Then Sings My Soul: The Culture of Southern Gospel Music

250 Pages·2012·3.13 MB·English

by  Douglas Harrison

THEN SINGS
T
MY SOUL
H
E
The Culture of Southern Gospel Music
N

S
DOUGLAS HARRISON
I
N
G
S

M
Y

S
O
U
L
Then Sings My Soul
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Music in American Life
A list of books in the series appears
at the end of this book.
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Then Sings
My Soul
The Culture
of Southern
Gospel Music
Douglas Harrison
University of Illinois Press
Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield
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© 2012 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 c p 5 4 3 2 1
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Permission to reprint certain song lyrics is noted as applicable
in the notes.
Portions of chapter 1 and a few short sections of the introduction
appeared in “Why Southern Gospel Music Matters,” Religion and
American Culture 18, no. 1 (2008): 27–58. © 2008 The Center for
the Study of Religion and American Culture. Published by the
University of California Press.
A version of chapter 4 with a somewhat different focus appeared
in “Gaither Homecomings, College Football Reunions, and the
Consecration of Cultural History,” Journal of Religion and Popular
Culture 22, no. 1 (2010): http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art22(3)-
homecomings.html. Permission to reprint portions of this essay
granted by the editor.
Portions of chapter 5 were first published in “Southern Gospel
Sissies: Evangelical Music, Queer Spirituality, and the Plays of
Del Shores,” Journal of Men, Masculinities, and Spirituality 3, no.
2 (2009): 121–43. Permission to reprint portions of this essay
granted by the editorial board of the journal.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harrison, Douglas, 1975–
Then sings my soul : the culture of southern gospel music /
Douglas Harrison.
p. cm. — (Music in American life)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-252-03697-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-252-07857-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-252-09409-5 (e-book)
1. Gospel music—Southern States—History and criticism.
2. Popular culture—Religious aspects. I. Title.
ml3187.h39 2012
782.25'408909075—dc23 2011045145
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For MSQ, and in memory of MVH
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: A Native Informant’s
Report from the Field 1
1. Glory Bumps; or, The Psychodynamics
of the Southern Gospel Experience 25
2. Nostalgia, Modernity, and the Reconstruction
Roots of Southern Gospel 50
3. The Rise of “Southern” Gospel Music
and the Compensations of History 80
4. The Gaitherization of Contemporary
Southern Gospel 110
5. Southern Gospel in the Key of Queer 137
Epilogue: The Soul’s Best Song 163
Appendix A: Songs Referenced 171
Appendix B: Methods and Preliminary
Findings of a Survey of Attitudes and Beliefs
about Southern Gospel Music 175
Notes 181
Index 217
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Acknowledgments
In some ways, I have been preparing to write this book all my life. Con-
sequently, there is a lifetime’s worth of influence, indebtedness, gratitude,
and generosity to acknowledge. I learned to love music in the rural Baptist
churches of my childhood and was lucky to have musical parents who en-
couraged my early interest in music generally and the piano particularly.
Maxine Sanders, whose classic Baptist-church-lady style of playing galva-
nized my fascination with the gospel sound, helped my father teach me basic
chord structures on the piano when I was a young boy. As I progressed at
the keyboard, my mother and grandmother invited me to accompany them
when they sang so-called specials (that is, solos) at church. In this, I learned
how not to step on someone else’s best lines—an invaluable lesson in music
and life. More deeply, providing improvised piano accompaniment for my
family at church taught me at a young age to rely on my own expressive
instincts, to “let the spirit move,” as we would say back home, and trust that
the right notes will follow. I will always be grateful for this early immersion
in the art and instruction of Protestant evangelical sacred music.
Alan Freeman and Diana Hill both took an uncommon interest in my
musical education as a teenager and provided years’ worth of applied tutori-
als in music theory and piano pedagogy during the time I played piano for
a regional gospel quartet in southern Missouri in my late teens and early
twenties. Perhaps more than anything else, my musical sensibility is indebted
to the countless gospel singers whose music so often seemed to be saying
something for and about and to me that was both immediately recognizable
yet also somehow revelatory.
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