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Sound Clips
Audio
- Like many southern musicians, bluegrass star Ricky Skaggs says he used
to feel conflicted by his desires to be a good performer...and a
good Christian.
Audio
- A striking vision of Hell marks the cover of the Louvin Brothers' 1959
album, "Satan is Real." The photo shows the brothers singing
gospel music, surrounded by fire and brimstone, while a satanic figure
rises behind them. Charlie Louvin tells reporter David C. Barnett
how they created this legendary picture
Listen
to Part 3
There is a great influence of shape note hymnals, hymnal publishers, itinerant
singing teachers, and singing schools on country music. The harmonies
still heard today in the contemporary singing styles of bluegrass and
country artists including Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys,
The Oak Ridge Boys, and Alison Krauss can trace their roots in part back
to the four-part emphasis on shape note singing, singing schools, southern
gospel quartets pioneered by J.D. Vaughan and other publishers of gospel
hymnals, and to the singing in country churches of the south.
Humanities Themes:
The Economics of Early Gospel Music
As early as the beginning of the 19th century,
publishing businesses drove popular music trends, creating demand for
certain styles of music and filling it for economic gain, much as it does
today.
Social Bias and the Resulting Shift
of Singing Schools from the North to the South
After the Revolutionary War, the singing-school
tradition lost favor in New England, the victim of an influx of European-trained
musicians who preferred more rigid rules. Armed with the first shape
note book, The Easy Instructor (Little and Smith, 1801), itinerant singing-school
teachers moved south and were well received.
Race and the Sacred Harp Tradition
Though the Sacred Harp tradition is primarily
a white phenomenon, there were isolated African American shape note
singing congregations. This module takes a look at how the racial politics
of the time affected the development of Sacred Harp singing schools.
How did shape note singing influence the development of black gospel
music, as we know it today?
Emergence of Singing School and Country
Church Harmonies into Bluegrass and Country MusicExamples from The Delmores, The Louvins,
Chuck Wagon Gang, Stanley Brothers, Clinch Mountain Boys, Doyle Lawson
& Quicksilver, Oak Ridge Boys, Alison Krauss, et. AL
Storylines:
What is shape note singing?
Where did it come from? Who invented it? Who popularized it? Where
do we hear shape note harmonies in popular music today?
How did shape note singing influence subsequent
singing styles in county music?
We’ll look into the story of
the “singing schools” created by itinerant singing teachers employed
by music publishing companies such as Vaughan and Stamps-Baxter.
These teachers––and, later, the gospel quartets formed by the publishing
companies––roamed the South popularizing four-part harmony singing
at country churches, schoolhouse concerts, and “singing conventions”:
all-day sings with “dinner on the ground.”
We’ll also look at the life of Albert
E. Brumley, who authored hundreds of gospel songs, including I’ll
Fly Away, one of the most recorded songs in gospel music history.
We’ll explore how The Chuck
Wagon Gang is a link between country music and traditional sacred
songs of the South.
We’ll see how Charlie and Ira Louvin
were transitional figures between the old shape note singing schools and
modern country music.
We’ll also explore how Mitchell’s
Christian Singers, an early African American gospel quartet, were transitional
figures between Sacred Harp music and contemporary black gospel and
doo-wop styles.
Background And Source Quotes:
The singing-school tradition
enjoyed some popularity in pre-Revolutionary War New England. But
in the years following the war, trained musicians dismissed the idea.
The shape note system was first published by William Little and William
Smith in The Easy Instructor (Philadelphia, 1801). Armed with this
system, singing-school teachers took the tradition south. There,
shape note systems became the standard for publication of hymns,
and the itinerant singing teachers and singing schools became the
primary sales tool. In 1816, Ananias Davisson (1780-1857) and Joseph
Funk (1777-1862), both of Rockingham County, Virginia, became the
first Southern singing masters to compile and publish their own
tunebooks. By 1860, more than 30 sacred tunebooks, all in shape
notes, had been compiled by Southerners, although many of these were printed
outside the South at Cincinnati or Philadelphia. (Source: Mississippi
Arts Commission, http://www.arts.state.ms.us/crossroads/music/sacred_harp/mu4_text.html
and
“David Warren Steel, University of
Mississippi” from Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited
by William Ferris and Charles Reagan Wilson. Copyright 1989 by the University
of North Carolina Press.)
Once the singing schools went
south, a major center of shape-note music promotion, education, and
publishing occurred in Northwest Virginia. A key figure was Aldine Kieffer,
who in 1877, published The Christian Harp. This tunebook specialized
in songs for Sunday Schools and revivals. Kieffer also kept busy
with “The Musical Million,” started in 1870. This was a monthly
periodical devoted to rural music, singing schools and their teachers,
songs, and songbooks in shaped notes. In 1874 he opened the Virginia
Normal School of Music (in the Shenandoah Valley) to better train
and educate singing-school teachers. One of the alumni from his
Normal School was J. D. Vaughan, who in 1902 started the Vaughan
Music Company, and in 1911 opened the Vaughan School of Music. (Source:
http://users.boone.net/blueridgemusic/Sacred.html)
Country church singing, well into the 20th
century, was not necessarily harmonized. Singers sang in unison or just
let their voices follow their own undisciplined routes. But the extent
to which harmony did exist, in the church or elsewhere, was probably a
product of the Southern gospel quartets and of the four-part emphasis
of the shape note singing schools. Pioneered by J.D. Vaughan, a successful
publisher of shape note hymnals in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, the publishing-house
quartets toured widely through the rural South in the early 20th century.
Hawking songbooks as they toured, the Vaughan quartets along with those
employed by the Hartford Company in Arkansas, the Trio Music Company in
Waco, Texas, and the Stamps-Baxter Company in Dallas, popularized their
style of harmony (usually 1st tenor, 2nd tenor, baritone, and bass) in
country churches, at singing schools, at schoolhouse concerts and the
famous all-day-singings with dinner on the ground. (Source: Bill C. Malone,
Country Music U.S.A. (revised), University of Texas Press, Austin, 1985.
p. 21)
Albert E. Brumley was born
in 1905 in Spiro, Oklahoma. At various times in his life, he worked
as a cotton farmer, piano tuner, and grocery store clerk. Prior
to his songwriting career, he attended the old Hartford Musical Institute
at Hartford, Arkansas, and sang with the Hartford Quartet. Later,
he taught singing schools in various parts of the Ozarks. Brumley
was a staff writer for gospel’s famed Hartford and Stamps-Baxter
publishing companies. In 1943, he established Albert E. Brumley
& Sons Music Company. In 1948, he purchased the Hartford Music
Company. It is estimated that the songs of Albert E. Brumley have
been printed 15 million times in sheet music and hymn songbooks.
Among the some 800 songs Brumley wrote: “I’ll Fly Away,” “Turn Your
Radio On,” and “Rank Strangers.” (Source: http://www.brumleymusic.com)
Founded in 1924, Stamps-Baxter Music and
Printing Company was the largest gospel music publishing company in the
world at one point. While most publishing companies produced one songbook
a year, Stamps-Baxter published two convention books annually, beginning
in the early 1930s. In 1936, V.O. Stamps of Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing
Company approached Albert Brumley, furnished him a car, and paid him to
produce four songs annually for Stamps-Baxter songbooks. (Source: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/GG/xbg2.html)
The direct result of the publishing
activity of Vaughan, Stamps-Baxter, and others are the dozens of
community gospel singing conventions, both white and black, found
throughout Alabama. The indirect result is the profound impact on
the development of a whole variety of gospel styles. (Source: http://www.bham.net/sacred/harp.html)
Radio was a major factor in the spread of
gospel music's popularity. One feature of the 1936 Texas Centennial celebration
in Dallas was a series of radio studios in glass booths erected in hexagonal
shape at the fair grounds. Rural folk were fascinated. They had heard
radio broadcasts but had never seen one. Stamps-Baxter Quartets performed
several live broadcasts at the state fair and KRLD in Dallas. Impressed
with the reception, they decided to try a noonday program in the fall
of 1936. V. O. Stamps entreated listeners to write in if they like the
music. Within a week KRLD was deluged with mail. The KRLD broadcasts,
sponsored by American Beauty Flour, became noontime staples in Texas.
Eventually, live gospel singing expanded into the morning hours at 6:45
a.m. and occupied a 10 p.m. evening slot. At noon during the summertime,
it was possible to walk down any street in Texas within broadcast range
of KRLD and hear the Stamps-Quartet singing. By 1938 the Stamps-Baxter
singers became so popular that V. O. Stamps hosted an All Night Singing
at the end of the three-week class session in June. KRLD carried the first
broadcast that was held in the Cotton Bowl. At midnight, FCC limitations
were lifted. KRLD turned up the wattage, and the broadcast went international.
Soon, V. O. Stamps and his quartets were traveling to Del Rio and providing
wire recordings to radio station XERA for national broadcast. (Source:
The Handbook of Texas Online, a joint project of The General Libraries
at the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association.
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/GG/xbg2.html)
Charlie and Ira Louvin, who
would become one of the great singing duos, grew up in Henagar, Alabama.
“Where we were raised, Sacred Harp was famous.” Charlie Louvin
remembered that a singing-school teacher repeatedly pestered their
dad to enroll Charlie and Ira in singing school, and although the
family had no money, their father (driven by pride) gave the teacher
$12.00 for two weeks tuition. “We were to take the money and give
it to the singing-school teacher,” Louvin goes on. “Instead, Ira
and I and two or three other boys we were raised with went by the
store a quarter of a mile from our house and we bought Moon Pies,
RC Colas, Baby Ruths and cigarettes. Then we drifted off into the
woods and played all day. We knew what time singing school let out.
At about that time we went back home. It was about the fourth day
we done this that my daddy ran into the singing-school teacher ...
” (Source: Nicholas Dawidoff, In the Country of Country,
Pantheon Books, New York, 1997, p. 136.)
The Chuck Wagon Gang provided an important
link between country music and traditional sacred songs of the South.
“Dad” (David Parker Carter) was raised in Clay County, Texas.
He attended singing school, where he met his future wife. The couple had
nine children. In 1935, after one of the children became very ill and
the family was left destitute, Dad Carter, with three of the older children,
organized the Chuck Wagon Gang. They were sponsored by Bewley Mills of
WBAP, Fort Worth, Texas, for over 12 years beginning in 1936. In 1937,
Don Law and Art Satherly of Columbia Records visited WBAP studios and
signed them to a record contract. Among the songs recorded by the Chuck
Wagon Gang: “If We Never Meet Again,”
“I’d Rather Be an Old Time Christian,”
“Camping In Canaan's Land,” “I'm Bound For the Land
of Canaan,” and “I’ll Fly Away” ––
songs written by singing-school teacher turned songwriter, Albert E.
Brumley. (Source: http://www.musicmatch.com/
artist/artist.cgi?ARTISTID=334923&TMPL=LONG#bio and http://www.gospelmusic.org/hall_of_fame/inductee_bio.cfm?ID=325
Interview Subjects:
Robert Brumley, son of gospel
composer Albert E. Brumley. Robert Brumley is current owner and CEO
of Albert E. Brumley and Sons Inc., and Hartford Music Company.
Bill Ivey,
former National Endowment for the Arts Chairman. Previously, Ivey served
for 25 years as Director of the Country Music Foundation and Hall
of Fame in Nashville. He holds degrees in history, folklore, and
ethnomusicology, and is on the faculty of Vanderbilt University,
where he teaches, writes, and conducts research on cultural policy.
Kip Lornell, Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology,
is a professor of African Studies, Music, and American Studies at George
Washington University, and he serves as a Research Associate at the Smithsonian.
He is the author of Happy in the Service of the Lord: African-American
Sacred Vocal Harmony Quartets in Memphis, originally published by University
of Illinois Press in 1988.
Charlie Louvin, who, with
his late brother, Ira, became one of the finest vocal duos in the history
of country music.
Bill C. Malone, author of
Country Music U.S.A., University of Texas Press, Austin, 1985.
Thomas Wilmeth, Associate
Professor of English at Concordia University (Mequon, Wisconsin) and
author of The Music of the Louvin Brothers: Heaven's Own Harmony, Edwin
Mellen Press, 1998.
Charles K. Wolfe, professor
of English and folklore at Middle Tennessee State University and author
of In Close Harmony: The Story of the Louvin Brothers, University Press
of Mississippi, 1996.
Significant Historical Recordings:
“I’ll Fly Away” - The most recorded
song in the history of gospel music, “I’ll Fly Away” was composed
by one-time singing-school teacher Albert E. Brumley in 1929 and
published in 1932. It was first recorded by the Chuck Wagon Gang,
circa 1941.
Recent artists who have recorded “I'll
Fly Away” include Aretha Franklin (Princess Diana Tribute Album),
Wynonna Judd, and Gary Chapman (Soundtrack for the movie The Apostle).
“Christian Soldier,” sung in
1936 by the Denson Quartet on CD Before the Blues, Vol.
1 Track 23. (Yazoo 2015)
“Sweet Rivers,” sung by the Allison’s
Sacred Harp Singers (a group from the Birmingham area) in 1928. From CD
Times Ain't What They Used To Be, Vol. 3 Track 11. (Yazoo 2047)
“I’ll Stay on the Right Road
Now,” sung by black group, Fa Sol La Singers, Atlanta, 1931. From
CD Times Ain't What They Used To Be, Vol. 3 Track 23. (Yazoo
2047)
Checking with WBAP, Fort Worth for The Chuck
Wagon Gang material.
Louvin Brothers material from Mike Seeger
Collection Inventory (#20009) 1955-1967, Manuscripts Department, Library
of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Resources, Bibliography, Discography, Archival:
Books/Articles:
Archival materials from Albert E. Brumley
and Sons/Hartford Music Company.
Bealle, John. Public Worship,
Private Faith: Sacred Harp and American Folksong. University
of Georgia Press, 1997. This is a 320-page book. The
publisher's catalog states (in part): "Bealle surveys definitive
moments in American musical history from the vantage of the distinctive
musical idiom [of the Sacred Harp]: from the lively singing schools
of the New England Puritans to the dramatic theological crises that
split New England Congregationalism, from the rise of the genteel
urban mainstream in frontier Cincinnati to the bold "New South"
movement that sought to transform the Southern economy, from the
nostalgic culture writing era of the Great Depression to the rise
of the post-WWII folksong revival. The distinctive thrust of Bealle's
book is the presence of an unassailable traditional discourse that
has prevailed through these definitive and sometimes perilous encounters
with cultural America.
Cobb, Buell E. Jr. The Sacred Harp: A
Tradition and Its Music. University of Georgia Press, 1978 [paperback
edition, Brown Thrasher, 1989]. Author is an Alabaman who was drawn into
Sacred Harp in his college years and later wrote a Master's thesis on
the subject. Whereas other scholarly studies by musicologists examine
the tradition from the outside, Mr. Cobb observes and analyzes the musical
and social aspects of the Southern tradition from the inside, yet with
objectivity and perspicacity.
Dawidoff, Nicholas. In the Country of
Country. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997.
Malone, Bill C. Country Music U.S.A.
(revised). Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.
Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company.
Precious Memories of Virgil O. Stamps. Dallas, 1941.
Stanley, David H. “The Gospel Singing
Convention in South Georgia,” Journal of American Folklore
(95) (January-March 1982).Walls, Chiquita. “Mississippi’s
African American Shape Note Tradition,” published in the La-Miss-Ala
Shape Note Newsletter (November - December 1999), edited by Regina
Glassat. Availiable http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/articles/walls.html
Walls, Chiquita. The African American
Shape Note and Vocal Music Singing Convention Directory, a special
publication of Mississippi Folklife (27) (1994), available from Mississippi
Folklife, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi,
Hill Hall, University, MS 38677.
Wilmeth, Thomas. The Music of the Louvin
Brothers: Heaven's Own Harmony. Edwin Mellen Press, 1999.
Wolfe, Charles K. In Close Harmony: The
Story of the Louvin Brothers. University Press of Mississippi,
1996.
Recordings:
Old Harp Singers: Hymns, Anthems, Fuguing
Tunes from Tennessee. Folkways 2356.
A 1951 recording of ten songs
from the seven-shape tunebook, New Harp of Columbia, sung by seventeen
traditional singers from the cultivated mountains of eastern Tennessee.
Many of the songs are found in the Sacred Harp tunebooks. The tempos
are rather slow compared to those typical of a Sacred Harp singing.
The singers sing the notes before proceeding to the words.
FASOLA: 53 Shape-Note Folk Hymns. Folkways
4151.
Recorded at an all-day Sacred Harp singing
at Houston, Mississippi by Amelia and Frederick Ramsey, Jr., and issued
as a Folkways box album in 1970. Highlights include vigorous singing,
rapid tempos, and a large number of songs. Features extensive liner
notes.
The Louvin Brothers’ Satan is Real,
Capitol Nashville Records 37378 Features liner notes by Charles Wolfe
and Joe Allison.From Where I Stand: The Black Experience
in Country Music (Warner Brothers)
Mitchell’s Christian Singers, Volume
2: 1936-38, compiled by Johnny Parth, Document Records DOCD 5494,
Austria
Mike Seeger Collection Inventory (#20009)
1955-1967Manuscripts Department, Library of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill Contact Information: Manuscripts Department,
CB#3926, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890, Phone: 919/962-1345
Southern Folklife Collection - During the
1950s and 1960s, collector, folklorist, and traditional music performer
Mike Seeger recorded interviews and performances of many legendary old-time
and bluegrass musicians. The collection consists of open reel tape audio
recordings from 1955 to 1967, along with supporting logs. The audio
recordings include both live performances and Seeger's interviews with
many notable bluegrass and old-time musicians, as well as master tapes
from various LP recording projects. Of particular interest are live
concert recordings featuring such musicians as the Stanley Brothers,
Alex Campbell with Ola Belle Reed, Lester Flatt with Earl Scruggs, Bill
Monroe with Charlie Monroe (the Monroe Brothers), Buzz Busby, the Osborne
Brothers, The Louvin Brothers, J. C. Sutphin, Ernest V. Stoneman, Don
Reno, E. C. Ball, Wade Ward, Kilby Snow, Sam McGee with Kirk McGee (the
McGee Brothers), Elizabeth Cotten, Red Smiley, Grandpa Jones, Hazel
Dickens, Mac Wiseman, the Lilly Brothers, Mississippi John Hurt, Dock
Boggs, Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Maybelle Carter, Cousin Emmy, Merle Travis,
Tony Alderman, and Seeger's own New Lost City Ramblers. There are also
recordings from the New Lost City Ramblers' European tour with the Stanley
Brothers, Adam Landrenau and Cyp Landrenau, Cousin Emmy, and Roscoe
Holcomb. Performances were recorded at large and small venues, including
New River Ranch near Rising Sun, Maryland; Sunset Park, Pennsylvania;
and the Union Grove Fiddlers Convention in North Carolina. Seeger recorded
in-depth interviews with many of these musicians, including Kirk McGee,
Sam McGee, Wade Ward, Clarence Tom Ashley, Ernest V. Stoneman, the Benfield
family, Kilby Snow, Charlie Bowman, Dock Boggs, Eck Robertson, Leslie
Riddle, and Maybelle Carter. Of particular interest is Seeger's interview
with Columbia Records talent scout Frank B. Warner. Supporting documentation
includes Seeger's logs for all of the audio recordings and an artist
index. (Source: http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/htm/20009_m.htm)
Web Sites:
Web site of the Mississippi Arts Commission,
http://www.arts.state.ms.us/crossroads/music/sacred_harp
Web site of Univ. of Mississippi,
Sacred Harp Singing, http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/harp.html
Web site of Brumley Music http://www.brumleymusic.com
Web site of Gospel Music Hall
of Fame http://www.gospelmusic.org/hall_of_fame
Web site of The Handbook of Texas Online,
a joint project of The General Libraries at the University of Texas at
Austin and the Texas State Historical Association. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/GG/xbg2.html
Web site of MUSICMATCH. http://wwwp.musicmatch.com/artist/artist.cgi?ARTISTID=334923&TMPL=LONG#bio
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