|
Jerry Zolten,
author of
Great
God A'Mighty - The Dixie Hummingbirds:
Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Music
_____________________________
From the Jim Crow world of 1920s Greenville, South Carolina, to Greenwich
Village's Café Society in the '40s, to their 1974 Grammy-winning
collaboration on "Loves Me Like a Rock," the Dixie Hummingbirds have been
one of gospel's most durable and inspiring groups.
When James Davis and his high-school friends starting singing together in
a rural South Carolina church they could not have foreseen the road that
was about to unfold before them. They began a ten-year jaunt of "wildcatting,"
traveling from town to town, working local radio stations, schools, and churches,
struggling to make a name for themselves.
By 1939 the a cappella singers were recording their four-part harmony spirituals
on the prestigious Decca label. By 1942 they had moved north to Philadelphia
and then New York where, backed by Lester Young's band, they regularly brought
the house down at the city's first integrated nightclub, Café Society.
From there the group rode a wave of popularity that would propel them to
nation-wide tours, major record contracts, collaborations with Stevie Wonder
and Paul Simon, and a career still vibrant today as they approach their
seventy-fifth anniversary.
In Great God A'Mighty - The Dixie Hummingbirds: Celebrating the Rise of Soul
Gospel Music, author Jerry Zolten brings vividly to life the growth of a
gospel group and of gospel music itself.* He joins us in a conversation
about the Hummingbirds, and on gospel music's golden age.
Dixie Hummingbirds, mid 1970's
From left: Beachey Thompson, Ira Tucker, Howard Carroll, James Davis,
James Walker
"(The Hummingbirds' singing) gave us inspiration. Whenever they
came around, it was a tremendous uplift that helped us cope and deal with
all of the negative things that was going on at the time. Racism, social
injustice, economic injustice. The 'Birds would sing and it would just
seem that heaven came open and God had come down. We just felt like
we could deal more with what we had to deal with, after hearing them."
-Pastor Gadson Graham, Canaan Baptist Church, Paterson, New Jersey
*
Nobody Knows The Trouble I See
 , by the Dixie Hummingbirds
_____________________________
JJM Why did you choose to profile the Dixie Hummingbirds
and not the Golden Gate Quartet or other gospel groups of that era?
JZ I guess one way to answer that is to say
that ultimately the Hummingbirds chose me. I had been working with another
gospel group, the Fairfield Four, who had a lengthy career dating back to
even before the Hummingbirds began. The Fairfields were from Nashville and
were influenced by Birmingham, Alabama gospel, and had been major players
within the African American community up until the time of their retirement
in 1950. They were retired for over thirty years when I ran into them in
the early eighties. I fell in love with how they sounded and tried to get
them back into touring and recording, which they did, ultimately recording
for Warner Brothers.
During this same time I had been trying to track down the Dixie Hummingbirds
because I wanted to present them at various festivals and venues I was involved
in. Eventually, our paths crossed and they became aware of my work with the
Fairfield Four and wanted some of that to happen for themselves, and it was
in this context that Ira Tucker of the Hummingbirds asked me if I would consider
writing a book about them. I had actually been contemplating writing a book
about the Fairfield Four, but the thing that made the Dixie Hummingbirds
appeal to me was that they came with ready-built name recognition which was
what I needed in order to interest a publisher. Also, I knew that their career
encompassed much of the history of twentieth century gospel, and that they
were one of the top groups in the genre. They touched more bases in and out
of the gospel genre than any other group I could think of. Since I wanted
to tell a deep gospel story and at the same time throw a spotlight on some
of the under-appreciated heroes of the genre, centering the book on the Dixie
Hummingbirds seemed like the right thing to do.
| JJM James Davis was the founder of the
Hummingbirds. What was his musical foundation?
JZ He grew up in the Meadow Bottoms area
of Greenville, South Carolina, during the time of Jim Crow, and in a family
that was totally involved in the church -- in his case the Church of God
Holiness. The area was called Meadow Bottoms -- which was actually Meadow
Street -- because it was flooded out and the houses were built up on stilts
to keep them from getting flooded. The church was right there in the
neighborhood.
His father was an itinerant who would leave for long periods of time, but
when he was around he steeped himself in music.. Music was the one thing
that James Davis' father took seriously. He began training young James in
the art of singing as soon as he was old enough to make sense of it. The
method he taught was shape note singing. If you look at a shape on a piece
of paper, a triangle might be "doe", a square might be "mi", a circle might
be "ray," and you learn to associate a note with a shape, and that is how
James learned to sing.
He was aware of other kinds of music in Greenville. While it wasn't a huge
town, they did have a venue where some out of town bands with a reputation
would come through. For example, Davis distinctly remembers when Cab Calloway
came to town. . He would be aware of performers like Calloway, and he would
know their music through the radio, but he wouldn't necessarily go to see
a show. He saw many street performers -- gospel singers, blues singers --
and, of course, he constantly heard choirs and quartets in church, and you
could say that those experiences were his musical roots. By the time he was
ten or eleven years old, he was singing in a gospel group. |
The Dixie Hummingbirds
James Davis, top right
Let's Go Out To The Programs |
JJM The church shaped him in so many ways,
and it certainly shaped his values as a performer. What were the "Davis Rules"?
JZ James Davis was famous for his rules,
not just within the Dixie Hummingbirds, but celebrated amongst all their
fellow travelers on the gospel highway. Everybody knew that Davis ruled the
group with a legendary iron hand. By and large the rules were pretty practical,
and were based in experiences he had early on. His number one rule was
"absolutely no drinking of any kind at any time or any place," which was
rooted in one of his earliest experiences. When he was still a kid, he and
some of his friends got a little gig singing at a church some distance from
home, and one of the boys found some liquor and got tipsy on it. Word got
back to his mother and she made him break up that group and James never forgot
that. Even later, as he was trying to get the Hummingbirds into professional
shape, he had singers who turned out to be drinkers who he couldn't rely
on. So, because he wanted to be professional, no drinking was his number
one rule.
Another rule was that no women could be in the car at any time. There was
an incident when Jimmy Bryant, the 'Birds popular bass singer, had a lightly
complected girlfriend, and the word spread that an angry mob was going to
run the group out of town. People thought he was flirting with a white woman.
The 'Birds had to slip away before there was any trouble and Mr. Davis took
firm cautions from then on. Another dimension to his rules was his fundamental
belief that the 'Birds had an obligation to live the life they sang about,
and that if you weren't an exemplar in the world of gospel, you wouldn't
be taken seriously. In time, the rules would cover everything from public
image to sheer business acumen; for example, administering fines if you were
late for rehearsal, no curse words could be used at any time in any place.
No listening to blues music was allowed, and group members were not allowed
to play anything other than gospel music in the juke box. These rules had
to do with living the life they sang about and some had to do with maintaining
a high standard of professionalism.
| JJM You claimed Jimmy Bryant of the 'Birds
to be a sort of Dennis Rodman of gospel.
JZ Yes, there is an illusion that one has
of gospel singers as being "holier than thou," but, like anyone else, some
of them were quite flamboyant. Bryant, their star bass singer, really couldn't
sing bass all that well, but he was good looking, knew how to work the crowd,
and, as the guys would say, he knew how to "sell it." He had a persona that
communicated to others that he knew what he was doing and was right where
he belonged. He would lean over backwards, jump, gesture, and do whatever
it took to get the crowd's attention. He was a colorful showman and that
is what prompted Mr. Davis to compare him to Dennis Rodman. |
The 'Birds impacted their secular counterparts in so many
ways. James Davis likes to tell how they were always about a decade ahead
of the curve. Back in the forties, the 'Birds were performing the a cappella
harmonies that would inform the doo wop and jump blues of the fifties. But
when that music was in its prime in the fifties, the 'Birds had already moved
on to the electric guitar soul sound that would influence the
sixties. |
JJM Zora Neale Hurston wrote that spirituals
were "variations on a theme, bent on expression of feelings. The congregation
is bound by no rules. No two times singing is alike, so that we must consider
the rendition of a song not as a final thing, but as a mood. It won't be
the same thing next Sunday." What was the source material for spirituals?
JZ That is an interesting question because
those sources are part known, part unknown. The knowable sources are the
Anglo hymns, the songs like those of Dr. Watts that the masters taught the
slaves in their earliest days on American soil. The hope was to teach them
English, provide a spiritual bond in a kind of twisted vision of Christianity
where the "meek"-- read "slaves"-- shall inherit the earth. The unknown would
be the African songs and styles and ideas that slaves brought here with them.
Over time, the African would reshape the Anglo and out of it all arose the
spirituals, the first tradition of black religious singing, and, as with
any oral culture, it is impossible to know who wrote them. Songs like "Swing
Low Sweet Chariot" and "Roll Jordan Roll" and "Go Down Moses."
One element that I could not capture in my research is what those songs might
have sounded like as they were sung in the southern congregations Zora Neale
Hurston describes, where people are just making it up as they go. This was
happening in little churches all throughout the South. The spirituals would
get passed along from generation to generation. They were not written down
-- they were truly an oral tradition.
When the Hummingbirds first started performing, they simply picked songs
that they had already learned. Of course, by the time they began singing,
the tradition was no longer strictly oral and lyrics could be found written
down. But the Birds did not learn that way. They didn't go to books and read
what musicologists may have notated about particular songs, they simply took
songs they had heard and reworked them out loud. The 'Birds would take songs
such as those Hurston describes, that had no arrangements -- only lyrics,
a melody and perhaps a rag tag harmony -- and they would create some order
to them. They would work them out for four or five voices, and work them
out in their heads, never singing them the same way twice.
Flying Home |
JJM You quote Lionel Hampton as saying, "I started
working on my musicians to play with that kind of inspiration. And I think
I was the first to bring all that music from the Holiness church -- the beat,
the hand clapping, the shouting -- out into the band business." You wrote
that gospel, unlike jazz and blues, remained "culturally confined." What
was borrowed from gospel by popular musicians of Hampton's era?
JZ For one, the importance of improvisation
to performance. I believe that blues and jazz performers all draw from the
well of religious music, which demands a certain improvisatory quality. It
also exposes the artist emotionally, where he is not worrying so much about
getting the note right as he is getting it emotionally ready to perform,
so the audience feels something. From that a certain honesty is demanded
and communicated.
A good piece of music is designed to transport you to some other place. I
think the great jazz and blues musicians may have first felt this when listening
to and in many cases actually performing religious music, and then took it
into mainstream music -- perhaps never quite with the vigor or totality of
a religious performance, but with many of those earmarks. I don't think Lionel
Hampton was the first, but he certainly was one who drew on those traditions. |
JJM Were groups like the Hummingbirds successful
in bringing an understanding of black culture to a white audience?
JZ I don't know that the 'Birds did that
in their earliest days. They made their first record in 1939, and it isn't
likely that many people beyond those in the African American community bought
it. As the forties unfolded, however, gospel groups were occasionally breaking
through to the white mainstream, but never in the way people like Hampton,
Charlie Christian, Fletcher Henderson or, ultimately, Duke Ellington did.
JJM You wrote, "Gospel music was one of the
few occupations for people of color that offered them a measure of dignity
and promise."
JZ Yes, there weren't many options. James
Davis and Ira Tucker both expressed that they didn't want to be stuck in
South Carolina doing "drudge work." They felt that was their fate if they
remained. Davis joked with me about how the only things a black person could
do to break out was to be either a boxer or an entertainer. While being an
entertainer was a way out, being a jazz or blues musician would bring down
the wrath of the religious black community upon you. So, if you sang spirituals,
that would get you blessings from everybody, except you would never achieve
mainstream success. That would change a little with a group like the Golden
Gates, who were the best example of a gospel group who managed to break through,
although they never made the financial gains that groups who sang secular
music would -- the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots, for example.
| JJM What were the circumstances that led
to the Hummingbirds' move from South Carolina to Philadelphia?
JZ They had pretty much saturated the South
Carolina region, which relative to the Northeast, for example, is a very
rural part of the country. By 1941 they had played every church a hundred
times over, and they were finding that if they wanted to keep working as
professionals, they would have to travel further and further away. By then
they had families growing, and it was getting to be really very frustrating
for them to be away so much. They were hoping to establish themselves in
a heavily populated place so they would not have to travel so far and wide.
As it turned out, an old friend of theirs from Florida, Charlie Newsome,
was managing a group called the Royal Harmony Singers. Through efforts, the
Royals got a gig at WCAU radio in Philadelphia. However, the group fell apart
before the show got off the ground, and Newsome contacted the only other
group he knew well, the Hummingbirds, and asked if they wanted the gig. One
of the guys in the 'Birds, Barnie Parks, had a little family in Philadelphia,
and the city was right on that corridor from New York to Washington and
Baltimore. It was just what the 'Birds were looking for, so they decided
to make the trip. They also hoped that by moving north they would escape
the prejudice in the South, although it turned out there was plenty of that
there as well, it was just packaged a little differently. Nonetheless, they
had no regrets, and that is how they came to Philadelphia. |
The 'Birds, performing on WCAU Radio, Philadelphia
Lord, Come See About Me |
*
John Hammond
photo from Frank Driggs Collection |
JJM They had some success getting on the
radio, performing on the radio station right away.
JZ Yes, they were doing one, two or three
songs, bright and early every morning. It was the sort of work available
to African American gospel groups at the time.
JJM In 1939, John Hammond put together
an event in Carnegie Hall in 1939 called "From Spirituals to Swing."
JZ Yes. His idea was to capture the whole
sweep of black music, from spirituals to swing. He felt that, at the time,
African American musicians across all genres had never received their due,
and that the mainstream public didn't really know their names or their work.
There were not enough opportunities for people to frequently see them.
Consequently, these musicians didn't make the sort of money they deserved.
Prejudice was a roadblock to their playing in the best venues and to their
having quality recording contracts.
Hammond, partially to rectify some of these inequities and partially because
he loved the music, staged this event at the classiest venue he could think
of, Carnegie Hall in New York City. His goal was to provide the performers
with a place to perform with dignity and create an opportunity for music
fans to see the best in black music, close up in a fine concert hall.
The performers on the bill included everybody -- Count Basie, Billie
Holiday, Charlie Christian, Benny Goodman, the Golden Gates, and a relatively
primitive gospel group from the Carolinas called The Mitchell's Christian
Singers. The concert was also famous because the great blues musician Robert
Johnson was invited to perform, which would have been the first time he had
ever traveled out of Mississippi to appear in concert. However, as they soon
discovered, he was already dead. His name actually appeared on the program.
JJM Right around that time, Barney Josephson
opened Café Society and hired Hammond as musical director.
JZ That's correct. Josephson didn't know
all that much about music, but he was a political activist who wanted to
shake things up and make a dent in segregation. At the same time, it gave
him a chance to get involved in what he thought to be an exciting musical
enterprise. But he didn't know the musicians well enough to choose the best
talent for the club, so he came to John Hammond for that.
|
| JJM Given their background and audience,
how did the Hummingbirds fit into this night club scene?
JZ It was a somewhat totally new situation
for them. I say "somewhat" because they had performed for white audiences
before, but there were a couple things going on here that were new. One was
that they now had instrumental backing -- it was one of their first experiences
with that. They sang "a cappella" up until this time. While they still performed
"a cappella" in their set, they also did numbers backed by the great saxophonist
Lester Young, who had a band with his brother Lee at that time. Lester's
band wasn't there for the entire duration of the 'Birds stay at Café
Society, but he was there for a good bit of it, and I know Ira Tucker, for
one, really enjoyed the camaraderie.
As an aside, when I sit with the 'Birds and talk about music, they love to
talk about jazz and bop and the sounds of Basie and other jazz greats. They
have always been fans of the music even though they didn't perform it.
At Café Society, they were working a sophisticated club, and they
enjoyed wearing very elegant clothing. They had to work on every nuance of
their act. In essence, they were a foil to the Golden Gates. When the Gates
were playing Café Society uptown, the 'Birds would play at the Café
Society downtown, and sometimes vice versa. When the Gates were out of town,
the 'Birds were the resident gospel group. They weren't called the Dixie
Hummingbirds during their time there. Josephson called them the Jericho Quartet
or Quintet, depending on how many were in the lineup on a given night. |
Headlining the Apollo Theatre during the 70's |
JJM Why did Josephson insist on changing their
group name?
JZ We don't know for sure. It wasn't the
Hummingbirds' choice, it was Josephson and Hammond who decided they should
be called the Jericho Quartet. Ira Tucker thought it was because the term
"dixie" had too many associations with racism, and that Hammond and Josephson
may not have liked the name "Hummingbirds." It's possible they thought that
Jericho was a little more neutral, but I have never been able to really establish
that. I actually did an interview with John Hammond once, but this was never
discussed. Had I known I was going to be writing this book at that time,
I would have asked him.
JJM During their career they were under some
pressure from their record company, Apollo Records, to cross over into secular
music. Did that ultimately lead them to move to another record company?
JZ After they left Café Society, they
went back out on the road and realized things were changing rapidly, that
records -- especially gospel recordings -- were the up and coming thing.
Back before the war, they had, of course, made some records and the Golden
Gates and a few other groups had already been making records steadily, but
now post-war, there was a growing market for records by African American
artists for African American consumers.. Breaking back into the recording
business did not at first go smoothly for the 'Birds. They did quite
a few recordings with small labels starting in 1944, the most successful
being on a Philadelphia-based imprint, Gotham. Why "Gotham" in Philadelphia?
Because the label had been started by Sam Goody in New York City, but he
sold it to Ivin Ballen of Philadelphia, and that's who the 'Birds recorded
for in those days. But it wasn't until 1946 that the 'Birds moved up a notch
and began recording for the Apollo label, which was three years after their
run at Café Society.
Ezekiel Saw The Wheel
*
Christian's Automobile
|
JJM Apollo was having some success with
secular music.
JZ Yes, they sure were.
JJM There was some hope among those at Apollo
that the 'Birds would go beyond gospel recordings and into secular music.
JZ It didn't happen immediately, but yes,
Apollo was recording jazz, jump blues and vocal group music, and the market
for those genres was very hot. Young African Americans were returning home
from the war with money in their pockets. The market was so hot that you
could literally have a million-selling record. But, while there were some
gospel recordings that sold well, they never sold anything like a secular
hit would. Label owners consequently tried to get double duty out of their
groups, asking them to record something under another name for the secular
market, which would allow them to cash in twice. There was a group on Apollo
who did that, the Larks, also known as the Selahs. They recorded gospel as
the Selahs and they recorded jump blues, vocal group music as the Larks.
Whether the record buyers knew they were hearing the same group or not, I
don't know. It was indeed an interesting time.
JJM Peacock Records founder Don Robey was
a notorious thug who got into fights with his artists and threatened them
with weapons if they asked out of contracts. In fact, the way he ran his
label sounds more like a modern day rap label than that of a gospel impresario.
Given the character of the 'Birds, how did they deal with Robey?
JZ Gospel wasn't Robey's primary thing. It
turned out to be, but gospel isn't how he started. I do give a little background
of his underworld connections in the book, and he certainly wasn't alone
in this. There is the legendary story, for instance, about singer Jackie
Wilson being hung out of a hotel room window by his feet until he stopped
complaining about his royalties -- or lack thereof. While Robey's character
and behavior was notorious, the 'Birds got along with him fine. None of them
ever complained to me about him or felt they were mistreated. He never got
rough with them, according to the 'Birds, but they did assume he was keeping
more profits for himself than he admitted to. That was just a fact of life,
as far as the 'Birds were concerned. Overall they were very happy with their
relationship with Peacock and Robey. |
| JJM Clara Ward said of gospel, "I think
it fills a vacuum in people's lives. For people who work hard and make little
money it offers a promise that things will be better in the life to come.
It's like in slavery times, it cheers the downtrodden." How was gospel music
marketed during the 1950's?
JZ What she didn't mention was that this
was primarily a black audience. I don't know that it was that way within
white America, although I am sure there were people listening to it. By the
fifties, you began to see rather large ads in Billboard magazine mixed
right in with the rhythm and blues and jazz. It was not unusual to see a
big ad from a particular label for a rhythm and blues group, and right next
to it a gospel group is advertised. Robey made use of that medium quite a
bit. Of course, Billboard ads were directed at record store owners
and radio stations rather than at consumers, specifically. In support of
the ads, Robey and promoters working for him would travel across the country
and visit the radio stations, which by this time was the way the public was
hearing the music. Also, African American newspapers like the Chicago
Defender or Pittsburgh Courier occasionally advertised long lists
of the latest spiritual tunes available, which consumers would have the option
to buy through the mail. |
Clara Ward
Come In the Room |
In earlier times, for instance, when they were recording for Regis Manor
Records in the forties, part of the Hummingbirds' pay was in records they
could sell at their performance. That served the purpose of providing some
extra income for the group as well as being an arm in the distribution of
the record. By the time they recorded for Peacock, they didn't necessarily
travel with a lot of records. Robey really had distribution covered between
radio play, mail order, and the record stores.
JJM What were the physical aspects of the
Hummingbirds' stage show?
JZ During the years of their quintessential
line-up -- Ira Tucker, James Walker, James Davis, Beachey Thompson, William
Bobo, and Howard Carroll -- roughly throughout the fifties and sixties, they
always dressed immaculately. They postured and they pointed, they fell down
on their knees, "holy walked" out into the crowd, reached out and touched
people, screamed and shouted, sang it slowly and in sweet harmony. You name
it, the 'Birds did what it took to set the crowds on fire.
JJM How did the addition of electric guitarist
Howard Carroll affect the way the 'Birds sang?
JZ Howard's move into the group took some
adjusting. They had had some experience with instrumental backing -- drums,
organ, that sort of thing, and, of course, Lester Young's small band -- but
with the guitar, they had to find their space, Howard his. He ultimately
was the one who had to fit his style in and behind the 'Birds, and he was
masterful at it. He developed a style that supported and accented, a combination
of bass runs played in between chords and little lead flurries when space
provided between the vocals.
JJM What influence did the 'Birds have on
the next generation of singers? What gospel singing techniques were absorbed
by secular music of R&B and soul?
JZ The 'Birds impacted their secular counterparts
in so many ways. James Davis likes to tell how they were always about a decade
ahead of the curve. Back in the forties, the 'Birds were performing the a
cappella harmonies that would inform the doo wop and jump blues of the fifties.
But when that music was in its prime in the fifties, the 'Birds had already
moved on to the electric guitar soul sound that would influence the sixties.
Otis Williams of the Temptations says that his group actually took schooling
from the 'Birds on everything from harmonizing to stage moves. They were
especially fond of bass singer William Bobo. Hank Ballard and Jackie Wilson
borrowed freely from the 'Birds' songbook. As the late Hank Ballard told
me, he'd call the 'Birds on the phone and ask permission to borrow a melody
or a bit of lyric.
JJM What impact did gospel music have on John
Coltrane?
JZ A friend of mine, Steve Rowland, put together
a radio documentary on Coltrane and from it I learned a lot. Among others,
Coltrane listened to the black gospel preachers on radio when he came to
Philly in the forties. He would build compositions on their cadences and
flow. I guess one of his most famous pieces, "Alabama," was based on the
feel of Martin Luther King Jr's eulogy to the four children killed in the
Birmingham church bombing back in the sixties. I think music and religion
were synonymous to Coltrane. Music was his religion, and that's pretty profound,
I think.
photo by
Charles
Moore
"The freedom songs are playing a vital role in our struggle. They
give people new courage and a sense of unity...in our most trying
hours."
- Martin Luther King |
JJM Did the Dixie Hummingbirds' music
become political as a result of the events of 1963?
JZ By 1963, their two primary songwriters
were James Walker and Ira Tucker, both of whom had already written material
that had a kind of social commentary to it. During the fifties, Walker wrote
a tune that he recorded with another group on the Trumpet label out of Jackson,
Mississippi called "Our Prayer for Peace," a song whose message is that we
are all brothers regardless of skin color. So, Walker had already written
songs with a somewhat political theme before 1963. In fact, I was very struck
by how similar at times "Our Prayer for Peace" is to John Lennon's "Imagine."
Who knows if Lennon ever listened to it, but it is very interesting how similar
the lines were.
Tucker had always been taken with Paul Robeson, who he met in the forties
at Café Society. Robeson pioneered the art of writing or interpreting
material that spoke out about social injustice, racism and that sort of thing.
Robeson wasn't the only one. Billie Holiday sang "Strange Fruit," and blues
singers Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy as well wrote politically conscious
material in the forties. The very first record the 'Birds cut for Peacock
in 1952 was a Tucker song called "Wading Through Blood and Water," which
was an anti-war song about Korea. |
While performing politically conscious material wasn't new to them, the events
of 1963 certainly brought that out more. For instance, the group had been
performing Walker's "Our Prayer for Peace," but they wrote a special verse
for it about the assassination of President Kennedy. Later, they would also
add a verse about Martin Luther King, Jr. In a general way, songs they wrote
and performed were meant to be food for thought and for people engaged in
the civil rights movement. Much of their music had that kind of double focus.
JJM How did Martin Luther King's death affect
how black and white soul musicians worked together?
JZ The question brings to mind the ironies
of the sixties soul era, the idea, for example, that Motown relied primarily
on black musicians to create a smooth, polished sound that appealed to white
teens, while labels like Stax and Fame, where the music was much grittier,
relied on white instrumentalists to get that "authentic" soul sound. That
always intrigued me. But, to answer your question, I once saw a documentary,
I think it was the PBS series on rock 'n' roll, where musicians who worked
for Stax Records -- people like Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn -- discussed
quite poignantly about how after King's death the connection among white
and black musicians fell apart. At Fame Studios, for example, the people
there claimed that black artists just stopped coming. Nobody ever said anything
flat out, but it just stopped.
| JJM How did Paul Simon choose the Hummingbirds
to sing with him?
JZ The 'Birds weren't his first choice. It
was actually Claude Jeter and the Swan Silvertones he was initially interested
in. Simon actually borrowed the line "bridge over troubled water" from Jeter's
performance of "Oh Mary, Don't You Weep." He became friendly with Anthony
Heilbut, author of one of the most important books on gospel music called
The Gospel Sound, and who at the time was a producer for the Newport
Folk and Jazz Festival. In that particular year, 1972, the Newport Jazz Festival
took place in New York City, and the 'Birds performed at an indoor auditorium
which Simon witnessed from backstage with Heilbut. Upon hearing them, Simon
thought that they could be the group to work with on the album he was working
on. I can't tell you exactly what was going on in his head and why he went
with that choice, but that is how it came to be.
JJM Did the 'Birds ever regret their decision
to sing with Paul Simon?
JZ No, they never did. If it weren't for
that association, their name wouldn't be nearly as well known as it is today.
They have no regrets about that. At the time, they had to deal with some
backlash within their own community. I have always found it interesting that
at the time one of their critics of their work with Simon was Thermon Ruth,
who ran the gospel shows at the Apollo Theatre. Ruth was one of the first
promoters to bring gospel to the Apollo, and he did it for years. He was
critical of the 'Birds, among others, for crossing over and getting into
the "devil's music." This is quite ironic, because it was Ruth's Selah Singers
who also performed as the Larks for Apollo, so it is hard to understand why
he would criticize the 'Birds for working with Simon. So, the Hummingbirds
certainly may have lost some of their core fan group, but at the same time
they gained an audience that was larger than they ever imagined.
JJM The Hummingbirds' commitment to their
audience may have cost them some money.
JZ Yes, they could have made a lot of money
touring with Simon but turned him down because they had commitments to perform
at a string of little churches. They weren't going to make nearly as much
money, but they had commitments and they didn't want to abandon their core
audience. That is one of the things that made the Dixie Hummingbirds so highly
regarded within the gospel community. |
Ira Tucker and Paul Simon
*
Loves Me Like A Rock |
JJM What was the apex of their career?
JZ I don't know if there was any one apex.
Many would point to "Loves Me Like a Rock," which opened them up to their
largest audience ever, but there are numerous other moments -- like in the
forties at Café Society, or when they appeared with Sister Rosetta
Tharp on major gospel shows with thousands of people in attendance. There
are so many interesting little peaks.
Their greatest success as gospel singers came with Peacock. Their recordings
of tunes like "Christian's Automobile" and "Let's Go Out to the Programs"
were the musical peaks of their "purist" career.
The Inner Man
It's the Inner Man,
What's in a man,
That counts.
It's not his height,
Not his size,
Not the color of his eyes.
It's the inner man,
What's in a man,
That counts.
- James Davis |
_____________________________
Great
God A'Mighty - The Dixie Hummingbirds:
Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Music
by
Jerry Zolten
About Jerry Zolten
JJM Who was your childhood hero?
JZ Probably any number of black rock and
rollers who were coming up at the time. I related to rhythm and blues musicians
more than anyone else, and it is hard to name only one because I loved them
all.
I grew up in Pittsburgh in the mid-fifties and early sixties, and was listening
to black radio. There was one disc jockey in particular, Porky Chedwick,
who I admired because he played music by people who were my heroes. He never
told us who the musicians that he played were, he just played the records,
which of course added an even greater mystery to the music. He played a lot
of doo-wop, New Orleans and jump blues. While I didn't always know who I
was listening to, I just knew I loved it.
Jerry Zolten with the 'Birds and the Fairfield Four, 1991
________________________________
Dixie Hummingbirds products at Amazon.com
Jerry Zolten products at Amazon.com
_______________________________
Interview took place on March 10, 2003
*
If you enjoyed this interview, you may want to read our interview with Billie Holiday historian Farah Griffin.
*
Other
Jerry Jazz Musician interviews
* From the publisher
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