The AfroAmer sacred song (negro spiritulas-gospel) tradition appreciation and it's impact thread

[IllmaticDelta]

That guitar work








^^Rock straight from the black church!!!!!!!!!!

 

[MostReal]

the off-beat-backbeat (1 2 3 4 ). That's one of the defining rhythmic qualities of Black Gospel music. This offbeat rhythmic quality in Black Gospel is described perfectly below by the famous White Southern Gospel group, The Jordanaires...


3:04-->4:00




White people/europeans are programmed to clap on the 1 and 3

it amazes me how they have to be instructed to clap on 2 and 4

cant' you just feel it

also OP, I appreciate the info, but its got to be presented in a better way. Too many vids slow down the page & there is no way anyone is going to watch all those vids. allow for some discussion of the info. Give a little at a time so we can digest it.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Blues Unlimited #223 - Great Gospel Preachers

Perhaps you've heard it said many times over the years, that a lot of Blues musicians got their start in church. And if any definitive proof of that were ever needed, some of the performances on this episode of Blues Unlimited might be good examples.

Although popular gospel preachers like the Reverends J.M. Gates, A.W. Nix, and J.C. Burnett sold records by the thousands back in the 1920s and 1930s, it was a tradition largely overlooked by scholars and researchers. As a result, information about Nix, whose "Black Diamond Express To Hell" has become a perennial cult favorite, is seriously lacking (formative years spent in Alabama before coming to Chicago shortly after World War I has so far been offered, which is at least something). Perhaps it was sermons being preached on topics such as going to hell for dancing the "Charleston" that embarrassed scholars, causing them to view the genre in a generally derogatory light. But amidst the fire and brimstone deliveries, one thing is evident. Gospel preaching, like the blues, covered almost every imaginable topic, from the hard times of the Great Depression and current events of the day — even to subjects like the death of Blind Lemon Jefferson. From that regard, then, the social commentary becomes an invaluable historical record, and the oratorical skills, which are often captivating and eerily spell-binding, almost a thing of bygone, forgotten era.

Another device richly used by gospel preachers is that of the metaphor, and in that regard, perhaps none was used more dramatically than in the Rev. C.L. Franklin's all-time classic, "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest." According to at least one critic, it's been called the greatest piece of gospel preaching ever committed to tape. His sermons, which were recorded live at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit by Joe Von Battle, and then shipped over to Chess, reputedly sold in the millions of copies (and just for the record, yes, he's the father of another famous Franklin you've possibly heard of, named Aretha — who started her musical career right there in his church while still just a teenager).

As the old saying goes, there could be no jazz without the blues, and it's also been said that without gospel, there could be no blues. In that regard, then, blues and gospel merely occupy different sides of the same coin, and as we listen to some outstanding and impassioned oratory, we can only think of all those blues musicians who sat in church Sunday after Sunday when they were kids, memorizing and absorbing the vocal nuances and cadences from the man in the pulpit as he preached the gospel.

http://www.prx.org/pieces/107288-blues-unlimited-223-great-gospel-preachers/floating_piece

https://beta.prx.org/stories/107288

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The Doo Wop sound











also came from the Black Church vocal quartets

Doo Wop, like Rhythm and Blues, began in the years immediately following World War II. Both came out of big-city ghettos (now bursting with ex-war industry workers) and were aimed at the urban, black market.

But where Rhythm & Blues took its drive and beat from Jazz and Jump Blues of the 1940s, Doo Wop took its four-part a capella harmonies from Gospel of the 1920s.

http://www.onlinerootsofrock.com/doo-wop/


This Is Gospel: Great Gospel Quartets CD

THIS IS GOSPEL series of vintage gospel recordings, GREAT GOSPEL QUARTETS offers songs by the Swan Silvertones, the Highway QCs, the Davis Sisters, the Harmonizing Four, the Angelics, and the All-Star Gospel Quartet. Along with being a cornerstone of black gospel, the vocal quartet tradition eventually led to the development of doo-wop and rock & roll, making the 20-track THIS IS GOSPEL: GREAT GOSPEL QUARTETS a fine overview of an important style.

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7406430&style=music&fulldesc=T

Early Gospel quartets with Doo Wopisms











Then you have the Swan Silvertones



w/ Claude Jeter who put falsetto on the map and pioneered the type of lighter harmony singing that went to to Doo Wop->Soul (Chicago style) and then eventually to Reggae

The Rev. Claude Jeter, one of the giants of the golden age of gospel music whose soaring, soul piercing falsetto cries amidst the impeccable harmonies of the Swan Silvertones, were echoed in succeeding generations of doo-wop, R&B and soul singers, passed away on January 6 at his home in the Bronx, NY. He was 94 years old.


Jeter's distinctive falsetto and soothing tenor gave the Swan Silvertones one of the most distinctive vocal blends of the era in its contrast to the gravel-throated shout of Rev. Robert Crenshaw and the hard driving rhythmic attack of co-lead singer Solomon J. Womack. The group's 1947 recording, "Lord I've Tried" was the prototype for the ensuing decade's brooding R&B and doo-wop ballads, with Jeter's plaintive, pleading lead buttressed by a rumbling, walking vocal bass line, soothing ensemble harmonizing and dramatic but restrained call-and-response choruses. "Mary Don't You Weep," a 1959 recording and one of the group's monuments, found Jeter caressing the lyric, "I'll be your bridge over deep water, you can trust in me," which was reconfigured by Paul Simon in 1970 in Simon & Garfunkel's six-week chart topper, "Bridge Over Troubled Water." (Jeter later sang on Simon's 1973 solo album, There Goes Rhymin' Simon.) The Jeter falsetto, at once emotionally charged but imbued with tender yearning, was adopted by a host of popular and influential secular singers who followed him and all had roots in the church, including Drifters founder Clyde McPhatter, Impressions founder Curtis Mayfield, the Temptations' Eddie Kendricks and Jeter's most vocal acolyte, Al Green, who has rarely passed up an opportunity to praise the Rev. in words, or in deed, with falsetto swoops descended from the Jeter bloodline.

http://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2009/february2009/gospelsetfeb09.php

The genesis for the rise of the high tenor begins in the post-war years, a period of technological and creative frenzy for Afro-American music, At a time when most black people were brought up with such as Willmer ‘Little Ax’ Broadnax of the Spirit Of Memphis, called ‘Nothing But Mother Wit And Jesus’, the gospel quartets were a prime source of inspiration and entertainment that preceded the age of soul. The secular style of sweet soul could not have happened without the harmonies of the gospel quartets, with their emphasis on a lead tenor to anchor the vocals, a baritone for thunderous rousing ‘trickeration’ and a ringing tenor to take the sound into the falsetto range. It was for the glory of God but the dazzling complexity of the best of the quartets often bordered on the erotic.



In a list of the greatest gospel quartets of the age, the Swan Silvertones would surely be near the pinnacle. They featured, for many years, the tenor lead of Solomon Womack, an uncle of Bobby and his brothers, and the astounding falsettist, Claude Jeter, whose high-fifth pyrotechnics guaranteed standing-room-only audiences in the largest auditoria. Jeter, a former coal miner in West Virginia, has inspired many secular imitators. In this autobiography, Otis Williams of the Temptations describes the effect Jeter had on his sensibilities... “I’ll never forget this one record, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ by the Swan Silvertones. Their lead singer, Claude Jeter possessed a voice of awesome purity. He sounded like an angel. We didn’t have a record player, so I would run over to a friend’s house and beg him to play me that Silvertones record over and over.” Jeter’s smooth falsetto was the influence for many soul falsetto singers, particularly Eddie Kendricks and Eddie Holman. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1914, Jeter formed his first gospel quartet in 1938, reportedly to give him a respite from his work as a miner, becoming an ordained minister in 1963. He continued singing until the end of the twentieth century, cutting one solo album, ‘Yesterday And Today’, for Shanachie in 1991. He died in a nursing home in New York’s Bronx district in January, 2009. His vocal prowess can be particularly exampled on the Swan Silvertones’ astoundingly beautiful ‘Saviour Pass Me Not’, a Vee-Jay album track from 1962. Solomon Womack’s successor, the gravelly tenor Louis Johnson, provides the stylings to match Jeter’s peerless high tenor, while the third great member of the Silvertones, Paul Owens, harmonises the background leads. (Why Swan incidentally? It was the name of a bakery that sponsored the group for some years in the fifties, before they signed to Specialty Records.)



The quartet practice of using a ‘voci-naturali’ against a lead tenor at which the Swans excelled, was a technique that transferred with great effect to soul music and especially to sweet soul, where the falsetto singer is often the key component in the vocals. Most soul groups organised themselves along the lines of lead tenor and two or three harmonies of falsetto, baritone, tenor or possibly a bass singing falsetto in the alto range. In the case of the Van Dykes, they had two unusually high falsettists, Eddie Nixon and Rondalis Tandy, offset against the tenor of Wenzon Mosley and the baritone, James Mays. (Mays was a strong enough lead in his own right to cut ‘Nothing’s Bad As Being Lonely’, on the Fort Worth, Texas-based Hue label.) They formed in Fort Hood, a Texas garrison town, around 1962, developing a repertoire that owed much to Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. Rondalis Tandy had learned to sing in his father’s church and the almost castrato notes he reaches on the Van Dykes’ big Mala hit from 1965, ‘No Man Is An Island’, owed much to the gospel aperçus. Throughout 1966 and ’67, the Van Dykes were hot nationally, charting with a series of ballads that featured Tandy on solo lead or in tandem with Mays. They split in 1968, reforming ten years later and, in 1984, released to acclaim the superb ‘Return Engagement’ album on Marquee Records.

http://www.thesoulbasement.com/Site/Falsetto.html

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Some more Gospel Blues

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

These are Gospel songs by Rosetta but it's also early Rock n Roll!

 

[IllmaticDelta]

leadbelly showing the difference between methodist-->baptist-->holiness

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The Dixie Hummingbirds

 

[Thsnnor]