The history of the choir within black congregations is intertwined with that of the hymn and gospel song, which was advanced during the early 20th century through composers such as Charles Tindley, Lucie Campbell, and Thomas Dorsey. The emergence of both reflected the evolution of worship practices as African Americans moved from rural to urban environments, agrarian to industrial economic systems, and traditional to cosmopolitan life experiences.
Since the first gospel choir appeared in the 1930s at the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago, it has remained one of the most recognized symbols of Black Church culture and Christendom in general. In the decades since Thomas Dorsey, Theodore Frye, Lucie Campbell, and several other individuals advanced the gospel choir as one of the significant agents of worship, the nature of music ministry has evolved extensively.
Today many congregations have multiple choirs that are defined by age and gender as well as by the type of repertoire performed. Despite diverse and sometimes controversial ideologies about the role of the choir within the Church and the appropriateness of certain types of music within the context of worship, the one unifying agent that draws all of these phenomenon together is the celebration of Choir Day or the Choir Anniversary.
While many congregations continued to advance the congregational practices that had developed during the 19th century, the emergence of ensembles such as The Fisk Jubilee Singers and similar groups from other historically black colleges signaled the introduction of a new performance aesthetic and repertory into the Black Church. Some churches expanded their cultivation of a concert tradition reflecting the traditions of some white congregations to include arranged spirituals.
The gospel choir aesthetic, which is the most commonly-known representation of the choral tradition in worship services, evolved significantly in the 1930s as performers like Roberta Martin popularized a performance style that incorporated both male and female voices and a style of piano accompaniment that has been identified by both scholars and performers as the classic gospel style.
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However, Martins contributions reflect only one facet of this history as the growing popularity of the gospel choir can also be traced back to the programming of the Wings Over Jordan choir of Cleveland and the St. Paul Church Choir of Los Angeles.
The Wings Over Jordan choir developed out of the Gethsemane Baptist Church located on the East side of the city. What started as a regional radio show called the Negro Hour on WGAR 1450 AM became a nationally syndicated radio show by 1938. Renamed Wings Over Jordan, the show featured musical performances as well as presentations from scholars, politicians, and artists and by 1940 was heard on hundreds of radio stations across the country.
Another aggregation that helped popularize the gospel choir aesthetic was J. Earle Hines and the St. Paul Church Choir of Los Angeles. This choir was initially associated with St. Paul Baptist Church, one of the largest black congregations in Los Angeles. It garnered much attention when it began broadcasting weekly on KFWB. The show reached seventeen states and eventually led to the group recording. In 1947 Capitol Records conducted a live recording of the choir in the sanctuary of the church.
The success of these early choirs laid the foundation for the choirs of James Cleveland, Mattie Moss Clark, and later Donald Lawrence, Hezekiah Walker, and Ricky Dillard. But in the years since the earliest choirs were integrated into worship services, a number of musicians and directors have attempted to advance the role of the choir beyond the performance of songs to a deeper level of praise and a form of worship that offers antiphony and support to the ministry of the Word in their respective church.
Therefore service within many music ministries has extended beyond the ability to sing the correct notes or display virtuosic ability. It is viewed as a calling and anointed work that requires a personal relationship with as well as study and understanding of Gods word.
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Examples of Gospel Songs and Their Composers
Here are a few examples of gospel songs and their composers that reflect both traditional and contemporary gospel aesthetics:
- "I Opened My Mouth to the Lord": This traditional spiritual is generally performed a capella with various dynamic and textural variations being implored. In recent years it has been arranged by a number of composers, including Dr. Raymond Wise.
- "I Will Go": This song was written by Thomas Dorsey and recorded and made famous by Mahalia Jackson.
- "You Don’t Know My Story": This song was written by Fred Hammond and Steven Ford and was recorded by the Straight Gate Mass Choir featuring Fred Hammond on lead vocals. This choir is one of the many music aggregations associated with the Straight Gate International Church in Detroit, Michigan.
- "I’ll Praise": This song comes from the album Expectations, which was released in 2000 by the Straight Gate Mass Choir.
These songs also reflect a growing trend in the gospel music industry where church choirs are beginning to produce their own recording projects.
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Key Figures in Contemporary Gospel Music
Several individuals have significantly shaped contemporary gospel music:
- James Cleveland: Born in Chicago, James Cleveland came under the mentorship of Thomas Dorsey while attending the Pilgrim Baptist Church, where Dorsey served as music director. His contribution to the choir aesthetic is two-fold. First, he popularized a more contemporary gospel choir sound in the 1960s and 1970s through a series of recordings that featured him with different choirs from around the country. Second, he founded the Gospel Music Workshop of America in 1967.
- Mattie Moss Clark: One of the most influential women associated with the contemporary gospel music of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Mattie Moss Clark came to prominence serving as the Minister of Music for the Southwest Michigan Jurisdiction for the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). In 1968 she became the International President of the Music Department of the COGIC. One of her most enduring legacy lies in her children, the famous Clark Sisters, who have become recognized as seminal voices in contemporary gospel music.
- Donald Lawrence: One of the many individuals associated with the mass choir movement of the 1990s, Donald Lawrence has worked with a range of artists, including R&B group En Vogue, Stephanie Mills, gospel artists The Clark Sisters, and his choir The Tri-City Singers.
These artists have left an indelible mark on the landscape of gospel music, influencing generations of musicians and shaping the sound of contemporary worship.
Interviews and Perspectives
Insights from gospel composers and artists provide valuable context to the evolution of African American heritage hymnals. Thomas Dorsey, in an interview, described his experiences in the churches and gospel music scene in Chicago:
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"Well, my first choir that I directed.... The pastor wanted a gospel choir and I had told him about Mr. Frye. Frye and I had gone around places singing to people just taking it in. So Frye wanted to know if he could get to Ebenezer Baptist Church. The pastor said yes and Frye said come on, you know the music, I dont. And the man got the funniest rehearsal, we had 101 people in the church and from then on I began to train under Frye he began training me and then we would bring in other fellows who could help us. Right there, that is the seat of gospel choir..."
This reflects the collaborative and community-driven nature of early gospel music development.
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism: An African American Ecumenical Hymnal
One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism is a new Protestant hymnal compiled by a core committee of worship arts ministers and scholars. According to Birgitta Johnson, this hymnal offers a wider representation of African American denominational traditions and includes more recent songs from various genres, including contemporary gospel and praise and worship music.
The hymnal also includes service music and songs common among African American Christians in historically or predominantly white denominations. This reflects the diverse musical heritage within the Black Christian community.
Some songs were immediate shoo-ins. Richard Smallwood has many popular gospel songs that appear only rarely (or never) in denominational hymnals. Other songs surprised the committee, such as "He’s So Freely Passing Out Blessings" by Damian D. Price, which was initially sung without tempo markings until its proper context was remembered.
While some favorites didn't make it into the hymnal, such as Hezekiah Walker's "I Need You to Survive," the collection represents a comprehensive effort to capture the breadth and depth of African American sacred music.
"Old Time Religion": A Deep Dive
The earliest print version of the song “Old Time Religion” appeared in publications linked to the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a renowned African American a cappella ensemble. These were Gustavus D. Pike’s The Jubilee Singers and their campaign for twenty thousand dollars (Boston, 1873) and J.B.T. Marsh’s The Story of the Jubilee Singers with their songs (Boston, 1880). The song "This Old Time Religion" contains four stanzas.
This spiritual, deeply rooted in the African American culture, holds significant influence in white southern gospel revival culture and Black gatherings. Carlon R. Young notes that it is “a traditional folk song of the nineteenth-century USA rural South” and that the melody and words of “Old Time Religion” are often interchanged with a variant of an earlier spiritual, “Tis the Old Ship of Zion,” with roots in the early nineteenth century.
The spiritual also appeared in white gospel convention collections in the late nineteenth century. The earliest hymnal to include “Old Time Religion” in Hymnary.org is Heavenly Highways (Rev. Ed.) (1886). Charles D. Tillman (1861-1943), an evangelistic singer who established a church music publishing company in Atlanta, promoted the spiritual extensively in his many collections.
African American arrangers followed these convention collections from white publishers in the 1920s. Edward Hammond Boatner (1898-1981) included “Old-Time Religion” in his Spirituals Triumphant Old and New (1927). The rhythm is identical, but Dr. Townsend’s arrangement shifts the meter from 2/4 to 4/4 and doubles the note values, suggesting the African American community practiced a more relaxed tempo.
Over 300 collections include some variant of this spiritual. Because of its repetitive pattern, publishers easily adapted the song to their audience. William B. McClain noted that this popular song was a call back to a simple faith the slaves embraced when they heard about Jesus.
Numerous Black and white gospel singers recorded “Old-Time Religion,” attesting to its popularity and versatility. Black ensembles included the Pace Jubilee Singers (1928-1929), The Caravans (1954), the Famous Ward Singers (1959), a women’s quintet, and Mahalia Jackson (1962). White folk singers and gospel artists include Johnny Cash (1971), Pete Seeger (1980), Dolly Parton (1999), and Willie Nelson (2013).
The tune, usually called OLD TIME RELIGION, has been adapted to many other texts. In addition to “Tis the old ship of Zion,” the melody also appears in the temperance collection Songs of the New Crusade (1916), with the refrain, “I’m for state-wide prohibition.” White gospel song composers borrowed the key phrase- “Old-Time Religion”-and incorporated it into their hymns.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1873 & 1880 | Earliest print versions appear in publications linked to the Fisk Jubilee Singers |
| 1886 | Included in Heavenly Highways, the earliest hymnal to feature the song |
| 1889 | Charles D. Tillman encounters the spiritual and promotes it extensively |
| 1927 | Edward Hammond Boatner includes the song in his Spirituals Triumphant Old and New |
| 1928-2013 | Recorded by numerous Black and white artists across various genres |
The deeper meaning depends on the community that sings the spiritual. The white revival context also found meaning in these themes, but music in revivals primarily supported evangelism-saving the lost-rather than sustaining and admonishing those from the African diaspora.
The song took on a polemical tone for evangelicals in the later twentieth century, especially Southern Baptists, who understood “old-time religion” to reflect biblical inerrancy, conservative cultural values, and a suspicion of modern methods of biblical criticism and interpretation.
