Gospel Music
Recommended Books
The recommended books below include print reference sources and books on a wide sampling of topics related to gospel music. Dictionaries and encyclopedias are classified in ML 102.G6. Most books on gospel music can be found in ML 3187 under forms and types of Christian music. Books are sorted by their call numbers for ease of browsing. Hover over the info icon to see a description.
Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music by
The Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music is the first comprehensive reference to cover this important American musical form. Coverage includes all aspects of both African-American and white gospel from history and performers to recording techniques and styles as well as the influence of gospel on different musical genres and cultural trends. With more than 60 contributors from universities and libraries as well as from gospel- and folk-music organizations, the Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music provides historic and biographical information for hundreds of artists who have shaped gospel music for more than 100 years.
Call Number: ML102.G6 E63 2005 (Music Reference)Publication Date: 2005
We'll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers by
From the congregations of small African churches in Memphis, Philadelphia, and Chicago to the nationwide fans of the Golden Gate Quartet, Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, Edwin Hawkins, and others, gospel music has profoundly influenced American culture. This book brings together some of the best pioneering composers and shows the impact of their work.
Call Number: ML390 .W274 1992Publication Date: 1992
Woke Me up This Morning: Black Gospel Singers and the Gospel Life by
Many studies of African-American gospel music spotlight history and style. This one, however, is focused mainly on grassroots makers and singers. Most of those included here are not stars. A few have received national recognition, but most are known only in their own home areas. Yet their collective stories presented in this book indicate that Black gospel music is one of the most prevalent forms of contemporary American song. Its author Alan Young is a New Zealander who came to the South seeking authentic blues music. Instead, he found gospel to be the most pervasive, fundamental music in the contemporary African-American South. Blues, he concludes, has largely lost touch with its roots, while gospel continues to express authentic resources. Conducting interviews with singers and others in the gospel world of Tennessee and Mississippi, Young ascertains that gospel is firmly rooted in community life. Woke Me Up This Morning includes his candid, widely varied conversations with a capella groups, with radio personalities, with preachers, and with soloists whose performances reveal the diversity of gospel styles. Major figures interviewed include the Spirit of Memphis Quartet and the Reverend Willie Morganfield, author and singer of the million-selling What Is This? who turned his back on fame in order to pastor a church in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. All speak freely in oral-history style here, telling how they became involved in gospel music and religion, how it enriches their lives, how it is connected to secular music (especially blues), and how the spiritual and the practical are united in their performances. Their accounts reveal the essential grassroots force and spirit of gospel music and demonstrate that if blues springs from America's soul, then gospel arises from its heart.
Call Number: ML394 .Y68 1997Publication Date: 1997
Got to Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel by
Mahalia Jackson was one of the greatest gospel singers America has ever known, the woman who almost singlehandedly brought Black gospel from the churches of Chicago into the public eye. In her pink, floor-length organza gown, her black beehive piled high atop her head, and her foot-stomping, hip-swaying style, Mahalia was gospel personified. And whether she was singing in a local church, performing at Harlem's Golden Gate, or appearing on The Dinah Shore Show, her spiritual bewitchery and monumental voice were sure to lift the souls of those listening into an astonishing state of grace. Now, Jules Schwerin, the producer of Mahalia Jackson's Grammy award-winning record for best gospel and soul in 1976 and the creator of a highly acclaimed film documentary on Mahalia, brings us a firsthand account of the Queen of Gospel, based on his interviews with Mahalia. We hear Mahalia as she remembers the local preacher who influenced her style: "There was a way that he would preach, would have a singing tone in his voice, that was sad. And it done something to me....It is the basic way that I sing." We follow Mahalia to Chicago, where her partnership with Thomas A. Dorsey (the Father of Gospel) brought her local fame, and where a young disc jockey named Studs Terkel invited her to appear on his radio program, successfully introducing her and gospel music to the airwaves.
Call Number: ML420.J17 S4 1992Publication Date: 1992
How Sweet the Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel by
There is no artistic outpouring more likely to stir the soul and shake the rafters than the African American sacred folk music called gospel. How Sweet the Sound takes us from Los Angeles, where the first notes of the undeniably new sound burst forth in 1906, to the Deep South, where ecstatic worshippers in the Pentecostal churches forged the gospel tradition. Then from Chicago, with the mass northern migration of African Americans in the 1930s, gospel entered the mainstream of American popular culture. In How Sweet the Sound, music historian Horace Clarence Boyer charts gospel's emergence as a discrete musical style in the early 1900s. He details its heyday in the years from 1945 to 1955 and describes its development through the 1960s, when the soulful strains of the once-churchbound music could be heard in the finest concert halls in the country. A gospel singer himself, Boyer brings added insight to the story of this extraordinary indigenous American art form and the equally extraordinary people who created it. He explains the various styles and stages of the music, and refers to more than a hundred of gospel's finest, from Thomas A. Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson to the Soul Stirrers and Aretha Franklin. Rare performance photographs and backstage studies by Lloyd Yearwood illustrate Boyer's text.
Call Number: ML3187 .B7 1995Publication Date: 1995
People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music by
People Get Ready: A New History of Gospel Music is a passionate, celebratory, and carefully researched chronology of one of America's greatest treasures. From Africa through the spirituals, from minstrel music through jubilee, and from traditional to contemporary gospel, People Get Ready shows the links between styles, social patterns, and artists. The emphasis is on the stories behind the songs and musicians: the stories that helped to create the incomparable art form. From the nameless slaves of Colonial America to Donnie McClurkin, Yolanda Adams, and Kirk Franklin, People Get Ready provides, for the first time, an accessible overview of this musical genre. The book offers intriguing new insights into the often forgotten era between the Civil War and the rise of jubilee - that most intriguing blend of minstrel music, barbershop harmonies, and the spiritual. Also chronicled are the connections between some of gospel's precursors (Blind Willie Johnson, Arizona Dranes, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe) and modern gospel stars, including Andrae Crouch and Clare Ward. Robert Darden knits together a number of narratives, and combines history, musicology, and spirituality into a coherent whole, stitched together by the stories of dozens of famous and forgotten musical geniuses.
Call Number: ML3187 .D37 2004Publication Date: 2004
The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church by
In the early 1930s an exciting new musical form arose in Chicago known as the gospel blues. The principal figure in the creation of this distinctive music was a blues pianist named Thomas A. Dorsey, who had considerable success in the 1920s as a pianist, composer, and arranger for such prominent blues singers as Ma Rainey. In the 1930s, Dorsey became increasingly involved in the African-American churches in Chicago. His background in the blues was an important influence on his composing and singing of church music. At first the "respectable" Chicago churches rejected this newform, not only because of Dorsey's blues playing and singing, but more because of the excitement in the church congregation that this new gospel blues produced. However, by the end of the 1930s, the power of the music had made gospel blues a major force in African-American churches and religion. Through the voices of such singers as Mahalia Jackson, gospel blues helped shape the development of American popular music. In this book, Harris looks at the story of the rise of gospel blues as seen through the career of its founding figure. Harris also places it in the broader contexts of African-American religion and the large urban migration of African-Americans after World War I.
Call Number: ML3187 .H37 1992Publication Date: 1992
Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age by
Black gospel music grew from obscure nineteenth-century beginnings to become the leading style of sacred music in Black American communities after World War II. Jerma A. Jackson traces the music's unique history, profiling the careers of several singers--particularly Sister Rosetta Tharpe--and demonstrating the important role women played in popularizing gospel. Female gospel singers initially developed their musical abilities in churches where gospel prevailed as a mode of worship. Few, however, stayed exclusively in the religious realm. As recordings and sheet music pushed gospel into the commercial arena, gospel began to develop a life beyond the church, spreading first among a broad spectrum of African Americans and then to white middle-class audiences. Retail outlets, recording companies, and booking agencies turned gospel into big business, and local church singers emerged as national and international celebrities. Amid these changes, the music acquired increasing significance as a source of Black identity. These successes, however, generated fierce controversy. As gospel gained public visibility and broad commercial appeal, debates broke out over the meaning of the music and its message, raising questions about the virtues of commercialism and material values, the contours of racial identity, and the nature of the sacred. Jackson engages these debates to explore how race, faith, and identity became central questions in twentieth-century African American life.
Call Number: ML3187 .J23 2004Publication Date: 2004
Happy in Service of the Lord: African-American Sacred Vocal Harmony Quartets in Memphis by
"Happy in the Service of the Lord" provides an in-depth look at the development of the African-American gospel quartet. Focusing largely on Memphis - long famous for its blues, jazz, and soul music - Kip Lornell reveals the special contributions that quartet members have made to the cultural and musical identity of the city. The author traces the evolution of such groups as the I. C. Glee Club Quartet, the Spirit of Memphis, the Sunset Travelers, and the Southern Wonders from the early 1920s to the late 1980s. Drawing on extensive interviews and field research, Lornell describes a unique world of radio personalities, quartet unions, fans, promoters, and singing teachers. What emerges is a fascinating picture of the complex, multilayered relationships within these communities, enhanced by a probing analysis of the gospel quartets' place within the larger contexts of popular culture and African-American history. "Happy in the Service of the Lord" was first published in 1988. For this second edition, Lornell has added a new chapter on the role of gospel composers and the importance of spirituality in quartet performances. The first chapter, a survey of the history of quartet singing across the United States from Reconstruction to the present, has been completely rewritten to reflect the most recent scholarship. Lornell has also updated and expanded the book's audiography and bibliography.
Call Number: ML3187 .L67 1995Publication Date: 1995
If You Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition by
How do you survive leaving everything you know to try to reconstruct your life and future in a new way? What do you carry with you on your journey to the new place? Migration looms large as a theme in twentieth-century African American life. Bernice Johnson Reagon uses this theme as a centering structure for four essays that examine different genres of African American sacred music as they manifested themselves throughout the twentieth century and within her own life. The first essay examines the evolution of gospel music by looking at the work of Charles Albert Tindley, Thomas Andrew Dorsey, Reverend Smallwood Williams, Roberta Martin, Pearl William Jones, and Richard Smallwood. In the next essay Reagon relates the story of Deacon William Reardon and the prayer bands that carried the tradition of South Carolina spirituals through the twentieth century in the communities of Washington DC, and Baltimore. The concert spiritual tradition is the subject of the third essay, and the final essay explores how stories about African American women of the nineteenth century became a source of strength for Reagon in her development as an African American woman, singer, fighter, and scholar.
Call Number: ML3187 .R3187 2001Publication Date: 2001
The Holy Profane: Religion in Black Popular Music by
Winner of the 2004 ARSC Award for Best Research in Recorded Rock, Rhythm & Blues or Soul, The Holy Profane explores the strong presence of religion in the secular music of twentieth-century African American artists as diverse as Rosetta Tharpe, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Tupac Shakur. Analyzing lyrics and the historical contexts which shaped those lyrics, Teresa L. Reed examines the link between West-African musical and religious culture and the way African Americans convey religious sentiment in styles such as the blues, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, and gangsta rap. She looks at Pentecostalism and Black secular music, minstrelsy and its portrayal of Black religion, the Black church, "crossing over" from gospel to R&B, images of the Black preacher, and the salience of God in the rap of Tupac Shakur. Traditionally, west European culture has drawn distinct divisions between the secular and the sacred in music. Liturgical music belongs in church, not on pop radio, and artists who fuse the two are guilty of sacrilege. In the West-African worldview, however, both music and the divine permeate every imaginable part of life--so much so that concepts like sacred and secular were entirely foreign to African slaves arriving in the colonies. The Western influence on African Americans eventually resulted in more polarization between these two musical forms, and Black musicians who grew up singing in church were often lamented as hellbound once they found popular success. Even these artists, however, never completely left behind their West-African musical ancestry. Reed's exploration of this trend in African American music connects the work of today's artists to their West-African ancestry--a tradition that over two-hundred years of Western influence could not completely stamp out.
Call Number: ML3479 .R42 2003Publication Date: 2003
Recommended Scores
Voice with Piano:
- The Best of Andraé Crouch, 2nd ed.
M2198 .C76 B4 2007 - The Best Praise & Worship Songs Ever
(includes songs in many styles)
M2198 .B47 2004 - Gospel's Greatest (a fake book)
M2198 .G659 2000 - Hezekiah Walker & The Love Fellowship Crusade Choir
M2198 .H49 1997 - Mississippi Mass Choir: The First Twenty Years
(with printable .pdfs on CD-ROM)
M2198 .F57 2009 - The Rebirth of Kirk Franklin
M2198 .F73 R4 2002 - WOW Gospel 2006 Songbook: 30 of the Year's
Top Gospel Artists and Songs
M2198 .W69 2006
For Pianists:
- Gospel Improv: Jazz-Style Improvisations for Solo Piano
M38.5 .G65 2005 - Gospel Keyboard Styles, by Mark Harrison
MT239 .H335 G6 2002
Video Resources
Films available on Kanopy (bsu.kanopy.com -- log in required from off campus)
Let's Have Some Church Detroit Style -- Faith, Hope, and Music
Mavis! Gospel Music Legend and Civil Rights Activist Mavis Staples
Rejoice and Shout: Gospel Music and African-American Christianity
Interlibrary Loan
Users are encouraged to search for items beyond University Libraries' catalog via RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and WorldCat. Materials not available in print or online may be requested through Interlibrary Loan. Please allow up to seven days for electronic delivery and up to fourteen days for delivery of physical items.