Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part I of a three part pancocojams series on the lining out hymn/Gospel song "I Feel Good". This religious song is also known as "I Feel Good Good Good".
Part I of this series presents information about African American lining out hymns and showcases a video filmed in 2002 of a lining out version of "I Feel Good". My partial transcription of that song is included in this post. Additions and corrections are welcome.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-canton-spirituals-i-feel-good-with.html for Part II of this series. Part II showcases a sound file of "I Feel Good" and presents several text examples of lyrics for Gospel versions of that song.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2018/11/three-youtube-examples-of-gospel-song-i.html for Part III of this series. Part III showcases three videos of Gospel renditions of "I Feel Good".
The content of this post is presented for religious, cultural, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to the unknown composers of this song and thanks to the Together As One Hymn Choir for their rendition of this song. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.
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Click the "lining out hymns" tag below for other pancocojams post about this music.
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INFORMATION ABOUT LINING OUT HYMNS
Excerpt #1:
"This quote appeared in the Black Music Research Journal Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago, Vol. 15 NO. 1, Spring 1995; reposted from http://www.hymnchoir.org/
"This way of singing hymns is called "Dr. Watts" , named after the 18th century composer of English hymns, "Dr Isaac Watts. These songs are also called "long meter", the "Old One Hundreds", and "surge singing."
Here's some more information about this type of soulful singing:
"According to William T. Dargan, Ph.D., Professor of Music at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, the old style a capella "spirituals and hymns are characterized by two and three part modal harmonies, gradual but drastic quickening of tempos, frequent and strong body movements as well as polyrhythmic clapping and stomping patterns.
Developed by slaves during the camp meeting revivals of the early nineteenth century, spirituals are rhythmic, call-and-response song forms that continue in oral tradition among African-American congregations.
"Lining out" is a method of performing a psalm or hymn in which the leader gives out the words, or the melody, or both, one or two lines at a time, to be followed by the congregation. This practice began in the early seventeenth century by the British Parish Churches as an aid for those who were unable to read."...
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Excerpt #2:
From https://www.urbancusp.com/2014/09/lined-hymn-african-american-vocal-tradition/ "The Lined-Hymn: An African American Vocal Tradition" By Urban Cusp on September 23, 2014
..."In the sweltering summers of my childhood, I spent many Sunday mornings with family tracking that clay into my grandparents’ small church. It was here where the elders – iron men and women who’d seen and survived a lynch-happy South, Jim Crow laws, and the hardscrabble lives of sharecroppers – brought their troubles to the altar and renewed the faith that sustained them. The Sunday ritual began with a time-honored tradition that is equally haunting and hopeful: a singing method called “lining a hymn.”
Lining a hymn is a common art form that has been practiced for centuries. The basic scheme is a leader, or precentor, raises the song by reciting a lyric, and the congregation carols the line back. This is done a cappella and follows a distinct melody that may sound a bit haphazardly constructed to the untrained ear. As is to be expected with such an old practice, it has many names: lining-out, surge-singing, deaconing, long meter, or Dr. Watts (named after 17th century Englishman and songwriter Isaac Watts who produced hymnals).
This method of singing originated in England as a way of compensating for the lack of hymnals and facilitating participation for illiterate parishioners. Gilbert Chase writes in America’s Music that the practice was legally sanctioned by Westminster in 1644, citing,
“for the present, where many of the congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister, or some other fit person appointed by him and the other officers, to read the psalm, line by line, before the singing thereof.”
This practice made its way to Scotland and eventually across the Atlantic to the colonies, from northeasterly winds in New England to the red clay of Georgia. Upon arrival on the American shores, whites and blacks in various parts of the land adopted the custom to their developing subcultures. During slavery, lining a hymn accompanied blacks’ conversion to Christianity and flourished because of their forced illiteracy. Whites in the hills of Appalachia sing it a little differently than blacks along the river banks of Mississippi. No matter the melodic dialect, lining a hymn is intrinsically American. The Smithsonian Institute calls it “the oldest English-language religious music in oral tradition in North America.”
There’s speculation that the oral tradition of many West African cultures made the practice particularly appealing to black slaves thrust and pressed into servitude. The horrific conditions of their existence certainly made the Christian teachings of a utopian afterlife attractive. As with the more familiar Negro spirituals, the lyrics of lined-out hymns center on enduring suffering with strength, believing that an end to grief will one day come.
As such, in the black church, the purpose of lining a hymn arguably always has been more than a utilitarian practice based on the availability of songbooks. It serves as a choral binding of the congregation, one to another, expressed in the harmonies of shared sorrows and the strength drawn from chords of accord.
After the end of slavery, the Reconstruction period, and Jim Crow, this custom has slowly begun to fade. The spread of literacy among blacks, the large migration north in search of economic opportunity, and the advent of gospel’s popularity has mostly relegated lining-out to that of an ancient art. When it’s heard in urban centers or contemporary black churches, it’s often aperiodic commemoration. It still, however, lives on in rural corners of the country where the centuries-old pain of the black American experience hangs in the air and covers the soil."...
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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTE [revised November 10, 2018]
I don't know when the religious song "I Feel Good" was first sung or recorded. However, based on comments that are found in video/sound file summaries or discussion threads for this song, "I Feel Good" is an old Black (African American) Gospel song.
My guess is that the oldest styles of singing "I Feel Good" are like the lining out example that is showcased in Part I of this series and the Gospel style that is showcased as Example #3 in Part III of this series.
The sub-title for the video which is featured in this post categorizes this version of "I Feel Good" as a spiritual. I've seen African American lining out hymns categorized as spirituals on some other websites. However, I'm not sure if lining out hymns should be categorized as spirituals, or if they are a [later?] sub-section of spirituals or a sub-section of Gospel music*.
I'd love it if any musicologists or any other person would share whether they think that any or all African American lining out hymns should be categorized as spirituals.
*This NPR (National Public Radio) broadcast referred to lining out hymns as Gospel music: "Before Churches Had Songbooks, There Was 'Lined-Out' Gospel"; October 15, 2013; Heard on Morning Edition; transcript by John Burnett; https://www.npr.org/2013/10/15/234606252/before-church-songbooks-there-was-lined-out-singing
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This broadcast focused on White American lining out hymns and the word "gospel" may have been used as a synonym for "religious music".
That said, would it be more accurate to refer to African American lining out hymns as Gospel than Spirituals?
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SHOWCASE VIDEO: I Feel Good
Hymn Choir Music Channel, Published on Oct 12, 2015
Leader: Sister Joann McCrorey
The Award Winning Together As One Hymn Choir, Volume 3, Recorded Live at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Rock Hill, SC November 22, 2002.
Author Unknown - Negro Spiritual - Oral Tradition
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PARTIAL LYRICS*
(composer unknown; as sung by Together As One Hymn Choir, recorded Live at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Rock Hill, SC November 22, 2002)
I feel good
I feel so good
I feel good
I feel so good
just as long as I know that
I’ve got Jesus
I feel good
I been to the Jordan river
and I been baptized
just as long as I know
that I got Jesus
I feel good
I feel good
I feel so good
I feel good
I feel so good
just as long as I know
that I’ve got Jesus
I feel good
I sat near my mother*
And my mother said
Won’t be back till judgement day
but as long as I’ve got Jesus
I feel good.
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The leader sings the first line and the rest of the choir (and the congregation) then sings along.
*This is my transcription of this video. Italics means that I'm not sure about this verse.
This transcription doesn't include all of the iterations of each verse and there's a least one verse I couldn't understand. Verses followed by the chorus were repeated more than once.
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This concludes Part I of this three part series.
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