Early Gospel Singers – D

Darby renounced the blues for the church in the late 1930s. We called him “Preacher Darby” said Henry Brown. He remained in East St. Louis and became an ordained deacon at the King Solomon Holy House of Prayer.

Davis was born in Laurens, South Carolina, in the Piedmont region. Of the eight children his mother bore, he was the only one who survived to adulthood. He became blind as an infant. He recalled being poorly treated by his mother and that his father placed him in the care of his paternal grandmother. Davis reported that when he was 10 years old his father was killed in Birmingham, Alabama; he later said that he had been told that his father was shot by the Birmingham sheriff.

He sang for the first time at Gray Court’s Baptist church in South Carolina.

He took to the guitar and assumed a unique multivoice style produced solely with his thumb and index finger, playing gospel, ragtime, and blues tunes along with traditional and original tunes in four-part harmony.

In the mid-1920s, Davis migrated to Durham, North Carolina, a major center of black culture at the time. There he taught Blind Boy Fuller and collaborated with a number of other artists in the Piedmont blues scene, including Bull City Red. In 1935, J. B. Long, a store manager with a reputation for supporting local artists, introduced Davis, Fuller, and Red to the American Record Company. The subsequent recording sessions (available on his Complete Early Recordings) marked the real beginning of Davis’s career. During his time in Durham, he became a Christian. In 1933, Davis was ordained as a Baptist minister in Washington, North Carolina. Following his conversion and especially his ordination, Davis began to prefer inspirational gospel music.

In the 1940s, the blues scene in Durham began to decline, and Davis moved to New York. In 1951, he recorded an oral history for the folklorist Elizabeth Lyttleton Harold (the wife of Alan Lomax). who transcribed their conversations in a typescript more than 300 pages long.

The folk revival of the 1960s invigorated Davis’s career. He performed at the Newport Folk Festival. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded his version of “Samson and Delilah”, also known as “If I Had My Way”, a song by Blind Willie Johnson, which Davis had popularized. “Samson and Delilah” was also covered and credited to Davis by the Grateful Dead on the album Terrapin Station. The Dead also covered Davis’ “Death Don’t Have No Mercy”. Eric Von Schmidt credited Davis with three-quarters of Schmidt’s “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down”, covered by Bob Dylan on his debut album for Columbia Records. The Blues Hall of Fame singer and harmonica player Darrell Mansfield has recorded several of Davis’s songs.

Davis died of a heart attack in May 1972, in Hammonton, New Jersey. He is buried in plot 68 of Rockville Cemetery, in Lynbrook, Long Island, New York.

Source: Wikipedia

Davis is a mysterious figure about whom little is known. Research done by Gayle Dean Wardlow in 1966 named his home as Bude, Mississippi, a small town in the southwest of the state. He reportedly was reluctant to record fearing he would be required to play secular material. He did not record again and his subsequent whereabouts and death are unknown. No photos of him are known to exist. Davis’ complete recorded works are available on Document Records

Source: Wikipedia

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The classic American spiritual “When the Saints Go Marching In” is closely identified with Louis Armstrong and New Orleans jazz. At Preservation Hall in the latter city, there is even a sign indicating that the combo will be glad to play the song — for a 50 dollar tip. (All other requests are only ten dollars per song.) Yet one listen to the Delta blues or rural gospel version of the song by Blind Willie Davis, originally recorded for the Paramount “race” record series in the late ’20s, could make a listener completely forget the Dixieland “Saints” — and that’s quite an accomplishment. The recordings of Davis, a figure whose personal history has yet to be uncovered, are part of many from this period that represented the beginnings of the gospel recording industry. As such, Davis’ work has been widely anthologized in various compilations devoted to early black gospel or sanctified singing, including the marvelous Raw Pre-War Gospel, 1926-36 on the Revenant label. In addition, blues fans have found the work of Davis to be of value even removed from its gospel context. Like the powerful work of Blind Willie Johnson, the recordings of Davis have everything a blues fan will want or need, including gritty vocals and tough guitar playing. Davis’ bottleneck guitar arrangements are quite unique. His thumb picking style is considered extremely unorthodox, actually seeming to be something like a backward version of what other Mississippi Delta players do. Davis also seemed to think and move faster than some of his contemporaries, meaning his combination of strumming and picking patterns is dense and packed with detail. The heavy blues content of a Davis performance also gives his gospel material much less of a joyous character. The performance included on the Revenant disc, “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home,” features sorrowful and moving interplay between voice and bottleneck; and represents a powerful argument that gospel music comes out of tragedy rather than ecstatic joy, at least in the minds of some blues and gospel critics.

Source: Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide

Nothin’ between

I Want to see my Jesus

Someday He’ll Make Plain To Me

Just Outside The Door

Charlie Patton, a friend of Wheeler Ford introduced the quartet to Art Laibly, Paramount’s recording director which spawned a recording session of some seven songs at Paramount recording studio at Grafton, Wisconsin.

God Won’t Forsake His Own
I Know My Time Ain’t Long
I’ll Be Here
Jesus Got His Arms Around Me
Moaner , Let’s Go Down In The Valley
We’re All Gonna Face The Rising Sun
Where Was Eve Sleeping

The group was founded in 1898 as a jubilee quartet, under the name the Dinwiddie Quartet, to benefit the Dinwiddie Normal and Industrial School of Dinwiddie County, Virginia. Around 1902, they became independent of the school, and were touring as part of a vaudeville revue.

In October 1902, they recorded six sides for the Victor Talking Machine Company, under the name of The Dinwiddie Colored Quartet. Recorded in separate sessions on 29 and 31 October, the songs selected were “Down On The Old Camp Ground”, “Poor Mourner”, “Gabriel’s Trumpet”, “My Way Is Cloudy”, “We’ll Anchor Bye-And-Bye”, and “Steal Away”.

The group is believed to have disbanded in 1904.

Source: Wikipedia

Upon relocating to Philadelphia in 1942, the Hummingbirds’ popularity began to grow — Tucker, in particular, wowed audiences with his flamboyant theatrics, rejecting the long tradition of “flat-footed” singers rooted in place on-stage in favor of running up the aisles and rocking prayerfully on his knees. By 1944, he was even regularly jumping off stages — indeed, the frenetic showmanship of soul music may have had its origins in Tucker’s manic intensity, itself an emulation of country preaching. At the same time, the Hummingbirds’ harmonies continued to grow more sophisticated; the addition of Paul Owens completed the quartet’s development, and together he and Tucker honed a style they dubbed “trickeration,” a kind of note-bending distinguished by sensual lyrical finesse and staggering vocal intricacy. Their virtuosity did not go unnoticed by audiences, and throughout the mid-’40s — an acknowledged golden age of a cappella quartet singing — the group regularly played to packed houses throughout the South.

Under names like the Swanee Quintet and the Jericho Boys, the Dixie Hummingbirds also regularly appeared on Philadelphia radio station WCAU; it was as the Jericho Boys that they auditioned for the legendary producer John Hammond, who in 1942 booked them into the Cafe Society Downtown, then the Greenwich Village area’s preeminent showcase for black talent. By 1946, the Hummingbirds were again recording, cutting sides for labels including Apollo and, later in the decade, Gotham and Hob. In 1952, what many consider the group’s definitive lineup — a roster of Tucker, Davis, Bobo, Beachey Thompson, James Walker (replacing Owens), and ace guitarist Howard Carroll, a roster that held intact for close to a quarter century — signed to the Peacock label, where over the course of the following decade they recorded a series of masterpieces including 1952’s “Trouble in My Way,” 1953’s “Let’s Go Out to the Programs,” 1954’s “Christian’s Testimonial,” 1957’s “Christian Automobile,” and 1959’s “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See.”

After earning a standing ovation for their performance at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival (captured on the Gospel at Newport LP), the Hummingbirds essentially retired from mainstream appearances to focus solely on the church circuit. They did, however, burst back into the popular consciousness in 1973, backing Paul Simon on his pop smash “Loves Me Like a Rock.” The death of Willie Bobo in 1976 brought to a sad end a lengthy chapter of the Hummingbirds’ history — his membership in their ranks dated back to the late ’30s — but the surviving members forged on; just two years later, Ebony magazine named them “The World’s Greatest Gospel Group.” After Davis retired in 1984, Tucker was the last remaining link to the quartet’s formative years; despite the subsequent deaths of Walker in 1992 and Thompson in 1994, Tucker continued leading the group at the century’s end, recruiting new blood to keep the Dixie Hummingbirds’ spirit alive for years to follow, celebrating their seventh decade with 1999’s Music in the Air: The 70th Anniversary All-Star Tribute. The group continued under Tucker’s leadership until June 2008, when Tucker died due to complications stemming from heart disease. The remaining members of the group declared they would press on and keep the legacy of the Dixie Hummingbirds alive.

Biography by Jason Ankeny, Source: AllMusic.com

“Loves Me Like A Rock”

“Amazing Grace” (Grammy Award)

The first feature length documentary/concert film featuring the life and history of the Dixie Hummingbirds was released in 2008 in commemoration of their extraordinary eighty years as performers. Produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker Jeff Scheftel, and Executive produced by University of Hawaii Musicologist Jay Junker, featuring extensive interviews with Ira Tucker, Sr., archival footage, and following the current group as they perform in numerous venues, and rehearse under Mr. Tucker’s spirited guidance, in their hometown of Philadelphia, and across the vast landscape of America.

Source: Gospel Music Hall of Fame

National Endowment for the Arts  – recipients of a National Heritage Fellowship

Gospel Music Hall of Fame – 2008 Inductees

Swanee River

Little David Play on your Harp

Good News, The Chariot’s Coming

Leaning on The Lord

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

Sweet Kentucky Babe

Eventually she became a regular pianist and singer for various traveling ministers of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC ), a national black Pentecostal church that has since developed into the largest of its kind. Dranes spent much of this early period with COGIC traveling through Texas and Oklahoma and aiding in the “planting” of new churches. In the mid-1920s she settled back in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and was soon spotted by OKeh Record Company scout Richard M. Jones. The company took Dranes to Chicago for recording sessions in 1926 and again held sessions in Dallas in 1928. [In 1926 recording sessions she was supported by the Rev. F.W. McGee and His Jubilee Choir. Rev. McGee himself went on to become a popular recording artist for Victor and he had Dranes to thank for this.] During her contract with OKeh she recorded more than thirty tracks, including such gospel standouts as “I Shall Wear a Crown” and “My Soul Is a Witness for the Lord.” Though she was a top gospel star for the OKeh label, correspondence between Dranes and the record executives indicate that she was often underpaid.

With the onset of the Great Depression, Blind Arizona Dranes fell into obscurity. She continued her performances in church services and may have lived in Memphis and possibly Oklahoma City in the 1930s. Her last known public concert was held in Cincinnati in 1947. In 1948 she moved to Los Angeles, where she lived until her death on July 27, 1963. Her death certificate listed her profession as a missionary and that she was buried at the Paradise Memorial Park in Santa Fe Springs, California. She was one of the most influential and innovative gospel pianists of the twentieth century.

Source:  Bradley Shreve, “DRANES, ARIZONA JUANITA [BLIND ARIZONA],” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fdr16). Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

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“Juanita” Arizona Dranes was born in Dallas, Texas around 1905. Born blind, Dranes is believed to have been of Mexican and African-American heritage, and was raised in the Church of God in Christ in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Dranes’ enthusiastic shouting and piano playing were so dynamic that they practically recommended themselves, and she was only about 20 years of age when a Fort Worth-based minister, Samuel Crouch, suggested to Okeh talent scout Richard M. Jones that Dranes be given a recording test. Blues singer Sara Martin agreed to travel to Fort Worth and help the blind Dranes make it to Chicago for her test on June 17, 1926. It was so successful that the six records resulting from it were all issued. Arizona Dranes was used to working with a chorus, and on two titles, “John Said He Saw a Number” and “My Soul Is a Witness for the Lord,” Richard M. Jones and Sara Martin stepped in to fulfill this role. Dranes’ last two selections of June 17, 1926 can best be described as sanctified barrelhouse piano solos, practically unique in the 1920s. Yet they are representative of a sound and style within gospel piano playing that may be heard yet today.

Dranes returned to Chicago on November 15, 1926, this time partnered with Rev. Ford Washington McGee and His Jubilee Choir. The four numbers recorded that day proved the first of thirteen recording sessions for McGee who, as Rev. F.W. McGee, would become a popular recording artist for Victor, and may have recorded in the 1940s with the Library of Congress. McGee owed this honor to Dranes, who set up the date with Okeh. It is believed that Arizona Dranes is the pianist on three sides made backing up gospel singer Jessie May Hill for Okeh on May 5, 1928 and two others with McGee the following day. On July 3, 1928 Dranes led a chorus of her own on six sides, of which two were withheld; these would be her last recordings under her own name. Dranes was likely the pianist, and possibly the coordinator, of two Columbia sessions held in Dallas in December 1928 with the Texas Jubilee Singers and the Rev. Joe Lenley. Although Dranes maintained contact with Columbia/Okeh scouts for at least a year afterward, Dranes would never record again herself.

Arizona Dranes is credited by some experts to have invented the “barrelhouse,” ragtime-derived style of gospel accompaniment, and at this point in time there is no known evidence to the contrary. Prior to Dranes, musical accompaniment in African-American gospel is practically unknown, as before 1920 it was only considered appropriate to present sanctified music in an a cappella setting. From 1928 forward, Dranes remained a top-billed artist in black gospel circles, and somewhere along the line she relocated from Texas to Chicago. Dranes’ latest-known advertising places her in Cleveland in 1947; after that Arizona Dranes literally disappears from historical mention, but is believed to have died around 1960. Listening to such riveting performances as “Lamb’s Blood Has Washed Me Clean,” “Crucifixion” and “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go” one can’t imagine being in Dranes’ presence without being swept up in the sheer excitement and power of her performances. Although the name Arizona Dranes is almost totally unknown to today’s general public, the style of music she is said to have pioneered continues in sanctified churches literally everywhere; such was her vast and important impact on American music.

Source: All Music Guide

The group performed under numerous line-ups as Dunham trained nearly a whole generation of quartet singers. Among those he tutored were Jimmie Hollingsworth, Charlie Beal, Sollie Pugh, L. V. Cox, James Allen, Arthur Turner, and Sam Middlebrooks.

Dunham was enormously influential in the development of quartet singing in the Birmingham District. His groups also expanded the repertoire of quartet singing from Gospel standards to popular songs, work songs, blues, and Dunham’s original compositions. The group toured around the South and midwest, sometimes picking up new members.

Source: Bham Wiki

In 1996 Document reissued the complete recordings of the Dunham Jazz & Jubilee Singers, an Alabama-based vocal harmony group whose legacy was rescued from oblivion by various diligent record collectors and a production staff engaged in a vast multi-genre reissuing campaign of unprecedented proportions. Music on this album was transferred (without noise reduction) directly from original 78-rpm platters dating back to the years 1927-1931. The first two selections were cut for the Gennett label in Birmingham, Alabama. For the blues “Honey Turn Your Damper Down” the group was identified as the Dunham Jazz Singers, while the arcane “You Can Hear Those Darkies Singing” apparently called for them to be billed as the Bessemer Quartette. They became the Dunham Jubilee Singers the following year when they recorded “Holy Is My Name” and three other gospel titles at Gennett’s world headquarters in Richmond, Indiana. The pianist heard on “Calvary” is believed to have been director and lead vocalist Charles Alf “Son” Dunham. This ensemble’s big break came at the end of May 1930 when it made its first Columbia recordings in New York City. “Louisiana Babe” and “My Mama’s Baby Child” were released under the name of the Bessemer Blues Singers. Billed as the Bessemer Singers and performing under the direction of James P. Johnson, Dunham’s unit backed blues singer Bessie Smith on her only two topically religious recordings 11 days later. It’s a shame that Document didn’t include those two titles on this collection. The sudden death of Dunham’s longtime collaborator and bass singer Leon Patrick precipitated a withdrawal from New York and the temporary dissolution of the ensemble. After Dunham returned to Alabama and rounded up some of the original members of the group, ten more sides were waxed in New York during May and June of 1931. Some of the source material for these tracks is of less than optimum quality, and by the producer’s own admission tracks 11 and 13 were obtained on “inferior tape” and “included for completeness only,” as no copies of the original recordings were known to exist. Even taking into account occasional flaws in audio quality, this collection provides access to cultural artifacts of great and lasting value. In their handling of great melodies like “Who Stole the Lock,” “Ephram Got the Coon,” and “If Men Go to Hell, Who Cares?,” the Dunham Jazz & Jubilee Singers built upon tradition in ways that invite comparison with Bryant’s Jubilee Quartet, the Utica Institute Jubilee Singers, and the Norfolk Jazz & Jubilee Quartet. Rather than including the Dunham unit’s historic collaborations with Bessie Smith, Document ended the set with a pair of rather forced, fast-paced theatrically comedic religious routines recorded in New York in 1930 by the Dixie Quartette, about whom nothing is known.

Source: AllMusic