An Introduction to America’s Music

338 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II

heartfelt, ecstatic, artful, and therefore worthy—in human expression. The

emotionally direct yet disciplined musical stylizations of black gospel perform-

ers have proved to be among the most powerful expressions of praise in the

modern Christian church.

Racial prejudice in America has sharpened class consciousness within black

communities, and religious life has mirrored the social divisions. In Chicago, for

example, middle-class blacks gravitated toward African Methodist Episcopal (AME)

and Baptist churches, while working-class blacks—including migrants from the

South—were more likely to join Pentecostal, or “sanctifi ed,” congregations. Middle-

class black denominations modeled their worship customs on white churches: in

the latter 1920s the choirs at two of black Chicago’s largest Baptist congregations

were singing sacred music by the likes of Handel and Mendelssohn. The ministers

of these “old-line” churches favored a restrained preaching style and avoided tra-

ditional black worship music, except for arranged, notated spirituals. A different

spirit was found in Pentecostal denominations such as the Church of God in Christ:

congregation hymns were “gospelized” and the mood was ecstatic, with jubilant

singing to drums and tambourines (or even pots and pans), hand clapping, foot

stomping, and shouting, as in the days before Emancipation (see chapter 4).

Modern black gospel music took shape before World War II as mainstream

denominations brought Pentecostal musical styles into their worship. A key

moment was the performance in August 1930 of Thomas A. Dorsey’s “If You See

My Sav ior” at a convention of black Baptists in Ch icago. Dorsey (sometimes called

“Georgia Tom”) was a Chicago musician and songwriter whose performing

credits included a stint as pianist for Ma Rainey and who, from the early 1930s

on, devoted himself entirely to sacred music.

In 1931 Chicago’s Ebenezer Baptist Church hired a new minister from Alabama

who hoped to introduce songs like those he had heard in the South. So in early

1932 a new choir was formed, accompanied by Dorsey himself. But when another

Chicago minister invited Dorsey to do the same at his church, the choir director

there objected to the secular basis of Dorsey’s gospel style: “I felt it was degrading.

How can something that’s jazzy give a religious feeling? If you’re in a club down-

town, a nightclub, that’s all right. That’s where it belongs. But how can you associate

that with God’s word? It’s a desecration.”

The transformation of music in Chicago’s

old-line churches did not happen without

internal strife and dissent.

Later that year Dorsey joined with

like-minded musicians to form the

National Convention of Gospel Choirs

and Choruses, dedicated to teaching

the gospel style. That year also saw the

founding of the Dorsey House of Music,

the fi rst publishing company devoted

to black gospel music. Dorsey’s ability to

compose, improvise, and notate music;

his command of blues-based rhythmic

drive; his commitment to the church;

and his understanding of sacred and

secular music as two sides of the same

Thomas A. Dorsey on the Relation of

Blues to Gospel

I

f a woman has lost a man, a man has lost a woman, his

feeling reacts to the blues; he feels like expressing it. The

same thing acts for a gospel song. Now you’re not singing

blues; you’re singing gospel, good news song, singing about

the Creator; but it’s the same feeling, a grasping of the

heart. If it’s in your public, they holler out “Hallelujah” or

“Amen” in church. In the theater they holler “sing it again”

or “do it again” or something like that.

In their own words

Thomas A. Dorsey

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