The Newsletter Vol. 6, No. 1 Stories about singers and singings, our music and traditions, and Sacred Harp’s present-day growth. Sept. 2017 Singing Report 150 Years and Counting: Heard County’s Hopewell Singing Karen Rollins | Bowdon, Georgia Sacred Harp singers and James A. Denney descendants from across the United States and beyond gathered for the 150th session of the Hopewell Singing. Photograph by Isaac Green. he oldest continuous event in James A. Denney and Hopewell inches tall, weighing 240 pounds. He Heard County, Georgia, is a Sacred Primitive Baptist Church wore a size sixteen shoe. Mary Anne was HarpT singing begun right after the petite, weighing ninety pounds and a Civil War on the third Sunday in June. The singing was started by James mere five feet tall. They started a family This June, the singing at Hopewell A. Denney and his wife, Mary Anne and had had three sons by the time the Primitive Baptist Church celebrated its Patterson Denney. James was born in Civil War began. James felt it was his 150th session with a well-attended day of January 1832. His father died of typhoid duty to join the Confederate war effort, singing, fellowship, and several special when James was sixteen, so James took so in the fall of 1862 he walked to join events. How does a small church in a over his business of farming, milling, Company 8 of Cobb’s Legion. Because small community in one of Georgia’s blacksmithing, and cattle raising. He of his strong constitution and experience, least-populated counties keep such an married Mary Anne (born July 1835) on he was assigned to carry the bellows on event going for so long? The answer has Christmas Day in 1852. They settled in his back from battlefield to battlefield a lot to do with perseverance, faith, and a Troup County, Georgia. and to do the blacksmithing needed strong sense of family. James was a large man, six feet, four by the infantry. He was wounded at a 2 The Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter Volume 6, Number 1 Introduction to Volume 6, Number 1, of the Sacred Harp Contents Publishing Company Newsletter 150 Years and Counting: 1 Jesse P. Karlsberg and Nathan Rees Heard County’s Hopewell Singing he twelfth issue of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter shares Karen Rollins the stories of composers and singers, printers and cooks who contributed Philadelphia, Birthplace of 6 toT Sacred Harp in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in roles both highly the Shapes and Center of visible and largely obscured and features the growing collection and programs of Shape-Note Publishing the Sacred Harp Museum. Rachel Wells Hall Our issue begins with the history of Heard County, Georgia’s, oldest annual event, a June Sacred Harp singing that celebrated its 150th session this year. Karen My Dad, E. C. Bowen 15 Rollins details how perseverance, faith, and family contributed to the singing’s Don Bowen persistence and continued strength. It and all other nineteenth-century Sacred Harp singings also relied on a distant yet robust network of music printers and O. A. Parris: At Home 17 publishers in Philadelphia. Rachel Wells Hall surveys the considerable impact Across the Shape-Note this network had on shape-note tunebooks, extending even to the music we Music Spectrum sing . The issue next turns to key characters whose compositions, dishes, and Jesse P. Karlsberg outsize personalities enlivened singings in the twentieth century. Don Bowen describes the life of his father, E. C. Bowen, and how Sacred Harp singing came Tubby Walton, “An 21 to “mean the world to him” after he rediscovered it late in life. Jesse P. Karlsberg Indispensable Head discusses the songs of Alabama composer O. A. Parris, who borrowed harmonic Waiter” at the 1935 United Convention and textural ideas freely from diverse shape-note genres to create unique music Nathan K. Rees that nonetheless “feels just right in its intended source.” In this issue’s “Just a Minute” column, Nathan K. Rees unearths delectable details about the life of I Remember: Ruth Denson 22 “Tubby” Walton, the charismatic head waiter who catered dinner at Atlanta’s Edwards on Her Sacred 1935 United Sacred Harp Musical Association. “Queen of the Sacred Harp” Harp Childhood Ruth Denson Edwards, in an article reprinted from a 1965 issue of the Harpeth Ruth Denson Edwards Valley Sacred Harp News, offers a glimpse of her musical childhood home sure From the Collection: 24 to trigger “vicarious nostalgia” in many readers. Two final essays highlight An Earlier Sacred Harp new donations to and programs at the Sacred Harp Museum. Nathan K. Rees Nathan K. Rees details the backstory of a Sacred Harp edited by Timothy and Lowell Mason, published nine years before our beloved tunebook, that was recently donated Preserving Sacred Harp’s 27 to the museum by P. Dan Brittain. As the Sacred Harp Museum’s 2017 interns Past for the Future: Interning make strides in cataloging and archiving the museum’s collection and preserving at the Sacred Harp Museum digital photographs and recordings of Sacred Harp, Sasha Hsuczyk shares her Sasha Hsuczyk experience piloting our internship program last summer. As always, the Newsletter team welcomes your comments on these articles. We also invite your suggestion of future topics, whether you’re interested in writing or not! Please get in touch. Editorial Information Visit us online Date published: September 2017 This newsletter is first published on the Sacred Harp Editor: Jesse P. Karlsberg Publishing Company website. Associate Editor: Nathan Rees The online edition includes videos, audio recordings, Editorial email: [email protected] additional images and allows readers Design (web edition): Jesse P. Karlsberg to post comments on articles. Design (print edition): Leigh Cooper and Elaena Gardner originalsacredharp.com/newsletter Transcription assistance: Giles Simmer To comment on or suggest future subjects for the Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter, please contact the Editor. September 2017 The Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter 3 A celebratory banner and life-size cutouts of six-foot-four James A. Denney and five-foot-tall Mary Anne Patterson Denney welcomed visitors to the singing. Photograph by Nathan Rees. battle near Perrysville. The shot went sold for delinquent taxes. His wife and James T., Lonnie, William, Charlie, through his body in the stomach area. A sons had hidden in a cave when the Buena Vista, and Joseph. The girl, called medic placed a silk handkerchief soaked Union forces came through, but Mary “Bunie,” was named for Buena Vista Hill in vinegar on the ramrod of a rifle Anne was able to hide some gold. With where James was wounded. James died and passed it through the path of the that stake, they moved to northwest on April 27, 1887, and Mary Anne died bullet. James recovered and continued Heard County and started over. James exactly twenty-one years later on April to serve. He was at Appomattox with bought some land and built a log house. 27, 1908. They are buried at Hopewell. Confederate general John B. Gordon He added to it later and had a fine, three- Their children and grandchildren when the war ended. With no money, chimney home. He also built a grist mill, were active in the church and singing. threadbare clothes, no maps, and one a mill dam, a sawmill, and a blacksmith They settled mostly in Heard and shoe, James and a fellow soldier began shop. With the help of his neighbors, he Carroll counties, where many of the the arduous trek back to Georgia. He built Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church. local citizens can trace their ancestry would wear the shoe on his right foot He donated the land and did 95 percent (and their love of Sacred Harp) back until his left became too sore to walk; of the work on the church. He also to James and Mary Anne. In October then he switched the shoe to his left started a Sacred Harp singing there on 1984, almost 100 years after James died, foot. The trip home took three months. the third Sunday in June. a ceremony was held at Hopewell to When James returned to his farm in James and Mary Anne had six more honor James and his contributions. A Troup County, his home and mills had children. They now had eight boys and plaque was unveiled, several descendants been destroyed, and his land had been a girl. They were Frank, John, Cullie, and local dignitaries spoke, a twenty- 4 The Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter Volume 6, Number 1 Singers enjoying Sherry Rogers Lovvorn’s genealogical and historical exhibits under a large tent to the right of the church. Photograph by Nathan Rees. one-gun salute was sounded, and there was alive, in October 1988, the church As singers and visitors arrived, it was was Sacred Harp singing. set up a domestic non-profit corporation clear that this was a special occasion. The earliest records of Hopewell are to handle the business of the church. The church was adorned with a large lost due to fires. One fire destroyed the The original fifteen members of this welcome banner across the front. church, one destroyed the home of the corporation’s committee are deceased. Underneath, life-size cutouts of James church clerk, and the county courthouse The current committee, consisting and Mary Anne Denney greeted burned as well. These fires were in of Denney and Rogers descendants, participants on their way inside, where different years, but the result was that maintains the church and works to keep special memorial fans were given as the earliest records for the church date the singing going.