ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME

The Soul Stirrers

By Dan J\[ooger

H a d THE SOUL STIRRERS done nothing more than launch the career o f Harris’s replacement, brought in by S.R Crain, was a Chicago teen- Sam Cooke, they would have more than earned their place in rock fe? roll ager named Sam Cooke, who had been singing w ith the Highway history. But for nearly half a century the Soul Stirrers set the pace for Q C ’s, a sort o f farm-team group sponsored by Stirrers baritone R.B. both gospel and pop vocal groups w ith their blend o f full, mellow harmo­ Robinson. The Cooke-led Soul Stirrers first recorded for Specialty in nies and sexy, crooning leads delivered by a magnificent succession o f March 1951, and among the sides they put down were “Jesus Gave singers. Cooke’s replacement, Johnnie Taylor, went on to Top Ten pop M e W ater” and “Peace in the Valley.” Elvis Presley must surely have and Rfe?B success, and the group’s original lead singer, R.H . Harris, been listening: he sang “Peace in the Valley” on Sun Records’ legend­ “simply created the entire gospel quartet tradition,” as Tony Heilbut ary M illion Dollar Quartet session, reprised the song on his third Ed w r o te in The Gospel Sound. Sullivan appearance and recorded it for R C A in 1957 in an arrange­ The Soul Stirrers’ career spans four decades. It began on a small Texas ment close to the original. form, where young Rebert Hams sang with a family gospel group called A t first, Cooke modeled his singing on R.H. Harris’s hugely influen­ the Friendly Five and listened to the great preacher-guitarist Blind W illie tial style, but he soon came into his own. A ll o f the graceful phrasings Johnson on radio broadcasts. and sensual sounds that later took him to the top o f the pop world “I used to listen to the birds sing,” Harris told Heilbut, “and what­ came to flower during Cooke’s tenure with the Soul Stirrers. Indeed, ever tune they’d make, I trained m yself to make.” Harris, Jesse Farley, many consider this w ork to be Sam’s best. (“ I’m not even interested in. S.R Crain and T.L. Brewster formed the original Soul Stirrers in Trin­ his pop records,” Jerry W exler once said.) ity, Texas, and were first recorded by Alan Lomax in 1936 for the Li­ Sam Cooke soon became the premier sex symbol in gospel music, de­ brary o f Congress. lighting older fans while sharing a devoted young following w ith con­ In contrast to the nineteenth-century spiritual and “jubilee” repertoire temporary R6?B groups. Cooke made his first secular recordings in o f other Southwestern quartets, the Soul Stirrers radically reshaped tradi­ 1957, under the name Dale Cooke, while continuing to sing gospel tional gospel material and composed many enduring songs o f their own. w ith the Soul Stirrers. Cooke and the group eventually left Specialty, The group introduced the use o f tw o lead singers to create stunning peaks and he achieved pop stardom on Keen Records in 1957 w ith “You o f intensity - one crooned high and sweet, the other shouted hoarse and Send M e,” inaugurating a fabulous career that ended with his tragic low - thus providing the model for latter-day secular stars like Sam and death, on December 11th, 1964. Dave and the Righteous Brothers. Harris ad-libbed at w ill and sang in de­ But Cooke never forgot his gospel roots in the Soul Stirrers. He record­ layed time, creating irresistible syncopations. “The group w ould start one ed the group w ith its new lead singer, Johnnie Taylor, for his SAR record meter,” he told Heilbut, “and I’d be in and out, front and behind, all company, and their brilliant “Stand by M e Father” was later reworked across there.” by Ben E. King as “Stand by M e.” The Arkansas-born Taylor also came In the late 1940s the Soul Stirrers battled for gospel supremacy with from the ranks o f the Highway Q C ’s, but he was singing with Chicago’s such mighty competitors as the Pilgrim Travelers (with J.W . Alexander, relatively obscure M elody Makers when he replaced Cooke in the Soul who, in 1959, became Sam Cooke’s publishing and record-company part­ Stirrers. “I was singing in this little group,” he later told writer Robert ner) and the Five Blind Boys o f Mississippi. During W orld W ar II the Palmer, “and here was this big star asking me if I’d join the biggest gospel group appeared in many USO shows and even sang on the W hite House group around. Man, I thought I was on Easy Street” lawn for Franklin Roosevelt and W inston Churchill. Johnnie Taylor got his first taste o f secular success w ith his SAR The Soul Stirrers made their first commercial recordings for Aladdin and Derby recordings of “Rome W asn’t Built in a Day” and “Dance Records during 1947-48, at a time when the gospel-quartet style was in W hat You W anna.” W hen the label shut down after Cooke’s death, transition. The fervor and freedom o f Harris’s singing, soaring beyond the Taylor signed w ith Stax Records, cutting many fine, bluesy sides' and older and more formal style o f the Deep River Boys and the Golden Gate eventually achieving soul stardom in 1968 with “W ho’s Making Quartet, was a harbinger o f things to come. The Stirrers also backed Love.” Taylor scored a monster pop hit with “Disco Lady” on Colum­ Brother W illie Eason, an outstanding preacher-guitarist in the Blind W il­ bia in 1976, but in recent years he’s returned to his natural gospel-in­ lie Johnson mold, but their ow n recordings were strictly a cappella, with fluenced groove w ith a series o f well-received albums for the Mississip­ four-part harmonies so rich as to render any musical accompaniment su­ pi-based M alaco label. perfluous. (These recordings, originally released on 78-rpm discs, were re­ Despite numerous personnel changes (Jesse Farley was the sole remain­ issued in 1971 on a superb Imperial/Liberty LP, Gospel Music, Volume I: ing original member), the Soul Stirrers continued to lay down some fine The Soul Stirrers, now out o f print.) gospel music on Chess Records - including an LP dedicated to Sam: The group cut a few sides for the Specialty label in 1950 ^- 5‘By and Cooke. Johnnie Taylor’s replacement, Jimmy Cutler, was killed in 1967; By” remains a classic - but in December o f that year, Harris retired from he was succeeded by another superb singer from the ranks o f the High­ the Soul Stirrers. He went on to form other fine groups, including the way Q C’s, W illie Rogers. Christland Singers (which included former Stirrers Leroy Taylor and The legacy o f the Soul Stirrers continues to echo through the paral­ James M edlock) and the Gospel Paraders. He also established the Nation­ lel worlds o f gospel and soul music. Their music forms an invaluable al Quartet Convention, which eventually grew to more than 30,000 part o f the gospel tradition - the most vital folk music in the United members and staged annual conventions dedicated to preserving the States today — and their urgent, expressive recordings w ill gospel-quartet tradition. 33 never be outdated.