Adapting Great Black Gospel So YOU Can Do It!

OK, those are some samples of the kind of classic black gospel that can be adapted and done in an "Americana" approach. If you listen to those shows, paying special attention to the songs listed above, you can hear a survey of classic black gospel song styles.

For example, some are clearly in the doo-wop mode. Some are early "sock hop" rock-and-roll in flavor. Some straddle the bluegrass line. Some are clearly blues, and some are spirituals sung the slave way. And so forth. (I generally skip the "screamers" myself.) The great thing is, it doesn't matter!

Very few "white" folks can replicate or re-enact these just as they were done. But you can still do them, because they are SONGS. You can do what the Carter family and others have done-- make them work for you, so you can pass on the SONG.

These were songs people learned by HEARING. So your main job in adapting them is LISTENING.


The FIRST thing to listen for is NOT "who plays what" or anything about the style of the performance. Listen for pieces that sound like SONGS-- great melodies, no matter where the tune shows up. It might be in the vocal lead or it might be hiding in a poorly-recorded, dimly-heard backup part. It might be on a keyboard instrument or brass. It might be laid out in the first pass, where a leader lays it out for the backups (who embroider it in the next pass), or it might emerge as the song goes on.

What you are listening for is the tune that makes you want to sing along, as a singer.

When you find one like that, chances are it also has a clear beat that makes you want to move with it. Highlight these to work on. How? Listen some more. Move a little. It's OK. I string together the songs I'm considering, onto a CD, and let it run while I do dishes.

Now you are looking for one out of these that you hear in your head later-- can't quite get it out of your mind. Pick one of those.

Listen again. Fix in your mind where the tune is, and sing/hum along with that tune to fix it in your memory.

When you can do that, start also listening for the internal rhythms-- what is being done within the measures; or maybe you can hear one rhythm beating against another. It might be instrumental or it might be the bass singer; it could be in any part. It might even be absent but be implied in how the heard parts weave around something that feels like it ought to be there.

Tap it. A washboard is a big help, especially for you guitar players who just want to rush in to copy the guitar licks. Remember, we aren't replicating, we are re-CREATING. Put that geetar down, and use your BODY. What you find at this stage will inform your strum pattern later, but it's too soon to play, unless you want to sound ridiculous when you try to perfrom it later! :~)

When this tune and this beat are woven into your recall of the song-- when they begin to play in your mind's karaoke-- NOW you can start figuring out how you would approach the song using your main instrument, and what you want other instruments to do, too. It's still too soon to pick up your ax-- this is all mental prep.

Determine the best key to sing it in, THEN start arranging. As you work on it, play along with how you now hear the song in your head.

By the time you get to arranging, you should find that what you do with the song is now very different from what your sources did. Don't worry f the melody itself has morphed quite a bit from the original. That's what the people listed above did, with what they heard. They let it rip, once they had "caught" the song.

I do all of the above adapting so fast that if you name one of the above songs, I can tell you how we would do it, pretty quickly.

YMMV.

Sorry for the typos. I gotta a lotta dishes waiting.

~Susan