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Dorothy Norwood](dorothy.gif)
When my way grows drear,
Precious Lord linger near,
When my life is almost gone,
At the river, Lord I'll stand,
Guide my feet, hold my hand,
Take my hand precious Lord and lead me home.
Thomas Dorsey - The Father of Gospel Music - 1932
Charles Albert Tindley was born of slave parents in
Maryland on July 7th 1856. In 1885, Tindley became a church
minister and spent the next seventeen years as an itinerant
pastor. Renowned during his lifetime as an eloquent preacher,
Tindley is remembered now as a pre-gospel hymn writer.
Among Tindley's songs are: Storm Is Passing Over,
and We'll Understand It Better By And By. Tindley also
wrote:
I'll overcome, I'll overcome, I'll overcome some day,
Sally Martin joined Thomas Dorsey's choir in
February 1932. She and Dorsey teamed up for what was to be an
eight-year mission to spread the gospel of Gospel. If Dorsey was
the creative inspiration, Sallie Martin was the promotional
genius.
She was no great shakes as a singer's singer, she never could hit
the sweet high notes nor could she seduce with the low,
resonating moans of a gospel blues, but she knew that rare art of
charging up an audience out of her own strength of conviction and
very little else. She performed as a great preacher performs,
going out a little way in front of the audience then pausing,
then articulating exactly what everyone else is on the point of
articulating. Her way wasn't to impress by vocal skills but to
catch hold of the spirit in a room and allow it to flood through
her in a torrent of home truths and eternal wisdoms.
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Willie Mae Ford Smith came up the hard way. Originally
from Rolling Fork, Mississippi, she was raised in Memphis along
with her thirteen brothers and sisters. In 1922 she joined the
family quartet, called the Ford Sisters, who were entertainers as
well as evangelists. Willie Mae says 'they were more like the
spiritual version of the Mills Brothers!' Two years later the
Ford Sisters caused a minor sensation at the National Baptist
Convention and a singing career became inevitable - though at
that stage it might as easily have been in secular as sacred
music.
Willie Mae was one of those few who never sold out, never gave up
and never made a thing out of gospel other than the satisfaction
of working for her Savior. If anyone qualifies as a gospel
saint it's Willie Mae Ford Smith.
Mahalia Jackson at twenty one years of age was already a
singer of extraordinary power. She went to Chicago at sixteen,
having absorbed all the music that her home town of New Orleans
could offer. Hers was the most heavily blues-drenched background
of any of the major gospel singers of the time and everyone who
heard her said she could be Bessie Smith number two. But
there's not the slightest hint that Mahalia Jackson ever
considered singing blues for a living.
The raw southern sound of Willie Mae Ford Smith so
inspired Mahalia Jackson that she took all the various elements
of the older woman's style and stirred it with her own into a
potent brew of down-home shouting. She wasn't above playing a
little on the element of nostalgia either. 'Gospel music in those
days of the early 1930s was really taking wing,' she recalls in
her book Movin' On Up. 'It was the kind of music colored
people had left behind down South, and they liked it because it
was just like a letter from home.'
They say that, in her time, Mahalia Jackson could wreck a church
in minutes flat and keep it that way for hours on end.
Search for your favorite Gospel Artist's
Precious Lord take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light,
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me on.
Thomas A. Dorsey, born on July 1st, 1899 was the
Father of gospel music.
No-one has had a greater influence on gospel singing; No-one has
been quite as prophetic; no-one spans the entire history of
gospel music quite like Dorsey. More than any other individual,
Thomas A. Dorsey is gospel and his story is the story of
gospel.
If in my life I do not yield, I'll overcome some day.
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