Gospel & the Blues

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: blindboybutler
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 10:15 AM

The Gospel tradition seems closer to the Psalms and similar literature. Whereas the blues draws from prophetic, apocalyptic and sapiential (wisdom) traditions.

Both Gospel and Blues music is deeply influenced by deep understandings of theological and biblical traditions and scholarship.

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Oct 11 - 09:42 PM

Welcome to black southern Baptist churches all over the South...

B~

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: GUEST,Goose Gander
Date: 12 Oct 11 - 09:34 PM

Here's a nice example . . .

Something's Got A Hold On Me

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: GUEST,Charlie (girl!)
Date: 27 Oct 10 - 01:33 PM

i go 2 church and here gospel music which i love and sing then come home and i live with my grandmother who loves blues music, such a good combernation. xx

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Dec 09 - 09:37 PM

What a great link! I don't even remember starting this thread. Funny thing is, I just finished a gospel song done in a very slow blues rhythm and chord progression. The previous gospel song I wrote sounds just like a country blues, except for the lyrics.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Janie
Date: 09 Dec 09 - 08:43 PM

Thanks for that Youtube link, TinDor. In addition to it being a great example of the gospel blues connection, you called my attention to blindboyblue's youtube channel, which looks to be a goldmine.

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: TinDor
Date: 09 Dec 09 - 08:22 PM

Interesting video that relates to the subject...

Ida is featured in "Wild Women Don't Have the Blues"

"Sprightly blues and gospel performer Ida Goodson -- the scene stealer of the film -- gives a stunning exhibition of the intimate connection between gospel and blues when she takes the song 'Precious Lord' from a rich, slow gospel opening to a rollicking boogie-woogie conclusion." -- Chris Heim, Chicago Tribune


Ida Goodson

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 05:32 PM

Thanks, Eve: I picked up a copy off Amazon.com. I'm looking forward to getting it.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Eve Goldberg
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 04:56 PM

Jerry, if it's not in print anymore you may be able to pick up a used copy through one of the many used book retailers on the internet. I've had some luck with ABE Books (can't remember their website but you should be able to find it with a quick search).

Eve

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: wysiwyg
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 11:11 AM

As posted elsewhere:

The more you listen to the spirituals that are documented as authentic spirituals, the more you hear songs that you realize later became blues or some variant of "gospel" you might have heard on a commercial recording. When these adaptations got recorded, whoever recorded it often grabbed a songwriting or arranging copyright, and thus established a toehold in the commercial music economy by making fair use of songs they had heard from their cradles. We confuse ourselves when we assume that they sat down one day and actually composed the song. As you hear the spirituals, you realize these commercial songs mostly floated up out of people's bellies, memories, and souls.

Stylistic features attributed to particular performers (especially the guitar work that fascinates us today) are actually representations of what they'd heard sung-- vocalizations improvised originally and then folk-processed into traditional parts of songs.

As an example, I always thought Gary Davis wrote some really cool gospel. Well, he didn't. He applied what he had heard, in so many cases I have found, that I suspect that's true of ALL his gospel work. "Wrote" is a pretty loose term, it turns out.

So "origins" questions can be, "what did this first mean" or "what is the earliest recording" or "when was it written down" or "who has copyright and why" or "who collected it in the field and when" or "who made the first dollar on this"......... And in our own time, "who recorded it" usually means vinyl. But to me it means WAX-- field recordings. Cuz it's FOLK music, whether it later got commercial enough to catch others' attention, or not.

At a certain point you stop documenting these relationships between spirituals and later, commercial songs, because there are too many, and there are so many versions, that it all finally just comes across as music to be enjoyed and taken into oneself.

~S~

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 05:35 PM

Another wonderful example of someone who approaches blues and gospel in much the same style is Pops Staples. If you approach one of the songs the Staples Singers do, blues picking works jes fine.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 01:10 PM

Thanks for the book recommendation, Eve! I'll see if it's still in print and available. If so, I'll surely pick up a copy.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Eve Goldberg
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 12:16 PM

At the risk of a little thread creep, I thought I would respond to pdq's comment earlier in this thread:

"I am not a musicologist, just a fan, but it seems that the chronology of the Blues is:

                            Minstrel > Ragtime > Trad. Jazz > Blues "


I wonder about this myself. Certainly of all these genres, blues was the last to come to the attention of the wider world, especially in terms of recorded music. Country blues was not really being recorded until well after many of the early jazz masters made it into the recording studio.

But blues music was being sung and played BEFORE Jazz was born, and in fact was one of the primary influences of Jazz music.

Traditional Jazz was the result of an incredible mixing of music, including rural country blues, that happened in cities like New Orleans and Memphis.

When African American music was first being recorded, country blues was seen as rural and "backwards," and often shunned in favour of more urban, sophisticated sounds of Traditional Jazz. This ironically meant that even though it is historically an OLDER form of music, in recorded form it is YOUNGER than Jazz.

Eve

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: ddw
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 11:49 AM

Greg,

An interesting idea about the different scales. I'd never encountered it before, so I'm going to do some more looking into it.

I would say, however, that there might be another dimension to Tommy Dorsey's different styles between his blues stuff and his gospel. He started his recording career behind a number of other better-knowns, particularly Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker). They formed The Hokum Boys for a while and also recorded a lot as just Tampa Red and Georgia Tom and Tampa's slide guitar work was a big factor in what they were doing. Was that part of the reason for the differences? Might be interesting to look at, tho' I don't know how you could prove it one way or the other.

Interesting stuff, tho....

cheers,

david

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Eve Goldberg
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 11:29 AM

I just went to check out the African-American Spirituals Permathread, and holy moly WYSIWYG! You have done an amazing job of assembling and cross-referencing a gold-mine of material.

I could get lost in there for years. THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Go there, people.

Eve

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:51 AM

I've tried to stress the importance of hearing the spirituals but people seem more interested in focusing on the narrow time-slices that grew out of them, out of a love for whatever slice happened to have caught their interest. There's so much depth of material in each of these slices that unless you go back to the spirituals right away, there's never time to go there. To get there, tho-- please, please, USE the African-American Spirituals Permathread, and add to it!

That heritage is ours to cherish and preserve. I urge people to do that awarely. To fail to plumb the depths of the spirituals, and then sing blues or blues gospel, is like singing bluegrass now with no awareness of the base in UK/trad musics. It can be done, but it's trendy. I guess it's called ROOTS music....

Again-- please, please, USE the African-American Spirituals Permathread, and add to it!

~Susan

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Eve Goldberg
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 09:49 AM

There's an excellent book called "The Spirituals and The Blues" by James H. Cone which really opened up my understanding of African American music and its role in the black community. I would HIGHLY recommend it for anyone interested in exploring the connections between African American religious music and the blues.

It's been a long time since I read it and I just went and took it down from the shelf to remind myself of what affected me so much about the book. The first sentence in the book:

"The power of song in the struggle for black survival-- that is what the spirituals and blues are about."

And later:

"...the blues and the spirituals flow from the same bedrock of experience, and neither is an adequate interpretation of black life without the commentary of the other."

"The blues are 'secular spirituals.' They are secular in the sense that they confine their attention solely to the immediate and affirm the bodily expression of black soul, including its sexual manifestations. They are spirituals because they are impelled by the same search for the truth of black experience..."

I'll stop there because I could continue quoting from the book for a LONG time. He spends quite a bit of time taking apart the theology and sociology of Spirituals and talking about the meaning of God, Jesus, Heaven, and black suffering. And then he analyzes the meaning and significance of the blues and draws some very compelling comparisons about the role of the blues and the role of spirituals in the black community.

As I said, HIGHLY recommended.

Eve

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Bobert
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 10:52 PM

Well, Khanny, "Slick" is somethin' else and perhaps a throwback to some of the earlier bluesmen.

But when talkin' about the connnection of blues and gospel, there are a couple of bluesmen who deserve a little mention.

The first is "Son" House, who was also a preacherman. There is a vidio of Son talkin' about the inner conflicts he had suffered as being a bluesman, when some folks had branded blues the "devil's music" and a minister... Well worth a watch and listening...

The other, Fred McDowell, recorded with his wife'sw church chior. You can find the CD, Jerry. If you have trouble, PM me and I'll research it fir ya'...

And lets not forget the Rev Gary Davis, or even the spiritual references found thoughout the blues... Robert Johnson singing "Lord, I don't mind dieing" in "Walking Blues" is a common theme in blues of references to the "Lord"... Might of fact, "Lord" become almost a filler of choice which should not be trivilized...

And yeah, Slick Ballenger brought his fiance's church chior to his performance at the IBC last Feburary very reminisent of Fred McDowell, but also similar to Richard Johnston bringing in Jessie Mae Hempfield (?) on his CD's... It's part of that rich black church custom of testifiers... Can I get an amen... But Slick, in my opinion, is using a lot of tricks he has learned from the old bluesman... That "Mississippi Hill Country Stomp" that Richard Johnston taught him ain't nuthin' but the R.L. Burnside/T-Model Ford hill stomp sound. I love it and play a little of it myself and probably has some links to gospel but lets keep "Slick's" music in some perpective here... Hey, he's 19 years old and only lived in Mississippi for a year. He doesn't have a lot of experience with the church yet and admitted to me that he really hadn't read much of the Bible, HOWEVER, he's catchin' up fast on both respects... The only reason I bring this up is that, when compared to Son House 'er Fred McDowell, Slick ain't there yet... But give him time, he's doing the right things...

Bobert

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: khandu
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 10:19 PM

Tweed & I have discussed the thin line between gospel & blues. Actually, to me, many blues songs are of a spiritual nature, even if they do not directly refer to spirit / gospel in the lyrics.

Many gospel songs are born of pain. Pain of wrestling with the flesh, blood & sweat of this world. The songs often express the need for relief from the pain & sing gratitude for the healing balm.

The same can be said for many of the blues songs.

"I Just Can't Keep from Crying Sometimes" by Blind Willie Johnson comes to mind as I write this. Of course, Blind Willie was a Gospel bluesman, but the agony & angst expressed in this song is echoed in a million blues songs.
         
I have seen the Spi rit move in some Christian gatherings during some anointed music. There was an overwhelming sense of unity in the congregants that superceded all natural barriers, such as social standing, race, etc. In spite of everyone's different pain, worries & woes, a sense of "oneness" & well-being prevailed.

I have seen the blues have a strikingly similar effect on people. You can say that such happens with many different types of music, but I disagree. I have seen the crowds get "caught up" in the music at rock/country concerts but it is somehow different. I'm not talking about getting caught in the music but in the mutual "human-ness" with all the frailties, and transcending it in the vehicle of the music.

I'm not too articulate tonight, but perhaps some of you follow what I'm saying. If not, ask Tweed about the "Slick effect". He will tell you of Daniel "Slick" Ballinger & the effect he has whenever he plays.

k

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: wysiwyg
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 10:10 PM

Mainstream, yes-- but the majority of black worship, IMO, occurred in smaller NON-mainstream churches. THAT is where the important black gospel work was done, song by song by song, heart by heart.

~S~

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 09:15 PM

Yeah, Ted: It is an amazing documentary. What a character Thomas A Dorsey was... wheww!!! Some real good music from others, too... My favorite scene is when Dorsey and an old female friend of his are sitting on a couch, all prim and proper, singing Bedise Of A Neighbor.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: M.Ted
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 09:09 PM

Dorsey organized the Convention of Gospel Choruses and Choirs, and, in many ways, standardized what was performed and how it was performed in the mainstream churches--

Check out the documentary, "Say Amen, Somebody" to see Thomas A. Dorsey in action--a truly remarkable person--

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: wysiwyg
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 05:04 PM

A lot of gaps in the progression of the styles are quite nicely and completely filled in, tho, if you listen through the Sinner's Crossroads radio program archives I've posted about. You can hear that actually, in day to day performance and enjoyment of a vast variety of gospel styles, nothing actually got squeezed out. What has actually been played/sung differs so much from what was published-- where IMO Dorsey did kinda have full sway.

The creativity preserved in that program series is phenomenal. The issue, listening to it, becomes not "how do these seveal styles relate" but "what words can I find for this stuff that crosses and encomapsses all style 'lines' and represents a thousand facets of style, each distinct, as you hear it, from the others?"

~Susan

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: M.Ted
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 04:53 PM

I have been meaning to read Michael Harris' book, "The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church" for a couple years now, and therefore have no way of knowing how good it is, but it probably is very good background for your effort--

Even still, his music is very commercial, he, like Handy before him, was a formally trained arranger and composer, and had worked for Paramount Records--he set the first independent, black owned music publishing company, and founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs, to help market his music--

I mention this because this music, as good as it is, squeezed out a lot of the traditional gospel singing and performance styles (Lomax gives a wonderful description of an old time gospel service in "The Land Where the Blues Began"--some of this stuff survives, though very marginally--and some of it has been recorded, both by folklorists, and for commercial purposes, and it is the stuff you really want to compare and contrast with the blues--

Rags, Blues, and Jazz seem to have evolved separately, from the same roots, in the nineteenth century, and my thought is that those roots would have been a combination of the old spiritual music that Allen, Ware, and Garrison collected in "Slave Songs of the United States", and in the instrumental tradtion that turned into minstrel music--

The bottom line for all of this, to me, is that banjo drone string--it provides the steady beat that the syncopated melodies bounce off in everything from the old time rags on to blues and bluegrass--and the gospel singers did the same thing--traditionally using a long stick that one of the church elders would rap(!) while the congregation sang on the off and afterbeats, and later moving the part over to piano, drums, and funky bass--

Anyway, that swing between a straight steady bottom beat and a syncopated, improvised melody is at the root of the "American" music forms--rags, blues, jazz, gospel, rock and roll, rap, funk, swing, hip-hop, and whatever else--and, sorry to disappoint, it didn't come from Celtic Music---

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 12:47 PM

Good site, Susan:

Thanks!

Jerry

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: wysiwyg
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 02:55 AM

Posted this before, too-- look around:

http://www.igmhf.org/website/html_pages/subpages/history/history.html

~S~

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 03:53 PM

SOme good observations, here. Thanks for the links, Susan. And to you Greg for talking music, with notes and all those things... scales..

Being semi-illerate musically, I have to go by feel as much as anything. It's hard for me to analyse the two forms of music in musical terms. But, I suppose that it isn't surprising that the two forms of music are connected. They both reflect on the human condition, often in a very stark way. Another Man Done Gone and He Never Said A mumblin' Word both talk about death, and many gospel songs (at least black gospel) talk about suffering, being mistreated and betrayed not that differently from the blues.

Thomas Dorsey is a wonderful example, Greg. Precious Lord Take My Hand may have a different scale than a blues, but the lines about storms, darkness and night falling would fit comfortably into a blues song.

I hope that D.W. Ditty is reading all of this..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: PoppaGator
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 02:49 PM

Hey Jerry,

In addition to Gary Davis and the other luminaries you mentioned, don't forget Mississippi Fred McDowell, who recorded quite a few Gospel numbers, some with his wife adding an additional vocal part.

I was fortunate enough to meet and spend some time with Fred back in about 1968. I got the assignment to act as his "host" when he played at my college campus, and was privileged to sit up all night with him after the gig, drinking gin, smoking reefer, and swapping tunes.

I sang him a couple of my "happy-blues" John Hurt numbers, and he immediately responded, "Oh, you like them spatch-el songs." I had no idea what he was saying -- "special songs?" -- since I couldn't decipher his accent. But then, when he responded by playing "Twelve Gates to the City" and "Jesus Is On the Mainline," I realized he was observing that I had a taste for "spiritual" songs.

Funny thing was, the numbers I had played weren't spirituals at all, but nevertheless he was immediately able to detect a gospel/spiritual influence in my style.

I had spent several formative years (ages 4-10) living next door to a very lively black church, listening with great wonderment to incredible ecstatic singing all day every Sunday plus at least one other evening per week, and whatever understanding I have of "soulful" singing, and of the African component of American song, comes from that experience. Of course, this was another ten or more years later, so I was completely blown away at how easily and immediately Mr. McDowell was able to perceive my childhood influence.

Whether different scales of notes define the difference between gospel and blues, or whether it's a less quantifiable matter of "feel," his perception demonstrated to me that there has to be a definite, recognizable aspect to spiritual singing that is somehow absent from purely secular blues, no matter how superficially similar.

Another related thought: The widely popular "soul" music of the 60s and 70s, starting with Sam Cooke and Ray Charles and extending through the heyday of Motown and the Memphis Stax/Volt sound, is of course secular music developed directly from Gospel, and is really closer to Gospel than to straight-ahead blues. Whatever it is that defines gospel/spirituals and distiguishes it from the old-time down-home blues -- is it found in "profane" soul music (even, for instance, Marvin Gaye)?

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 02:37 PM

Thomas Dorsey is a case in point that illustrates my remark about scale differences. His blues songs have a rather different melodic approach to his gospel material. "Take my hand Precious Lord" is a classic CDEGAC pentatonic based tune; compare that with his "sinful" "Tight like that". Quite interesting, the differences in one compsers work as he approaches different subject matters.

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: pdq
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 02:05 PM

I am not a musicologist, just a fan, but it seems that the chronology of the Blues is:

                            Minstrel > Ragtime > Trad. Jazz > Blues

The St. Louis Blues has a very "ragtimey" feel and is based around 4 chords, not

just 3 found in later stripped-down blues. Blues became very stylized when the

12 bar variation became the norm.   8 bar variants are probably the norm in Folk-

Blues and 16 bar variants are well known in Country-Blues. Blues date from

approx.1915. Ragtime was first published in the 1890's although there are

elements of both in the Minstrel tradition.


Gospel has roots in European church music and was probably isolated from black

secular music for a long time. Now there endless bluesy affectations in black

gospel which would not have been there 100 (or more) years ago.


Bluegrass? Just hope that someone in the group can sing a bass part and "go for it".

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: C-flat
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 02:00 PM

To me it's like different sides of the same thing. Blues and Gospel both gave the black American community their own musical identity.
The blues being a raw narrative, hard life, bad/good luck, broken relationships, etc, and Gospel being the celebration of living, whatever your circumstances.
The, so called, "Father of Gospel", Tommy Dorsey, started out playing the blues with the likes of Bessie Smith.
Frankie's probably right about the "hips" Jerry.


C-flat.

P.S. Good to see you're still around Jerry!

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: Once Famous
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 11:09 AM

I admit that I am not a student of the blues.

Bluegrass also has a complete gospel side to it. There is no specific chord or scale difference found in regular bluegrass songs and gospel bluegrass songs.

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 11:01 AM

I have seen it suggested that there was a technical difference between gospel and blues. That blues tended to be constructed using this version of the pentatonic scale:
DFGACD
While gospel tended to wards structures based on the CDEGAC scale.
Now, obviously this is an over-simplification, most blues and gospel songs are not purely pentatonic, but the predominant notes of a lot of songs follow a pentatonic pattern, with just a few passing noted filling in the gap. And of course the variable third is used a lot in blues, so the F in the "blues pentatonic" should be conidered as of variable pitch from F to F#. But I would say there is a germ of reason in this theory(I dont know who first proposed it). Jerry, youve got a foot in both camps, have you come across this idea?

Subject: RE: Gospel & the Blues
From: wysiwyg
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 09:15 AM

In the African-American Spirituals Permathread, in the opening post, you will find links for all this:

Did the blues spring from spirituals?
CLICK HERE for Blues Related to Spirituals.
CLICK HERE for Gary Davis Songs.
CLICK HERE for Your Favorite Gospel Blues.

What characterizes the sound of the spirituals?
CLICK HERE for Spirituals: Melody, Modes-- That SOUND.

CLICK HERE for History of Spirituals.

~Susan

Subject: Gospel & the Blues
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 02 Sep 04 - 08:28 AM

In another month or so, I'll be leading a workshop titled The Gospel In Black, Blue and bluegrass. I'm looking forward to sharing that time with fellow Catters from Shoregrass, and D.W. Ditty. I'm particularly interested in any thoughts you have about the connection between gospel and blues. There are all the obvious examples of musicians who were superb at both... Blind Willie Johnson, Reverend Gary Davis, Willie McTell, Blind Lemon Jefferson.. Leadbelly.

In the black community I think that was a better acceptance to the reality of the total range of human experiences, so it wasn't strange to hear a blues singer who lived a wild life also sing gospel with complete sincerity. My friend Frankie in the Gospel Messengers says that the difference between blues and gospel is all in the hips. Saturday night at a juke joint when dancers got into the jump blues, they shook their hips. Sunday morning when the Spirit moved them, they were jumping up and down.

Just watch the hips. Remember that D.W.Ditty, when you're doing a blues at the workshop...

Jerry