Early Gospel Singers – F

In 2002 the Library of Congress honored their 1909 recording of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” by adding it in the United States National Recording Registry. In 2008 they were awarded a National Medal of Arts.

The Singers were organized as a fundraising effort for Fisk University. The historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee was founded by the American Missionary Association and local supporters after the end of the American Civil War to educate freedmen and other young African Americans. The five-year-old university was facing serious financial difficulty. To avert bankruptcy and closure, Fisk’s treasurer and music director, George L. White, a white Northern missionary dedicated to music and proving African Americans were the intellectual equals of whites, gathered a nine-member student chorus, consisting of four black men (Isaac Dickerson, Ben Holmes, Greene Evans, Thomas Rutling) and five black women (Ella Sheppard, Maggie Porter, Minnie Tate, Jennie Jackson, Eliza Walker) to go on tour to earn money for the university. On October 6, 1871, the group of students, consisting of two quartets and a pianist, started their U.S. tour under White’s direction. They first performed in Cincinnati, Ohio. Over the next 18 months, the group toured through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

After a concert in Cincinnati, the group donated their small profit, which amounted to less than sixty dollars, to the relief to the victims of the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871. As soprano Maggie Porter recalled, “We had thirty dollars and sent every penny to Chicago and didn’t have anything for ourselves.” The mayor of Chillicothe, Ohio, expressed “thanks to these young colored people for their liberality in giving the proceeds of last evening’s concert to our relief fund for the Chicago sufferers.” The group traveled on to Columbus, Ohio, where lack of funding, poor hotel conditions, and overall mistreatment from the press and audiences left them feeling tired and discouraged.

The group and their pastor, Henry Bennett, prayed about whether to continue with the tour. White went off to pray as well; he believed that they needed a name to capture audience attention. The next morning, he met with the singers and said “Children, it shall be Jubilee Singers in memory of the Jewish year of Jubilee.” This was a reference to Jubilee described in the book of Leviticus in the Bible. Each fiftieth Pentecost was followed by a “year of jubilee” in which all slaves would be set free. Since most of the students at Fisk University and their families were newly freed slaves, the name “Jubilee Singers” seemed fitting.

The Jubilee Singers’ performances were a departure from the familiar “black minstrel” genre of white musicians’ performing in blackface. One early review of the group’s performance was headlined “Negro Minstrelsy in Church–Novel Religious Exercise,” while further reviews highlighted the fact that this group of Negro minstrels were, oddly enough, “genuine negroes.”  “Those who have only heard the burnt cork caricatures of negro minstrelsy have not the slightest conception of what it really is,” Doug Seroff quotes one review of a concert by the group as saying. This was not a uniquely American response to the group’s performance, but was typical in audience receptions in Europe as well: “From the first the Jubilee music was more or less of a puzzle to the critics; and even among those who sympathised with their mission there was no little difference of opinion as to the artistic merit of their entertainments. Some could not understand the reason for enjoying so thoroughly as almost everyone did these simple unpretending songs.”

As the tour continued, audiences came to appreciate the singers’ voices, and the group began to be praised. The Jubilee Singers are credited with the early popularization of the Negro spiritual tradition among white and northern audiences in the late 19th century; many were previously unaware of its existence. At first the slave songs were never sung in public, according to Ella Sheppard; “they were sacred to our parents, who used them in their religious worship and shouted over them…It was only after many months that gradually our hearts were opened to the influence of these friends and we began to appreciate the wonderful beauty and power of our songs. After the rough start, the first United States tours eventually earned $40,000 for Fisk University.

In early 1872 the group performed at the World’s Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival in Boston, and they were invited to perform for President Ulysses S. Grant at the White House in March of that year. They gave a separate performance in Washington, D.C., for Vice President Schuyler Colfax and members of the U.S. Congress. They traveled next to New York, where they performed before enthusiastic audiences at preacher Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn and at Steinway Hall in Manhattan. They garnered national attention and generous donations. Staying in the New York area for six weeks, by the time they returned to Nashville, they had raised the full $20,000 White had promised the university.

In a tour of Great Britain and Europe in 1873, the group, by then with 11 members, performed “Steal Away to Jesus” and “Go Down, Moses” for Queen Victoria in April. They returned the following year, they sailed to Europe again, touring from May 1875 to July 1878. This tour raised an estimated $150,000 for the university, funds used to construct Fisk’s first permanent building. Named Jubilee Hall, the building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975 and still stands.

The original Jubilee Singers disbanded in 1878 because of their grueling touring schedule. As Ella Sheppard, one of the original Jubilee Singers recalled, “our strength was failing under the ill treatment at hotels, on railroads, poorly attended concerts, and ridicule.” Porter also said, “There were many times, when we didn’t have place to sleep or anything to eat. Mr. White went out and brought us some sandwiches and tried to find some place to put us up.” Other times while the singers would wait in the railway station, White “and some other man of the troupe waded through sleet or snow or rain from hotel to hotel seeking shelter for us”.

A new Jubilee Singers choir was formed in 1879 under the direction of George White and singer Frederick J. Loudin. This troupe, formed by White, consisted of Jennie Jackson, Maggie Porter, Georgia Gordon, Mabel Lewis, Patti Malone, Hinton Alexander, Benjamin W. Thomas, and newcomers R. A. Hall, Mattie Lawrence, and George E. Barrett. A. Cushing was the agent who managed their bookings.

The original Jubilee Singers introduced slave songs to the world in 1871 and were instrumental in preserving this unique American musical tradition known today as Negro spirituals. They broke racial barriers in the US and abroad in the late 19th century. They raised money in support of their beloved school due to it failing. In 1999, the Fisk Jubilee Singers were featured in Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory. In July 2007, the Fisk Jubilee Singers went on a sacred journey to Ghana at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy. It was a history making event, as it was their first time visit to Ghana. In 2008, the Fisk Jubilee Singers were selected as a recipient of the 2008 National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor for artists and patrons of the arts. The award was presented by President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush during a ceremony at the White House.

Source: Wikipedia

She was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi on June 23, 1904, the seventh of fourteen children. Her family moved to Memphis, Tennessee when she was a child, and they moved again to St. Louis, Missouri when Smith was age 12. Her mother opened a restaurant in St. Louis, where Smith worked full-time, leaving school during the eighth grade. Her father was a railroad brakeman and a devoutly religious man. Raised in the Baptist church, she began singing with her sisters, Mary, Geneva, Lucille, and Emma, in a family group known as “The Ford Sisters”. The group, and Willie Mae in particular, achieved wide recognition after an appearance at the 1922 National Baptist Convention, which was their first public performance.

After her sisters married and retired from the family group, Smith pursued a solo career. She had a contralto voice, and thought about studying classical music, “but after hearing Artella Huchins sing gospel songs at the National Baptist Convention of 1926, she changed her career plans and devoted herself entirely to gospel music. She began singing professionally in churches in St. Louis and throughout the Midwest.”

Based in St. Louis, Missouri, she was one of the early associates of Thomas A. Dorsey and was an innovator in gospel music, introducing the “song and sermonette” style that other singers, such as Shirley Caesar and Edna Gallmon Cooke, made popular.

She married James Peter Smith in 1927, who owned a general hauling business, and shortly after their marriage she began traveling in musical revivals to supplement the family income. In the late 1920s, she was ordained as a minister. Dorsey heard her in 1931 and asked to help him co-found (along with Sallie Martin) the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses, an organization devoted to spreading gospel music by training singers, choirs and composers. Smith served as the NCGCC’s director for many years, and became the principal singing teacher as head of its Soloists’ Bureau in 1936. She held that position until the late 1980s. Among her students were Myrtle Scott, Mahalia Jackson, and Brother Joe May, who gave her the affectionate name “Mother”. Teaming with Roberta Martin, Smith demonstrated how to make even familiar hymns such as “Jesus Loves Me” into deeper personal statements by slurs, note bending and other personalized adornments.

Smith was also a major figure within the Baptist Church as the Director of its Education Department of the National Baptist Convention before she became a member of a Pentecostal denomination, the COGIC. She considered herself a preacher and imbued her singing and sermonettes with an evangelical fervor. She was noted for her finesse, control and subtlety, but could also, like her protégé Brother Joe May, belt out hymns.

While her singing and performance style were highly influential on others, she did not begin a recording career until 1950. She was also a composer, but even more influential as an arranger. Her reinterpretations of hymns such as “Jesus Loves Me”, “Throw Out the Lifeline”, and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” influenced “a new generation of singers to include the songs in their repertoires”.

Smith developed a fine sensitivity to slights from others who did not appreciate her firm sincerity or thought she could be cheated. She also developed a rivalry with Sallie Martin that lasted for as long as they lived; the movie Say Amen, Somebody, filmed when both of them were in their seventies, showed that the fires had only gone down, not out. She had two biological children, William and Jacqueline, and an adopted daughter Bertha who was also her accompanist.

Smith died of congestive heart failure on February 2, 1994, at the Tower Village Nursing Home in St. Louis, aged 89.

Source: Wikipedia

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Considered the greatest of the “anointed singers” — artists who live according to the spirit, and who perform with the ultimate aim of saving souls — Willie Mae Ford Smith was among the most legendary gospel vocalists of her era; rarely recorded, her enormous reputation instead rested almost entirely on her incendiary live performances, where her dramatic, physical style inspired many of the finest soloists to follow in her wake. She was also the first to introduce the “song and sermonette,” the act of delivering a lengthy sermon before, during, or after a performance. Smith was born in 1906 in Rolling Fork, MS and raised in Memphis; one of 14 children, she was the daughter of a railroad brakeman who relocated the family to St. Louis in 1918. There her mother opened a restaurant, where Smith soon began working full-time, leaving school during the eighth grade; though raised as a devout Baptist, she sang everything from blues to reels as a child, but upon forming her family quartet the Ford Sisters, she turned solely to gospel.

Debuting at the National Baptist Convention in 1922, the Fords created a sensation with their performances of “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel” and “I’m in His Care.” After her sisters married and quit the group, Smith mounted a solo career; a high soprano, she briefly flirted with pursuing classical music, but was so profoundly moved by Detroit’s Madame Artelia Hutchins’ performance at the 1926 Baptist Convention that she returned to gospel once and for all. Upon marrying a man who operated a general hauling business, Smith began touring to supplement their household income; with the exception of the legendary Sallie Martin, she was arguably the first gospel performer to tour relentlessly, conducting musical revivals in many of the cities she visited. In her travels Smith crossed paths with Thomas A. Dorsey, who in 1932 invited her to Chicago to help organize the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses. She later formed a St. Louis chapter, and was the longtime head of the soloists’ bureau.

Smith’s rendition of her own composition “If You Just Keep Still,” delivered at the 1937 National Baptist Convention, set a new standard for solo singing; just as influential was her skill as an arranger, with her radical reinterpretations of chestnuts like “Jesus Loves Me,” “Throw Out the Lifeline,” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” galvanizing a new generation of singers to include the songs in their repertoires. As a teacher, Smith also mentored Brother Joe May, Myrtle Scott, Edna Gallmon Cooke, and Martha Bass. She joined the Church of God Apostolic in 1939, and immediately her music reflected the rhythm and energy of the sanctified church; still, she did not finally begin recording until the end of the following decade — with her protégé May enjoying massive success with her style, she saw no point in entering the studio. Only a handful of Smith recordings were issued in her own lifetime, and by the early ’50s, she had turned to evangelical work; still, she continued to remain a great inspiration, dying on February 2, 1994.

Source: Jason, Ankeny, All Music Guide

A . C. was born in Columbus, Georgia on August 9, 1890 (according to his second wife, Frances) or 1893 (according to the Social Security Death Index). He lost his sight in 1904. Mamie is said to have been born on June 8, 1895; she too was blind. In the 1920 Census, A. C. gave his age as 29 (which is consistent with the 1890 birth date) and his profession as “None”. Mamie was registered as being 23, and their daughter Rideth Mae as being three years old. The family was at that time residing in Birmingham, Alabama.

Around 1930, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. Mamie died; and in 1936, A. C. married Frances Forest (born July 5, 1920 in New Orleans), a blind pianist and organist. In the 1960s, the couple were active in the Church of God in Christ. A. C. died on May 9, 1972 and is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Memphis, in an unmarked grave. Frances outlived him.

Source: Wikipedia

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Having made only a handful of recordings in the company of her presumed husband A.C. Forehand, the ’20s performer Blind Mamie Forehand joins a class of recording artists whose uniqueness is not in name only. While it many not have been that common for women to sing the blues professionally in the ’20s, Forehand was one of many who did sing gospel and also one of the few who did manage to leave compelling documentation behind. She was an active singer of spirituals on the streets of Memphis, a venue that logically led to the stylistic classification of street-corner or storefront gospel. “Honey in the Rock” is one of the titles she recorded in 1927, and these tracks have endured not just because hazy copyright status has led to overlapping reissue documentation on an international level. In fact, due to the efforts of labels such as Wolf, it is easier to find a Blind Mamie Forehand recording in Austria than a jar of peanut butter. The actual music content is something that once heard is never forgotten; the robust singers accompanying themselves on cymbals so old one can imagine clouds of dust bursting forth with each crash.

Source: AllMusicGuide