[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. No, this isn't some weird audio filter. I do have a cold. On today's show, R&B singer/songwriter Umi joins us for a listening party, some warm beats for a snowy day. We'll hear another song created, especially for us as part of our Public Song Project.

Wait until you hear low-cut Connie's spin on Blind Lemon Jefferson. We'll also hear some history of the blues, and we'll speak with the Oscar-nominated editor of Oppenheimer. Her name is Jennifer Lame. She'll be our guest. That's our plan, so let's get this started with some gospel music.

[MUSIC: Aretha Franklin- Climbing Higher Mountains]

I'm going up the rough side of the mountain on my way home,

Meet my people (Trying to get home)

I'm going up the rough side of the mountain on my way home,

Oh yeah (Trying to get home)

I'm going (Climbing)

Up the rough side of the mountain (Climbing)

Oh, Jesus (Climbing)

On my way (Climbing)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (Higher, higher)

Climbing (Higher, higher)

Higher (Higher, higher)

Higher, Lord (Higher, higher)

Higher (Higher, higher)

Going on higher, Lord (Higher, higher)

To meet, please (Higher, higher)

Higher and higher (Higher, higher)

Higher (Higher, higher)

Oh, higher, Lord (Higher, higher)

Higher (Higher, higher)

Higher, Lord (Higher, higher)

Higher (Higher, higher)

That is Aretha Franklin singing Climbing Higher Mountains from her gospel album, Amazing Grace. Like many of America's greatest musicians, Aretha grew up in the church, and we hear from Aretha Franklin and many others in a new PBS documentary about the history and culture of gospel. It premiered last night and continues tonight hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. We learned about gospel's origins in Chicago in the early 20th century. The film follows the lives of icons like Mahalia Jackson and James Cleveland.

It also documents how gospel was crucial in the fight for civil rights. Of course, there's the development of the genre sound from the golden age to our present day and the tensions that can come from trying to meet a new generation where they are while not alienating those who are skeptical of "secular-sounding" church music. The first two parts of Gospel aired last night and the final two parts premiere tonight at 9:00 PM on PBS. Joining me now are directors and producers Stacy Holman, hi, Stacy-

Stacy Holman: Hi, Allison. Thank you for having us.

Alison Stewart: -and Shayla Harris. Hey, Shayla.

Shayla Harris: Hi, Allison.

Alison Stewart: I'm so interested. I want to do a little bit of filmmaking questions first and then we'll get into some of the content. I was so interested about the way you went around this-- About this because we have well-known gospel artists. We have Twinkie Clark and Dionne Warwick, Cory Henry's on the organ, but then you also have interviews with some serious heavy-hitting academics from Baylor, and Princeton, and Harvard, UT Austin. I'll ask you, Shayla, to start, why did you all want to go in this direction with this academic angle as well as the musical angle?

Shayla Harris: Well, this series is a family reunion of sorts between Stacy and I and Professor Gates. The three of us worked together on the original Black Church series, and it felt that there was a lot on the cutting room floor that we weren't able to include in that series. Particularly the sound of Black spirituality was something, and this cultural and artistic expression that comes out of this really iconic institution was something that we wanted to tease out in a little more detail, both in the form of gospel music as well as preaching.

Certainly, the fact that Henry Louis Gates, or Skip as we call him, is a renowned scholar, we could not have done-- Approached this series without these scholars and incredible musicologists, like you said, from Yale and Julliard and Baylor, to help us contextualize this and break down homiletics and break down the tone and cadence of some of the music to help our audience really understand the craft behind these incredible art forms.

Alison Stewart: Stacy, anything else you wanted to add?

Stacy Holman: No, Shayla did it perfectly.

Alison Stewart: All right, then I have a question for you. When we think of the Black church, specifically Baptist and Pentecostal denominations, when we want to understand the intersection between music and faith, broadly speaking, why was music such an important aspect of Baptist and Pentecostal services?

Stacy Holman: Well, as people will see in the series, there is-- Music is important because it's a conversation on many levels. Conversation with the congregation, conversation that the musicians are having with the preacher, and one feeds off of the other. Many of these spaces have been laboratories for just the creation of music and worship. Music is a key form of worship.

With those denominations, you see just a lot of incredible talent coming out of it, a lot of incredible songs, and you see even a greater importance of it as time goes on and how it's really key to just the worship experience. You go, and you hear the song, it starts the sermon, over the sermon, gets the congregation and the spirit, and then you go to the preacher, and you have the closer, which is the music. Those denominations are key in creating that.

Alison Stewart: Stacy, what were the social conditions that contributed to the founding of gospel?

Stacy Holman: Well, we start in the 1920s, 1930s, and a lot of people are migrants. We start with Tom Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and Rosetta Tharpe, some of the key-- Sallie Martin. They're going to Chicago and Chicago had its own certain kind of understanding of just worship music, and that was hymns and very much of this politics of respectability.

When you have Mahalia and you have Dorsey, they're bringing their sense of blues and jazz and their own gumbo into Chicago to create just the sound and incorporate, infuse these musical genres together that becomes gospel as we know it. It's based on space, it's based on what people grew up with, what people understood, and they bring that with them. Those are familiar sounds that people cling to and that they lean onto. Especially other migrants.

Alison Stewart: Shayla, I wanted to ask, Chicago, we learn, is the place where gospel music really grew and was born, but of all the great migration destinations, why should Chicago?

Shayla Harris: Well, Chicago was really a crossroads where a lot of people were coming from the South, coming from other areas. It is certainly a massive Black population that centers there on the south side of Chicago that help contribute to the support of Barack Obama. That legacy continues to this day. The fact that there were so many churches and so many Black institutions.

So many places and spaces for this mix of migrants and the folks who had been already there in Chicago to create this big bang that creates gospel makes it this incredible laboratory for all of these things to happen. Then it starts to spread to other cities like Detroit and, certainly, out in California which we end up exploring in detail in the series

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the new docuseries Gospel. It premiered on PBS. The first two parts aired yesterday. The final two parts air tonight at 9:00 PM. I'm speaking with its directors and producers, Stacy Holman and Shayla Harris. We mentioned Thomas Dorsey. I want to dig in there a little bit more. Founder of gospel music in Chicago. He goes on a journey, Stacy.

Stacy Holman: Oh, yes.

Alison Stewart: When we first meet him, tell us about Thomas Dorsey when we first meet him in the series.

Stacy Holman: Well, he's not Thomas Dorsey. He is Georgia Tom. He's a migrant from Atlanta, or from, I should say, Georgia. He made his way to Atlanta. Like many people, wanted a better lifestyle, so he traveled up north, and he was actually one of the pianist for Ma Rainey, so he was deep into the blues, deep into the jazz. He also recorded his own record, Tight Like That so he was, as a blues musician, he was recognizable in his own right.

In the 1920s, he had a religious conversion. He went to the Baptist Convention and, from there, tried to put his spin being led by the spirit on what he thought music should be. Unfortunately, he was frowned upon, that politics or respectability, but he continued to try his hand on it. At the same time, continuing to do the blues music because that was what was really paying the bills.

Until one day, he just fully committed himself. Unfortunately, to the loss of his wife and his child, that was a true conversion. Also, just many people may consider, when gospel became gospel. He wrote, I would say, a theme song for many Black people, Precious Lord, Take My Hand.

Alison Stewart: Dorsey didn't really, obviously, do this alone. You point out that he had this partner in this, Sallie Martin, the mother of gospel music. Shayla, why was she instrumental in the success of the spread of Dorsey's compositions?

Shayla Harris: Well, one of the important things that we wanted to include in this series was the role of women, which I think was pretty surprising to us when we started exploring this series, but Sallie Martin was a pretty savvy businesswoman who herself was a migrant from Georgia.

She originally started out as a song plugger for Thomas Dorsey. She would go around giving samples of the sheet music that he would write, but she sensed that he wasn't doing enough to make this little enterprise that he had profitable, and so she started to sell and market his sheet music. Her salesmanship, and organizational skills, eventually turned Dorsey's publishing company into this extremely profitable blueprint for how this emerging set of gospel musicians could be successful.

She eventually parted ways with Thomas Dorsey and partnered with Kenneth Morris who, at the time, was the musical director for the First Church of Deliverance which ends up creating or being the first place to introduce the Hammond B-3 organ to gospel music, which creates the sound that we all come to know. The two of them create this incredible music studio, Martin & Morris, that becomes the largest African-American-owned gospel music publishing enterprise. She really built the engine that all of Gospel's rising stars would start to play off of.

Alison Stewart: Stacey, let's play a little bit of Precious Lord, Take My Hand. You mentioned it earlier. This is one of Thomas Dorsey's probably most famous songs performed by Mahalia Jackson in this particular rendition.

[MUSIC - Mahalia Jackson: Take My Hand, Precious Lord]

Precious Lord, take my hand

Lead me on, let me stand

I am tired, I am weak, I am worn

Through the storm, through the night

Lead me on--

Alison Stewart: It's so hard to know where to come in. It doesn't feel right. That's Mahalia Jackson singing Precious Lord. My guests are Stacey Holman and Shayla Harris. They are the directors and producers of the docuseries Gospel. The first two parts aired yesterday on PBS, the final two parts air tonight at 9:00 PM. The conventions were really interesting to me, Stacey. This idea of that as being a way to disseminate gospel music and the way it spread. Would you share a little bit more what those conventions were like? That was really interesting.

Stacey Holman: Yes. Thomas Dorsey, as I said, he attended the National Baptist Convention. During those conventions, they did have a music element when people would present their songs, they would try out their songs. Some would be successful with it, others would not. That whole idea of the convention, really, is the idea behind the national convention of choirs and courses. It's like a tongue twister to say that sometimes. It was key for him for people to understand the gospel.

There were people who they were selling the sheet music but people didn't really know how to present and how gospel should sound, so this is where you had choirs from across the country that would travel to Chicago. It would be like a laboratory, a learning exercise, of how gospel should be sung, how it should be executed. You would have, also, an opportunity to try out your songs. It was where you have the conventions where the music is secondary to the sermons. You have a space where artists are able to test their wares exclusively in front of their peers. Obviously, it gets feedback from Mr. Dorsey himself in some instances. [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: I want to talk about-- Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry.

Stacey Holman: When you fast forward to James Cleveland in an hour or two with the Gospel Music Workshop of America.

Alison Stewart: Since we're talking about presentation, I wanted to bring in the subject of whooping, the intersection of preaching and singing. Shayla, do you want to take this one? How would you describe what whooping is and why it's important to understand that when we're talking about gospel music?

Shayla Harris: Whooping is this really exhilarating preaching style which is a combination of both storytelling and performance and celebration at the close of the sermon. It's where the sermon becomes the song. It dates back to earlier traditions of slave exhorters who they feel like, when the spirit is moving them, the sermon gets transformed, and that's the way that they can convey that sonically to the congregation.

Certainly, one of the most prolific and well-known practitioners of whooping was the Reverend C. L. Franklin who is a popular pastor at New Bethel Baptist in Detroit, who's also famously known as the father of Aretha Franklin. He had this lyrical style that was built similarly, like all the folks that we've already been talking about, who brought their understanding of the blues and their deep understanding of the Bible together into this new kind of form.

It's an amalgam of both sinner and saint, blues man and preacher man. He starts to record these incredible albums that get disseminated and and circulated widely, and so he becomes one of the most imitated pastors that we know of because so many people heard his records and heard his style. As they say, great preachers borrow-- Oh wait, sorry. Good preachers borrow, great preachers steal, so they all steal this style from Reverend C. L. Franklin.

Alison Stewart: We actually have a clip of Reverend C. L. Franklin from one of his albums. He's delivering a sermon called Dry Bones In the Valley, so people can hear what we've been talking about. Let's take a listen.

Reverend C. L. Franklin: The lord, it looks like a helpless thing, it looks like an unprofitable thing for me to go out and preach to dry bones. Some of the living soul that I preach to don't respond to me. What could I expect from dry bones? The Lord is asking to go on out and preach anyhow. You know, God's ways, you know, are above man's ways, and you can't always understand why he orders you to do certain things.

Alison Stewart: Reverend C. L. Franklin, of course, is synonymous with Detroit's national influence around gospel. What was Detroit's reputation as a gospel city? What made its culture unique, Shayla?

Shayla Harris: Detroit becomes the centerpiece of gospel when a lot of folks certainly move out of Chicago and start coming in that direction. Most notably, folks like James Cleveland who grew up in Chicago, going to Pilgrim Baptist, becoming a protege of Thomas A. Dorsey. He becomes the music minister at C. L. Franklin's church, New Bethel Baptist, where he mentors Aretha Franklin in the piano and becomes a mentor to her musically.

The Chicago sound goes to Detroit, and Detroit becomes this hub where family-centered gospel starts to emerge. We can think of groups like The Clark Sisters, The Winans, all emerge out of Detroit which is bringing its own unique style, certainly, the influence of Motown and the musicality and this centrality of music, to the culture of Detroit. You start to see that infusing the gospel music that emerges in the '60s and in the '70s and heading into the '80s.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the new docuseries Gospel. The first two parts aired yesterday on PBS. The final two parts air tonight at 9:00 PM. My guests are directors and producers Stacey Holman and Shayla Harris. After a quick break, we'll talk about the importance of the Hammond organ, the radio, and of course, Mahalia Jackson. That's up after a quick break.

[MUSIC]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We're discussing the new docuseries Gospel. It premiered on PBS last night, the first two parts. The second two parts air tonight at 9:00 PM. I'm speaking with its producers and directors Stacey Holman and Shayla Harris. I teased before the break we were going to talk about the Hammond organ, Stacey. It seems like now people think, "Of course, Hammond organ and gospel, they go hand in hand," but it was really considered a big innovation. What was the story of how the Hammond organ began being used in the church?

Stacey Holman: Shayla mentioned his name, Kenneth Morris. We have him to thank introducing the Hammond B-3 organ. We also have to say thank you to the Reverend Clarence Cobbs of the First Church of Deliverance for just being open to that and excited about receiving just this new kind of instrumentation. Kenneth Morris, like a lot of people have seen in the first two hours, and we'll see, there are a lot of people who are coming from different backgrounds and Kenneth Morris had a jazz background, had a group that he played with in New York and made his way to Chicago, and he introduced the organ.

They had midnight services, and that was the first radio broadcast services, and that was the first introduction of the Hammond B-3 organ. How it just played with the voice, how it imitated the voice, it was a new sound, so much so that might not have had the warmest reception, but it was so unique that a lot of churches from that point on started raising money so they could also have a Hammond B-3 organ as part of their service.

That was 1935. You cannot go through a church today, a Black church, and not see a Hammond B-3 organ and just hear a Hammond B-3 organ. It continues to be a staple and always will, I feel like, will be a staple.

Alison Stewart: We get to hear Corey Henry go for it in the series. [chuckles]

Stacey Holman: Oh my gosh. Just to see how he works the [unintelligible 00:22:15] That was artistry coordination I've never seen before. We all were just like, "Oh my gosh."

Speaker 4: [unintelligible 00:22:22].

Stacey Holman: Just incredible.

Alison Stewart: Shayla, another revolutionary aspect of gospel music was the business side of the industry. How did gospel provide an opportunity for Black-owned businesses in the early 20th century?

Shayla Harris: Well, we see, and we have already mentioned, Martin & Morris, which was the preeminent publishing company, but you also see things like record store owners who are innovating and recording sermons and distributing them and building their own national networks. One that we feature in the series is Joe Von Battle who ended up owning a record shop in the Black Bottom area of Detroit which was down the street from New Bethel Baptist.

He recorded all of C. L. Franklin's sermons and created this incredible repository and collection of sermons in more than 70 albums that created this style that we all came to know and love. Just the innovation in terms of distribution and marketing and making what is-- Was before gospel became commercialized, just church music, and making it popular music that was accessible by people beyond the four walls of the church.

That's a through line that we really developed throughout the series is this idea of creating new audiences for this music and this message to get to folks who may not even go to church but who really appreciate the sound, who appreciate the message that's coming out of the music, and finding that connection.

Alison Stewart: We've got a really great Tweet, someone who's listening to the segments. I says "Gospel contributed to our survival and my Black Brooklyn sheet music experience with my family," so thanks to whoever tweeted that who's listening in. In the film, Stacey, you look at how central gospel music was in the Civil Rights Movement. Without giving too much away-- I don't think we'll give it away because you have to see it to really experience it.

This relationship between Mahalia Jackson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the way that she was incredibly supportive of him and was able to use her instrument and her energy to help uplift him in difficult times. Stacey, would you share a little bit about that relationship and what we see in the film?

Stacey Holman: Yes, definitely. Earlier I said there's a conversation that the preachers always have with the musician, and this is in the church. It was no different than Mahalia's relationship with Martin Luther King. She was there with him in Detroit where he first gave the I Have a Dream speech. We can only imagine the weight that he was under for-- From a very young age until his assassination. She was that Balm in Gilead for him. Her voice was soothing, her voice encouraged him. Voice was something that he listened to and reached out to in those times where it was very challenging.

There is a clip, it's one of my favorite clips, in where you see that. For Dara, one of our scholars, [unintelligible 00:25:47] she sets it up so beautifully and so eloquently in terms of what might be going through King's mind and exactly what Mahalia does and what she says and how she sings that just stills him and just speaks to what Gospel does.

It encouraged him, it soothed him, it comforted him. That relationship, we-- Continues on, and we see even how she supports him up until the March in Washington. I won't do any spoiler alerts at that point right there. Also her pocketbook. She was an incredibly top-grossing gospel artist but not the only one at that time, and she definitely supported the movement that way as well.

Alison Stewart: Shayla, something we get from the series is, as gospel evolves, and it goes through the golden age and the platinum age, that there's a tension between generations, between different philosophies about people who are purists and then people who think that gospel music should not have a secular sound. Shayla, do you think there'll always be this tension within gospel?

Shayla Harris: Yes, there's certainly a tension not just within the church itself, but certainly within the Black community about this secular and sacred divide and the gap and chasm between those two things, that Saturday night and Sunday morning are two very distinct cultures. I think what we came to understand in this exploration is that you can have Sunday morning without Saturday night and vice versa.

This expression on Saturday night and the penance of Sunday morning are necessary for both to be relevant and consistent, that they're two sides of the same coin. What we've discovered is that, in every generation and every innovation, someone is calling that new style devil's music, that that music isn't true to the spirit of gospel because it didn't sound like what came before, and then eventually that new art form is embraced.

Then the next thing that comes along is itself called devil's music. I think that's just a generational developmental thing that happens in gospel and certainly happens in a lot of art forms that we see, particularly in music, but I think the really beautiful thing about gospel is how elastic and innovative it is to be able to embrace all of these new forms and new musical styles, and yet, at its heart, maintain that central message of being the word of God and helping people connect to this community spirit and energy.

Alison Stewart: The series is called Gospel. Last night the first two parts aired and final two parts will air tonight at 9:00 PM on PBS. I've been speaking with its producers and directors Stacey Holman and Shayla Harris. Thank you so much for your time today.

Stacey Holman: Thank you for [crosstalk].

Shayla Harris: Thank you for having us.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for giving me an excuse to play one of my favorite gospel songs. Let's go out on some Kirk Franklin.

[MUSIC - Kirk Franklin: Looking for You]

To all my people in the struggle

You think God's forgotten about you

Here's some pain medicine

Let's go!

[music]

You're in your car

You at the house, on your job

Be encouraged, boo

Come on

I've been down so long

I've been hurt for so long

There were times I thought I'd never see the break of day

It was hard for me to see your plan for me

And I tried to believe trouble won't last always

And night after night (night after night, night after night)

I pray, Lord, don't take your joy from me

Don't take it, Father

And then late one night (then late one night)

I read in your love letter that it's gonna get better

Let's go

I've been looking for you.

I realized that nothing else will satisfy me

Nothing

I'm so glad I found you

Now that I'm changed, no one can keep me away from you

Ooh

You've been so good to us

You brought us from a mighty long way

 

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