Leo Davis, Dec 27, 2020
Performer: Pastor Darryl Pettis
Blvd. Vocal Ensemble
Site: Original Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)
978
Mississippi Boulevard [Memphis, Tennessee]
Dr. Watts [type of hymn]
-snip-
The people singing are seated far apart from each other because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents information about Dr. Watts hymns and showcases African American churches singing the hymn "I Love The Lord".
This post also presents lyrics for a rendition of this hymn.
The Addendum of this post showcases a contemporary (non-lining out) rendition of this song that was sung by Whitney Houston in the movie "The Preacher's Wife".
The content of this post is presented for religious, historical, socio-cultural, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Dr. Isaac Watts for his musical legacy and thanks to all those who are featured in these videos. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publishers of these videos on YouTube.
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INFORMATION ABOUT ISAAC WATTS
From https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Watts
"Isaac Watts (17 July 1674 – 25 November 1748) was an English pastor, preacher, poet, and hymn writer. He is often called the "Father of English Hymnody": he was the first popular English hymn writer. Because of his short height and large head, in all his portraits Isaac Watts wore a large gown.[1] He wrote about 600 hymns including When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Am I a Soldier of the Cross, and Joy to the World.[2] He is buried today in Bunhill Fields Cemetary, London, England.[2]"...
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INFORMATION ABOUT DR. WATTS' HYMN "I LOVE THE LORD HE HEARD MY CRY"
From https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/i-love-the-lord-he-heard-my-cries "Psalm 116 I love the Lord, he heard my cries" with HARINGTON SMALLWOOD
"I. Text: Origins
English pastor and writer Isaac Watts (1674–1748) had an
important vision for how to improve the condition of psalmody in English
churches. He believed the Hebrew Psalms were best suited for corporate worship
when they could be updated to include intertestamental theology, expressed
through the lens of the Christian gospel, thus his collection was called Psalms
of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719 | Fig. 1). Many of
these creative re-interpretations remain in circulation 300 years later,
including My shepherd will supply my need (Psalm 23), Jesus shall reign
where’er the sun (Psalm 72), Our God, our help in ages past (Psalm 90), and Joy
to the world; the Lord is come (Psalm 98). Whereas these other texts have long
traditions with historic church tunes, his rendition of Psalm 116, “I love the
Lord, he heard my cries” has had its own special journey, preserved and then
reinvigorated within the African American community.
[...]
The hymns of Watts and the practice of lining out a Psalm carried over into the American colonies, and they were likewise taught to American slaves. An example of this conveyance of Watts to slaves was described in a letter from Samuel Davies (1723–1761) to John Wesley, July 1755:
They have generally very little help to read, and yet to my agreeable surprize, sundry of them, by dint of application, in their very few leisure hours, have made such a progress that they are able to read their Bible, or a plain author, very intelligibly. But few of their masters will be at the expense of furnishing them with books. I have supplied them to the utmost of my ability. They are exceedingly delighted with Watts’s songs. And I cannot but observe that the Negroes, above all of the human species I ever knew, have the nicest ear for music. They have a kind of ecstatic delight in psalmody. Nor are there any books they so soon learn, or take so much pleasure in, as those used in that heavenly part of Divine Worship.[1]
Shortly after the Civil War, one writer described what he felt was a typical evening service for a group of black worshipers in his area:
For some time, one can hear, though at a good distance, the vociferous exhortation or prayer of the presiding elder, or of the brother who has a gift that way, . . . and at regular intervals one hears the elder “deaconing” a hymn-book hymn, which is sung two lines at a time, and whose wailing cadences, borne on the night air, are indescribably melancholy.[2]
White churches gradually shifted away from lining out psalms and hymns. Among the last practitioners in the U.S. are the Old Regular and Primitive Baptists. In England, Charles Spurgeon was one of the last major advocates for lining out hymns.[3] Among blacks in the U.S., the practice has had greater retention as one of a few characteristic styles in the oral tradition, together with spirituals, and starting in the early 20th century, a wide array of blues-based gospel songs. In the black tradition, the lined-out hymns were not just an imitation of what they had learned from their oppressors, they took on new qualities as their singers took ownership of the style. The hymns do not follow a strict repeat-after-me, call-and-response formula, rather, the leader will offer a phrase as a prompt, then the group will respond in a loosely constructed, individually embellished melodic and cadential formula, where no two people are singing exactly the same thing, but the music ebbs and flows in a communal direction (a form of heterophony).
In churches where this is practiced, the congregation will have a very limited subset of lined-out hymns. Not all of these hymns use texts by Isaac Watts, and yet, somewhat ironically, in spite of Watts’s own distaste for the practice, black church communities have referred to the genre as “Dr. Watts” singing. Musicologist William T. Dargan described how this happened:
Though the Reverend Isaac Watts was not the first to compose or publish hymns, as opposed to the psalm paraphrases of the Calvinist tradition that followed the English Reformation, his published collections achieved unprecedented popularity in England and the American colonies, and this currency continued throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Therefore, slaves who learned hymns by various authors through the lining-out form apparently came to associate the entire tradition with the name and honorific title “Dr. Watts.”[4]
B. I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry
One particular lined-out hymn from the common repertoire, widely known and performed in this style, is “I love the Lord, he heard my cry.” Dargan explained its early significance in the life of the slave community and its influence on future generations:
In reaching out toward God, slaves received a voice of their own, a sound of crying and laughing, a musical language that codified the developing blend of Standard English and the black vernacular termed “Spoken Soul” by Rickford and Rickford (2000). Therefore, in the Watts paraphrase of Psalm 116, “I love the Lord, he heard my cries,” we can hear the believer’s gratitude not only that the Lord heard the cries but that there was an effective means of crying out. Through Dr. Watts, the ambient cries, calls, and hollers, which reflect the most direct of African musical transfers to American soil, were fashioned into a new form as the slaves and later freedpersons learned the verses of Watts and Wesley. During the nineteenth century, this new voice of weeping and wailing, the “moaning” sound, became a fixed pattern and a reference for still other African American musical styles.[5] "... -snip- Click https://hymnary.org/text/i_love_the_lord_he_heard_my_cries_and_pi for the original lyrics for Dr. Watt's hymn "I Love The Lord, He Heard My Cry". These aren't the same lyrics that were sung in the 20th century and are sung now in the 21st century by African Americans.
VIDEO #1
This video is found at the top of this post.
VIDEO #2 - I Love The Lord. He Heard My Cry
Uploaded by chj333 on May 3, 2009
Pastor T.L. James sings "Dr. Watts" in 1989 in Memphis, TN.
-snip-
Here's a viewer comment that contains the words to this version of this hymn:
chj333, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Oh1eAJi8z4
"Call: I love the Lord He heard my cry.
Response: I-I love the Lord He heard my cry.
Call: And pitied every groan.
Response: A-n-d pitied e-v-e-r-y groan.
Call: Long as I live while trouble rise.
Response: L-o-n-g as I-I live while trouble rise.
Call: I'll hasten to His throne.
Response: I'll ha-asten to-o-o His throne.
Call: I-I love the Lord He bowed His head.
Response: I-I love the Lord He bowed His head.
Call: And chased my grief away.
Response: A-n-d chased my grief away."
-snip-
Click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW3up6Sr65U for a contemporary version of this hymn as sung by Whitney Houston & The Georgia Mass Choir.
Also, click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uoxm1Fpa9ck for a contemporary version of this hymn as sung by Whitney Houston in the movie "The Preacher's Wife".
ADDENDUM - A NON- LINING OUT RENDITION OF " I LOVE THE LORD HE HEARD MY CRY"
Whitney Houston - I Love The Lord (The Preacher's Wife)
Revolution POP, January 6, 2021
-snip-
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher%27s_Wife
" "The Preacher's Wife" is a 1996 American Christmas fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Penny Marshall and starring Denzel Washington, Whitney Houston (in her last film released during her lifetime), and Courtney B. Vance. It is a remake of the 1947 film The Bishop's Wife,[2] which in turn was based on the 1928 novel of the same name by Robert Nathan."...
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