Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents excerpts from three online articles about Black American (Gospel) Quartet music.
The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, and socio-cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to the founders and early performers of Black American Gospel Quartet music. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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I was inspired to research information about Black Gospel Quartet singing as a result of the comment that Gospel singer Erica Campbell made to her five year old daughter Zaya after listening to her daughter sing a version of the insurance company jingle "Nationwide Is On Your Side". Erica said "You're definitely a Quartet singer. You sound GREAT!"
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-original-video-of-nationwide-is-on.html for that pancocojams post which is entitled "he Original Video Of The "Nationwide Is On Your Side" Jingle That Is Sung In A Black Gospel Quartet Style & How That Video Went Viral In 2023 & 2024."
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ONLINE ARTICLE EXCERPTS ABOUT BLACK AMERICAN (GOSPEL) QUARTET MUSIC
These excerpts are given in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only.
ARTICLE EXCERPT #1
From https://musicrising.tulane.edu/discover/themes/black-gospel/ "Black Gospel" by Ben Sandmel [Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana]
"Gospel music is a broad term for Christian religious music –
much of which has folkloric roots – that is prevalent in Louisiana’s
African-American and Anglo-American communities alike. Gospel music’s core
practitioners are found in congregations of various Protestant denominations,
although gospel music influence also permeates some Catholic choirs in south
Louisiana. For many practitioners of gospel music, the act of singing
constitutes a testimony about their personal belief, an effort to proselytize,
and a strong sense of community involvement.
The term gospel music per se, to denote such music, came
into use in the early twentieth century. Its emergence occurred due in large
part to the efforts of the African-American songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey, a.k.a.
“the father of gospel music,” whose compositions include “Peace in the Valley”
and “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” But the musical traditions that gospel music
encompasses can be traced back to diverse sources in eighteenth-century
America, and even further back in both Africa and Britain.
African-American gospel music is rooted in such antebellum song forms as spirituals and ring-shouts. Many such songs used ostensibly religious lyrics and Biblical themes as code-phrases for survival during slavery, and for plans to escape from bondage. Numerous West African aesthetic traits were prominent in this music – sacred and spiritual alike – including rhythmic syncopation, call and response, melisma (the bending of tones, and the stretching of one-syllable words into polysyllabic form), improvisation, and the lack of a porous boundary between performer and audience.
[…]
While traditional African-rooted traits have continually
flourished and remain popular today, a quite different African-American
religious style emerged during the latter nineteenth century. Known as jubilee
singing, it significantly re-interpreted traditional spirituals by utilizing
the European system of precisely annotated non-improvisational music in
performances by university/community ensembles and quartets. While jubilee
singing is rarely if ever heard today, it left a significant imprint of the classical
technique with which it was performed, which is especially prominent in
contemporary gospel choral singing.
[…]
By the 1920s, a significant new form of gospel arose – a
quartet sound that made exquisite use of four-part harmonies, sung in different
registers that maximized the dramatic effect of contrasting voices. This style,
predominately performed by male artists, remained popular until the latter part
of the twentieth century. Popularized nationally by groups such as the Golden
Gate Quartet, this style significantly influenced secular music, from groups
such as the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers, to doo-wop singers of the ‘50s,
and ‘60s soul groups such as the Temptations, the Four Tops, and Sly and the
Family Stone. Still extant today, quartet is now considered old-fashioned, but
in a venerable sense that accords it proper respect. Despite the very strong
stylistic similarities between such sacred and secular music, many gospel
singers, even today, staunchly refuse to sing secular songs, especially blues
numbers, which they dismiss as “the devil’s music.
[…]
From the mid-twentieth century into the 1970s, gospel-music
instrumentation expanded to include the Hammond organ, electric guitar,
electric bass, drums, and, in some cases, horns. Lyrics aside, the
instrumentation and aesthetics of this religious music were almost identical to
that of secular R&B, soul, and funk from the same era. When such exuberant
instrumental settings are challenged as inappropriate, gospel musicians often
rebut this criticism by citing the scriptural edict to “Make a joyful noise
unto the Lord.” The close stylistic similarity between “the devil’s music and
God’s music” is further underscored by the fact that many New Orleans blues and
R&B musicians go straight from playing Saturday nights gigs at bars (there
is no legally mandated closing time in New Orleans) to playing at church
services on Sunday morning. “Church gigs” are generally regarded as
better-paying jobs under more favorable conditions.”…
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This article also includes information about Anglo-American Gospel music.
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ARTICLE EXCERPT #2
From https://timeline.carnegiehall.org/genres/gospel-quartet Sacred Gospel Quartet
“We changed our name to the Jericho Quintet for the
clubs. During that time [1940s] the gospel audiences weren’t ready for a night
club group, so we worked under the Jericho Quintet in the [club] Café Society.
But back in the church we were the Dixie Hummingbirds.”
-Ira Tucker, Lead Singer, Dixie Hummingbirds
"The gospel quartet sound began evolving in the1940s when
jubilee quartets incorporated songs by pioneering gospel songwriters, such as
Thomas Dorsey and Lucie Campbell, in their repertoire. The Dixie Hummingbirds,
Golden Gate Quartet and the Soul Stirrers, among others, helped to introduce
and popularize this new musical style, initially rejected by ministers of
denominational churches, to the Black masses through their live performances
and regular broadcasts on local radio. In the 1950s some jubilee quartets had
begun slowly transforming into gospel quartets. This transformation included a
repertoire of nearly as many gospels as jubilee songs, and the addition of
instruments, particularly the guitar. Influenced by the bluesy melodies of
Thomas A. Dorsey’s gospel songs and the sanctified singing style of
Holiness-Pentecostal churches, gospel quartets emerged as a distinct tradition.
By the 1960s, several quartets had also added piano, Hammond organ and drums.
The Soul Stirrers is believed to have been the first jubilee quartet to shift completely to gospel music. They moved away from a collective group singing style to one that featured a lead tenor supported by refrain lines repeated throughout the song (“Glory, Glory, Halleluiah” and “Wonderful”). After World War II, from about 1945 to 1960, gospel quartets reigned supreme. Many semi-professional groups toured the country, and some made performing their full-time profession. They sang at special gospel programs held in auditoriums and other large venues. By the 1960s, the gospel quartet sound had acquired shouts, screams and growls, and other non-verbal utterances. Rhythmic thigh slapping and other bodily movements further intensified the style, represented best by the Five Blind Boys of Alabama led by Clarence Fountain (“Alone and Motherless”). New trends eclipsed the popularity of gospel quartets, but their sound resurfaced in rhythm and blues vocal groups, many of whose members began in gospel quartets, such as Billy Ward and the Dominoes and the Isley Brothers.
Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls were lead singers in gospel groups before turning to rhythm and blues. A new generation of singers is currently reviving the gospel quartet, such as Keith “Wonderboy” Johnson & The Spiritual Voices (“Be Right” and “Send A Revival”) and Nu Beginning featuring Damon Little (“Do Right” and “You Can’t Straddle the Fence”).
Most gospel groups moved back and forth between two traditions: the jubilee and gospel. They sang jubilee songs in close harmony, using a call-and-response format in which the soloist introduced a phrase of text that is answered and completed by the group. The highly syncopated performance style emphasized an even blend of voices in which falsetto voices and changing leads were common. By comparison, the gospel quartet style featured a soloist who freely improvised, interjecting moans, screams, etc., over short repetitive lines or doo-wop syllables sung by the group members.
The gospel music repertoire reinterprets folk spirituals and hymns and adds original compositions. Texts are often based on stories and themes from the New and Old Testaments as filtered through the lens of African American experiences.”
Joyce Marie Jackson, Ph. D. is Professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University. An ethnomusicologist and public folklorist, Dr. Jackson is a specialist in African American vernacular music traditions (specializing in jubilee/gospel quartets) and music of the African Diaspora….
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ARTICLE EXCERPT #3
From https://www.popmatters.com/020805-gospel-2496102097.html "Sunday Singing: The Black Gospel Quartet" by Mark Anthony Neal, 5 August 2002
…"Although black gospel quartets can obviously be traced back
to plantation life in the South (According to Alan young in his book Woke Me Up
This Morning, the first reference to black gospel quartets was made in 1851),
the “modern” quartets were born in the late 1920s and early 1930s with the
emergence of groups like the Heavenly Gospel Singers (1934) and most notably,
The Golden Gate Quartet (influenced by the Mills Brothers) of Norfolk, Virginia
— Norfolk was often referred to as the “home of the quartet”. The intricate
four-part harmonies that were the bedrock of the black gospel quartet
tradition, were honed over centuries in the work songs that enslaved blacks
incorporated into their daily activities as exploited laborers. These harmonies
have always had a “public” visibility that connected them more to the secular
world, though so many of the narratives were “other-worldly,” which would also
include visions of emancipation and a return to the “homeland.” For example,
lots of folks became aware of the Black Harmonic tradition in the 1870s via the
Fisk Jubilee Singers, who performed “Christian” music for audiences around the
globe as a means of raising money for Fisk University, one of the earliest
Historically Black University and Colleges (HBUCs).
According to Young, “although [gospel quartets] are an essential part of African-American religious music, few are directly affiliated with churches and much of their singing is done outside the church” (52). As Robin D.G. Kelley acknowledges in his book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, many gospel quartets were the focal point of CP (Communist Party) organizing efforts in the deep south, as many of the men in these groups had an intimate understanding of labor exploitation and the groups’ performances would draw large audiences. Kelley gives examples of blacks in Alabama changing the words of classics like “Give Me That Old Time Religion” to “Give Me That Old Communist Spirit” and the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, which organized its own quartet named the Bessemer Big Four Quartet.
Black gospel quartets, helped bridge the spiritual world with the secular one for many blacks. It’s not surprising then that so many of these men would ultimately have a profound impact on popular music when they made the transition to soul music. Lou Rawls, Johnnie Taylor, Wilson Pickett, Otis Clay and of course Sam Cooke (who became the template for the “Soul Man” of the 1960s) are the best examples of this, though Aretha Franklin remains the singularly most important defector from the church to the pop charts. The Soul Man tradition itself, which I (and others) have argued elsewhere gave a popular and accessible “voice” to the political struggles of blacks in the 1960s, can be traced to the “Hard” (Pentecostal or “sanctified”) quartet style that emerged in the early 1940s. Silas Steele of the Famous Blue Jay Singers and Rebert Harris, the original lead of the Soul Stirrers were among the fabulous lead singers who would embody that tradition. (Harris reportedly left the Soul Stirrers in 1950 because of increased “immoral” contact (sexual?) between quartets and their female fans, but was ironically replaced by Sam Cooke, who became gospel’s first acknowledged “sex symbol.”)
[…]
Rebert Harris is generally credited with creating the
“double-lead” style of “hard” gospel singing. By the 1950s, most of the “hard”
quartets were using this format and “Song of Praise” is a clear example of why
the style gave those groups a more powerful sound. The double-lead is also
employed on “Somewhere Listening for My Name” (1953), though Brownlee literally
heisted the song from Woodard. Towards the end of the song, where Brownlee’s is
shouting “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” you can already hear the style that would
later become connected to “hard” soul singers like Wilson Pickett, Joe Tex,
James Brown and to some extent, Jackie Wilson.
[…]
Part of the appeal of the Mighty Clouds, besides
their stylish performances, was the way the falsetto of tenor Johnny Martin was
a perfect balance for Ligon’s gruff vocals. On tracks like “Family Circle” and
“None But the Righteous” (a/b sides, 1962), Martin’s falsetto is as striking as
Ligon’s leads. Also, as witnessed with “Ain’t Got Long Here”, in the early
days, the group specialized in turning traditional tracks into distinct Mighty
Clouds’ songs. “Amazing Grace”, “Glory Hallelujah”, and “Nearer to Thee” all
from the Family Circle disc (1963), are some of the best examples. The Ligon
original “I Came to Jesus” is also included on Family Circle, though it is
amped up on the Mighty Clouds’ Live in Houston (1966) which captures their
brilliance as live performers. (Martin’s falsetto vocals on the live version of
“I Came to Jesus” have been locked in my head since I first heard them as a
two-year-old.)
Ligon admits that the Mighty Clouds of Joy “helped bring the contemporary sound into this field [gospel]. . . . We aimed to cross over and get played on R&B radio stations. And we did.” One of the best examples of this strategy was “Nobody Can Turn Me Around” (1965), which was directly influenced by the music of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. The Clouds recorded many of their sides in Chi-town under the supervision of the legendary Blues artist Willie Dixon, so the influence of Mayfield on their music is understandable. By the 1970s the group was getting regular play on soul stations (they also appeared on Soul Train) with songs like “Mighty High”. By then the popularity of quartet tradition had been usurped by large choirs (think Edwin Hawkins and the Northern California State Choir and their classic “pop” breakthrough “Oh Happy Day”).
Within black gospel circles, the quartet format still
thrives, with Ligon and Tucker, still at the helms of the Clouds and the Birds,
respectively. The Best of from the Mighty Clouds of Joy, The Dixie Hummingbirds
and the Five Blind Boys, doesn’t simply compile a collection of gospel hits,
but in some ways, helps to better document a tradition that is slowing
disappearing from the general memory of the American public."
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The audio part of this article features The Best of the Mighty Clouds of Joy (Universal), The Best of the Dixie Hummingbirds (Universal), and The Best of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi (Universal).
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