Hi,Ron:

An anecdote:

When I first joined the Men's Chorus at the church where my wife and I are members, I was very excited about the prospect of singing with the guys. They sang with great power and freedom, not singing from sheet music. I'd never had any desire to sing in a choir, because I am not musically trained and am barely, barely adequate reading music. Our Chorus Director teaches us new songs, starting with the second tenors who sing the melody, then teaching the baritones, first tenors and bass their harmonies by ear. When it was time for the baritones to learn their harmony, we all stood up and I was quickly into the rhythm of the music. It just felt great to be able to move freely while we were singing. When the baritones had practiced their part, it was time for the first tenors to learn their harmony. I remained standing and was very much into moving with the music, even though we weren't singing yet. Bill, (the only person I knew by name) said to me, "You can stop moving now, we're not singing," and I answered "I waited all my life to be able to move to the music while I'm singing, and I'm not going to stop now!"

I told this story to a group of 1st to 3rd grade girls in a private school where we were singing, and one of the kids raised her hand and asked "Why did it take you so long?" My wife and I and all the teachers really cracked up at the question. It was a logical question, and I wasn't really sure of the answer.

Back in the early 60's when I first started performing regularly, I performed sitting down. It was the way a lof of singers did it. I took lessons from Dave Van Ronk, and he performed sitting down, so it seemed logical to me to do the same thing. But Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Peter LaFarge and many others performed standing up. As time went by, I started performing standing up, and discovered that I liked it a lot because I could move more freely with the music. When I've performed folk music in recent years, I've gone back to performing sitting down. Most of the performers I booked over the years performed that way. Bluegrass bands always perform standing up... as much as anything, because they move back and forth from the mic to do harmonies. And, it would be awkward playing stand-up bass, sitting down. Choirs always perform standing up, and I can't imagine singing black gospel music sitting down. I can sing the old white southern gospel sitting down just fine, but not black gospel.
I suppose I could start a thread (there probably already is one) on whether people perform sitting or standing and why, but those threads always seem to turn out to be one or two sentence responses, without a lot of coversation. This is a kitchen table thread, so we can talk about anything, and have a conversation not just do a survey.

But if it's black gospel, I gotta mooooovvvvveeeee.

Jerry