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26 CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 5, 2005 | SECTION ONE Music WHEN GOSPEL WAS GOSPEL (SHANACHIE) MARION WILLIAMS REMEMBER ME (SHANACHIE) The Shame of Fame There’s no reason classic gospel shouldn’t capture the popular imagination like classic jazz and blues. But there is a reason it hasn’t. By Noah Berlatsky ith Ken Burns, Martin vocals drip with emotion and Scorsese, and the Coen even sensuality—a stark contrast W brothers running amok, to the hillbillies’ paralyzed, sex- it’s hard to believe there’s still less keening. Dispensing with any roots music left unfetishized. most of the lyrics, Williams And yet, despite the attention overemphasizes her breathing lavished on jazz, blues, and like a country preacher, creating country, classic black gospel a beat around which she moans continues to be largely ignored, and growls, repeating “O death” both critically and commercially. over and over until the sound The Ward Singers—perhaps the becomes more important than single most important postwar the meaning. When death does female gospel group—don’t have finally get in the room, she a definitive, well-annotated swings his “poor ice hands” so anthology in print. It defies reason. knowingly that their touch I mean, here’s a moving American becomes a caress. At the end of art form created by and for the the song, the listener is left con- oppressed masses: why hasn’t it templating not mortality or sin been mercilessly overpackaged for but Williams’s artistry. Take that, bourgeois consumption? Mr. Grim Reaper. It’s not a new question, and The triumph of life over death critic Robert Christgau trotted is part of a Christian message out most of the usual answers in that even a secular humanist can a Village Voice essay 14 years ago. love. Yet, while the music and Gospel, Christgau argued, hasn’t lyrics of black gospel were wel- found its niche because it’s most- coming, the social structure in ly vocal, because “the rhythm which the music existed during parts are rudimentary” (the kids its golden age was narrow to the can’t dance to it), and because point of xenophobia. In her 2004 “personal quirks and oddities are book, Singing in My Soul: Black Y OF ANTHONY HEILBUT subsumed in communal values of TES Gospel Music in a Secular Age, rare solidarity” (it all sounds the OUR historian Jerma A. Jackson same). There’s some truth to , C explains that at its inception each of those charges, and they gospel was marketed as a contin- certainly make it clear why uation of the tradition of the gospel reissues haven’t knocked , GUISEPPE PINO slave spiritual. Thus, Jackson R. Kelly off the charts. But many OOD writes, they became “aligned under the rubric of black sacred older genres sound repetitive D YEARW OY and alienating to modern ears. If LL music.” This meant that gospel, Robert Johnson and Woody Clockwise from top left: Rosetta Tharpe, Ernestine Washington, and Mahalia Jackson; Marion Williams; Soul Stirrers like the spiritual, was seen as Guthrie are bywords among both a means to transmit the long-haired volk-fanciers, then Lonnie Johnson proud; R.H. ditties about the Rapture, of Ralph Stanley, it’s a frigid orgy of Holy Spirit and as an “icon of Claude Jeter should be as well. Harris’s vocals on “His Eye Is on course, and gospel’s focus on sin and hellfire. When you hear black heritage” intended to pre- When Gospel Was Gospel, a the Sparrow” recall one of Louis Jesus has always limited its Chandler intone, “I’m death, I serve a tradition of dignity, suf- recently released compilation, Armstrong’s yearning, behind- appeal. Yet bluegrass continues come to take the soul / Leave the fering, and liberation. That’s a lot does nothing to explain the the-beat trumpet solos; the to attract an enthusiastic follow- body and leave it cold / To draw of cultural baggage, and under genre’s unpopularity. The disc—a Original Gospel Harmonettes’ ing even though it tends to be far up the flesh off of the frame,” you the double burden gospel devel- stellar anthology of tracks from “You Better Run” is syncopated more confrontational and judg- know he’s heir to the culture that oped a cult of authenticity that 1945 to 1960, which compiler enough to bust your pacemaker. mental than black gospel. When produced Faust and Stephen King. was brutal even by the unforgiv- Anthony Heilbut dubs gospel’s Plus, for more than a week now they sing about Judgment Day, The version of the song on ing standards of American music. “golden age”—is thoroughly I’ve been humming the the Sensational Nightingales Remember Me , a recent compila- Thomas A. Dorsey, a risque accessible to anyone who listens Sensational Nightingales’ incred- seem joyful; hillbilly performers, tion of songs by the late gospel blues pianist who would become to roots music with any regulari- ibly catchy “Sinner Man,” which on the other hand, sound gen- singer Marion Williams, couldn’t gospel’s first great composer, had ty. Rosetta Tharpe’s jazzy climaxes with “The world’s uinely vindictive. Take the song be more different. Though to renounce his repertoire entire- acoustic guitar on “Little Boy, gonna be on fire ...nightmare!” “O Death.” Sung in an emotion- Williams, like Stanley and ly when he got religion in the How Old Are You” would do Not everyone wants to hum less warble by Lloyd Chandler or Chandler, sings a cappella, her early 30s. But even then, the fact CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 5, 2005 | SECTION ONE 27 that his new, sacred writing drew correlation of hardship, aesthetic descent—is a long way removed upbraiding the less privileged always as individuals, that to sell on blues influences meant many power, and purity is one of his in social class and belief system for being religious slackers. your soul to the wealthy and the in the church opposed it. It took constant themes. In his classic from the people whose work he He comes perilously close to faithless was anathema. Heilbut several years and many bitter 1971 book, The Gospel Sound: has embraced. And differences doing so when he dedicates his has produced latter-day sessions slights from skeptical preachers Good News and Bad Times, his in background sometimes seem book to “all the gospel singers for aging artists, organized con- before his rhythmic gospel love for the music seems inextri- as important to him as the who didn’t sell out, but stuck certs, compiled reissues, and became accepted as the Lord’s. cably bound to the suffering of music itself—the less Christian with their music despite the generally been one of the few Even so, Dorsey remained its creators. He argues in The the music, the less Heilbut likes encroachments and temptations people responsible for giving ambivalent about both the expo- Gospel Sound that one singer of it. He consistently argues that of the world.” All right—but classic gospel what limited expo- sure and the money; when secu- his acquaintance became a much Sam Cooke’s best records were what exactly does selling out sure it’s had. He has won the lar jazz bands began to perform better performer after she got a his gospel ones, that Aretha mean in this context? respect and admiration of many his songs he reacted in horror serious illness and ended up in a Franklin was at her best when It might conceivably mean singers, including Marion and publicly repudiated them. wheelchair. “It’s an awful way of she sang most like Clara Ward, allowing your religious beliefs Williams. But authenticity is a Dorsey managed to make a learning to sing ‘How I Got that Marion Williams wouldn’t and cultural identity to be pack- vengeful deity, and under its decent living for himself, but Over,’ ” he writes, “but gospel have been as great if she had aged by a secular scholar and remorseless gaze Heilbut’s aes- many other performers were singers take tragedy for granted.” sung pop material. All of these consumed by any record collec- thetics are as much a part of the chewed to pieces by gospel’s cul- Perhaps they do, but it’s not positions are defensible, and tor with a credit card. Classic world as a record executive’s tural demands. R.H. Harris, entirely clear why Heilbut does. there’s nothing wrong with a gospel has never been as popular bank book. If you’re going to unable to reconcile his faith with Like many ethnomusicologists, middle-class unbeliever writing as jazz, blues, or country in large separate the sheep from the life on the road, quit and ended Heilbut—a Harvard-educated about gospel. But there’s some- part because its fans and its goats, be damn sure you’re up working for a florist. Rosetta atheist of German-Jewish thing a little indecent about his artists felt, as a group if not on the side of the angels. v Tharpe was abandoned by much of the gospel audience after she booked a series of nightclub dates in the late 50s—even though her performances con- sisted of religious music. Forty years later, Jackson found people in Chicago, where Tharpe spent much of her childhood, who were still embittered by her betrayal. Similarly, after going pop both the Staple Singers and Sam Cooke received cold recep- tions when they performed before church audiences. Mahalia Jackson also lost the majority of her black gospel audience when she signed with Columbia and started singing pseudoreligious tripe like “Rusty Old Halo.” Meanwhile, in blue- grass, the Country Gentlemen were bridging hillbilly and col- lege audiences by mixing murder ballads with their hymns.

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