward vocal delivery, and elaborate arrangements, usually with strings and horns. Motown records were also known for their extremely well-crafted songwriting, particularly the work of the team Holland-Dozier-Holland, and the resulting mix of soul mannerisms and the styles of mainstream pop made Motown equally popular with both black and white audiences, fully living up to its slogan, "the sound of young America." (The groups on the label's roster, such as the Temptations and the Supremes, were known for their coordinated outfits and elaborate stage choreography as well.). Southern soul was primarily heard on recordings issued by the Memphis-based Stax and Volt labels and New York-based Atlantic Records. In fact, the Stax house band attained fame in their own right under the name Booker T. and the MGs (they took their name from organist Booker T. Jones) with hit singles like "Green Onions." The style ranged from sparse and funky like Eddie Floyd's "Knock on Wood" to slow, yearning ballads like Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman." A number of very famous solo singers, such as James Brown and Ray Charles, also began their careers rooted in the Southern soul style.
Throughout the 1970s Southern soul became somewhat modified and refined, but continued to be popular with audiences, with artists such as Al Green and the Staple Singers. A number of soul records also took on an increasingly political slant reflecting the new Black Power movement, such as Brown's "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)." But after disco became fashionable, soul's popularity suffered, and though it did recover some of its popularity in the 1980s through such performers as Bobby Womack, it was primarily passed over in favor of styles such as funk and rap.
Gospel One often thinks of gospel music as purely an African-American type of music. But in fact its roots are biracial. White gospel hymns first appeared in the mid-19th century, and the first use of the term "gospel music" can be found in P.P. Bliss' Gospel Songs (1874). Typically, as Grove's Dictionary of Popular Music puts it, the texts of these hymns focus on subjects such as "conversion, atonement through Christ, the assurance of salvation, and the joys of heaven" in styles ranging from meditative to jubilant.
Restored text, unchanged, from the Wayback Machine capture of May 3, 2004.
Resources listed in 2000
These lists come from the original ListenSmart.com page. Many sites have since closed, so each link opens its Wayback Machine copy. Books are listed as titles only.