Jackson, Mahalia

By: Joyce Marie Jackson

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Jackson, Mahalia

Sex:  Female

Born:  New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
29 October 1911

Died:  Evergreen Park, Illinois, United States
27 January 1972

Activity/Profession:  Gospel Musician / Singer

(b. 26 October 1911; d. 27 January 1972),
singer.

Mahalia Jackson, destined to become one of the greatest gospel singers of all time, was born in poverty in a three-room “shotgun” shack on Water Street between the railroad tracks and the Mississippi River levee in New Orleans. She was the third of six children. Her father, John A. Jackson, was a stevedore, barber, and Baptist preacher. Her mother, Charity Clark, died at twenty-five when Jackson was just a child.

Mahalia Jackson, shown in a publicity photograph from the William Morris Agency, c. 1960s. The great gospel singer became a symbol of the civil rights movement during the famous March on Washington in 1963.

Library of Congress

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Jackson began to sing at the age of four in the children's choir at Plymouth Rock Baptist. After her mother's death, her mother's sisters, Mahalia “Aunt Duke” Paul, for whom Mahalia was named, and Bessie Kimble, both of New Orleans, raised Mahalia. They lived in the section of the city upriver from Audubon Park that would later be known as Black Pearl.

As a young girl growing up in New Orleans, Jackson absorbed the musical sounds of her family's Baptist church, the Sanctified church next door, and local legends-to-be like King Oliver, Kid Ory, and Bunk Johnson. Louis Armstrong was not even in his teens and was already playing trumpet in the New Orleans Waifs' Home Band. Famous brass bands such as the Tuxedos, Eagle, and Eureka rode around town in advertising wagons and played at funerals, picnics, fish fries, lodge parties, and parades of all kinds, including Mardi Gras. The Black Mardi Gras Indians marched on Fat Tuesday, playing their unique sounds. Musicians like Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver performed in cabarets and cafes, and there was ragtime music on the showboats on the Mississippi River.

Many people were buying gramophones, and everybody had records of blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. Although Jackson grew up among people who were serious about religion, she was an admirer of popular music, and it was difficult not to hear the amalgam of sounds in her community or to notice how Jackson was influenced by the powerful music of the lower Mississippi Delta.

Indeed, Jackson experienced and was influenced by many styles of music; however, the most significant was that of the Sanctified church. A Sanctified church was near her home, and she could hear spirited singing and the drum, the cymbal, the tambourine, and the steel triangle. The church did not have a choir or organ. The whole congregation participated by singing, clapping, and stamping its feet—in essence, utilizing the entire body. Jackson later commented on several occasions that the church literally interpreted the psalmist in the Bible, just as she later would: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord” and “Praise the Lord with the instruments.” Jackson also said that the powerful beat and rhythms of the Sanctified church were holdovers from the antebellum era of slavery, and that the music was so expressive that it brought tears to her eyes. The sacred and secular sounds in her community blended together. When Jackson left New Orleans, she carried this African American musical matrix with her to Chicago.

Making Her Way

In 1927, Jackson moved to Chicago, where she lived with another aunt, Hannah Robinson. She worked as a laundress, a maid in a hotel, and a date packer, and she studied beauty culture at the Chicago branch of Madame C. J. Walker's renowned beauty school. Soon after she arrived in Chicago, Jackson joined the choir of the Greater Salem Baptist Church. After the director heard her sing “Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet, Gabriel,” she immediately became the choir's first soloist.

During the 1930s, Jackson toured the “storefront church circuit,” singing to congregations that could not afford conventional places of worship. She married her first husband, Isaac Hockenhull in 1935, and in later years, she married Sigmond Galloway and divorced again. She also became a member of a gospel quintet, the Johnson Singers, at Greater Salem Baptist Church. In addition, she caught the attention of Professor Thomas A. Dorsey, later known as the “Father of Gospel Music.” Dorsey was a gospel composer and publisher, who from then on served as Jackson's accompanist, mentor, and publisher. He wrote over four hundred songs and needed singers to sing and popularize them. Jackson, with other singers such as Roberta Martin and Sallie Martin, began performing and demonstrating Dorsey's songs for the Baptist conventions and various churches around the country. Dorsey had been the composer and accompanist for Ma Rainey, the classic blues singer, which explained not only his musical orientation but also why some middle-class congregations initially shunned him and his music. However, by 1947, Mahalia Jackson had become the official soloist for the National Baptist Convention by mostly singing Thomas A. Dorsey and W. Herbert Brewster songs.

Jackson, Dorsey, and the other talented gospel singers and composers helped to revitalize African American religious music by extending the developments that transpired within the Sanctified churches to the more established denominations. They helped bring back into African American church music the sounds and the structure of antebellum street cries and field hollers, folk spirituals and work songs. They borrowed freely from the ragtime, blues, and jazz music of the secular world; they helped keep alive the stylistic and aesthetic continuum that characterized African American music in the United States.

Jackson was criticized for clapping her hands, stomping her feet, moving her body around the stage, and for bringing undignified “jazz into the church.” Of course, being the feisty person that she was, she always retaliated, usually with scripture. Jackson liked to invoke the psalms to justify her performance practices, especially, “Oh clap your hands, all ye people! Shout unto the Lord with the voice of triumph!” She said she had to praise God with her whole body, and she did.

Jackson bridged the gap between the sacred and the secular in her performances without compromising her deep-rooted fundamentalist faith. Many of her listeners encouraged her to abandon her commitment to gospel music and switch from the church to the nightclub circuit. After hearing her sing in church, some of her relatives offered to teach her minstrel jazz tunes, and a jazz bandleader offered her $100 per week. Decca Records, based in Chicago, wanted her to sing the blues and offered her $5,000 to play at the Village Vanguard. In addition, she was offered as much as $25,000 per performance in Las Vegas clubs. She turned down all offers. Jackson knew that sacred gospels and secular blues flow from the same bedrock of experience, but she knew that there was a difference, too: “When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong. But when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on.” Her first recording was through Decca in its Race Division, in 1937. However, the work sold poorly, and Decca did not record her again.

During the years surrounding World War II, Jackson was well known, but after the war, with breakthroughs in communication and another chance to record, she at last became know as a recording and performing artist. In 1946, she recorded four sides on the Apollo label, including “I'm Going to Wait Until My Change Comes,” but these recordings sold poorly, too. Her next recording venture on Apollo, which brought gospel singing out of the storefront and basement congregations and onto the world's stage, was “Move On Up a Little Higher.” Accompanied by James “Blind” Francis on organ and James Lee on piano, Jackson recorded the song in two parts. A minister and composer from Memphis, Rev. W. Herbert Brewster, composed the song, which was already a musical milestone, but it gained new life as a musical masterpiece after Jackson's recording. The recording, actually released in 1948, became the first gospel record to sell over a million copies (some sources estimate eight million), making gospel history and becoming a transitional landmark record for Jackson. The song made her commercially successful, and her career was launched. African American disc jockeys played her music; African American ministers praised it from their pulpits. When sales passed one million, the African American press hailed Jackson as “the only Negro whom Negroes have made famous.” Few Euro-Americans had ever heard her. She had come to fame by singing only in African American communities. From the start, audiences acknowledged her, as did London's New Statesman, as “the most majestic voice of faith” of her generation.

The obvious sincerity of Jackson's faith and belief moved audiences even when they could not understand her lyrics. Her warm, uninhibited contralto voice carried a strong emotional message. Jackson's sound depended on the employment of the full range of expression of the human voice—from the rough growls employed by blues singers to the dark and rich sounds of a dramatic contralto; from the shouts and hollers of folk cries to the most lyrical, floating tones of which the voice is capable. This can all be heard in “Move On Up A Little Higher.” She utilized to the fullest extent half tones, glissandi, blue notes, humming, and moaning. Her style also made use of a pronunciation that was almost of the academy in one instant and of the broadest southern cotton field dialect the next. Jackson's style employed a broad rhythmic freedom that accented her emotional lyric line to reinforce her musical virtuosity and spiritual genuineness.

Many of these vocal characteristics were exemplified in Jackson's other multimillion sellers such as “Upper Room,” “Didn't It Rain,” “Even Me,” and “Silent Night.” Some of her earliest and best work, recorded originally at 78 rpm, was later reissued on LP and CD. On Mahalia Jackson (Grand Award 326), she sings “It's No Secret” and other songs that first gained her popularity in her own community. On In the Upper Room (Apollo 474), she performs “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” and, accompanied by a male quartet with a basso profundo, offers an unequaled version of the title song. She had many successes with Apollo Records. When one of her recordings, “I Can Put My Trust in Jesus,” won the French Academy Award, Jackson consented to a European tour, though she was not convinced that foreign audiences would understand the sacred music of her people. In Paris, she had twenty-one curtain calls. She doubled the number of her originally scheduled performances when thousands were turned away from her concerts. Before a concert at Albert Hall, greetings came to her from Queen Elizabeth I and Winston Churchill. She gave a command performance before the king and queen of Denmark.

In 1954, Jackson left Apollo and joined the ranks of the highly successful Columbia Records. Signing with Columbia was a giant step for her and a commercially successful career move, launching her name internationally with the label's powerful marketing and distribution avenues. She eventually recorded some thirty albums (mostly for Columbia Records) during her career, a dozen of which went gold. However, in the opinion of many of Jackson's fans, the Columbia recordings were not done in the authentic Mahalia Jackson style. In gaining this international fame, she essentially became a “crossover” recording artist, and much of the criticism involved Jackson's selection of repertoire and musical arrangements. The repertoire featured more and more popular songs, including “You'll Never Walk Alone,” “Danny Boy,” and “Rusty Old Halo.” Large choruses and mixed and male ensembles accompanied the recordings. A number of them even had full orchestras with strings. Though Jackson's voice was still outstanding, many of these Columbia recordings were not in the culturally accepted musical aesthetic vein of gospel music. To remedy the situation, Jackson tried to please both her popular and gospel audiences by creating a double music consciousness: one for her live performances and one for the recording studio sessions. It was important to her to be herself, not only for the sake of her own spirituality and wellbeing but also for her community—the people who had first contributed to her international fame. She had a strong commitment to community and actively worked for its betterment. Still, it was difficult to ignore the economic rewards that came along with not only being a wonderful performer but also being one of the few black women in the field of gospel to be recorded on a major label.

Beyond Music

Mahalia Jackson mobilized against gender and racial discrimination, embracing a wide range of social concerns. A “womanist” consciousness, one concerned with both racial and gender issues, was inherent in Jackson's activities. In fact, other black women in the gospel field, especially in the early and middle years of the twentieth century, had a clear understanding that race and gender issues were inextricably linked. Performers such as Lucie Campbell Williams, Roberta Martin, Sallie Martin, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Willie Mae Ford Smith all joined Mahalia Jackson's fight for racial and gender equity in their own ways. These members of the gospel world helped to create an invisible army of black women warriors whose goal it was to alleviate the triple oppression of race, sex, and class prejudice in the gospel world and the larger society.

In the growing racial tensions of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, Jackson demonstrated a remarkable ability to cross boundaries of color on the sheer strength of her presence and the beauty and power of her voice. Her performances in and out of the church represented potentialities for action, and therefore for change, and had a significant effect on the basic creation and evolution of gospel music.

Despite male domination of one sort or another, Jackson controlled herself and her world through her creative expression, grassroots wit, and management style. In later years, she managed herself after she became suspicious of some managers and promoters and due to some bad experiences. However, several incidents concerning performance fees led some observers to tag her as suspicious of others and sometimes difficult to work with.

Jackson was also an entrepreneur and producer. She had her own CBS radio program and television show, which aired from 1954 to 1955. As host and star of the show, she helped to popularize traditional gospel, making the way for later gospel and soul singers. After attending beauty culture school, Jackson managed her own beauty and florist shop. She also owned a substantial amount of real estate. She appeared in movies such as Imitation of Life, St. Louis Blues, The Best Man, and I Remember Chicago. Three books were published about her life, Movin' On Up (1966), Just Mahalia, Baby (1975), and Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel (1992).

For years, a Mahalia Jackson concert assured promoters of sellout crowds at Carnegie Hall in New York, where she was a favorite. In Madison Square Garden, she moved a packed house from tears to thunderous applause. At the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, the jazz world came to Mahalia on her own terms. Thousands of jazz buffs gave her standing ovations, and when she closed with “The Lord's Prayer,” the crowd stood breathless. During two days in 1960, Mahalia taped a show for the Voice of America and gave two sellout concerts at the hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution and one in Constitution Hall. She also appeared on many television shows, most notably the Ed Sullivan Show.

With the advent of the civil rights movement, Jackson yielded to the requests of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Alongside King, she supported the fight for equality by traveling and singing at fundraising rallies all over the United States. Mahalia Jackson encouraged the people with songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “If I Can Help Somebody.” She also quietly slipped money to leaders who she believed were “for real.” She emerged as one of the symbols for the movement when in 1963 millions of television viewers watched as she accompanied King at the famous March on Washington. Immediately before King began his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Mahalia sang “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned.” With the lyrics of this traditional spiritual, she summed up the frustrations and aspirations of the entire movement.

An eighth grade dropout, Jackson was especially concerned about educating poor youth. She established the Mahalia Jackson Scholarship Fund and reportedly helped about fifty young adults to obtain college educations. Because of her humanitarian work, she received the Silver Dove Award “for work of quality, doing the most good for international understanding.” She received her first Grammy Award in 1962 and received subsequent ones in 1963 and 1976. In 1972, Mahalia Jackson was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Jackson died of heart failure at the age of sixty. She was honored with funerals in Chicago and New Orleans and was finally entombed in Providence Memorial Park in Metairie, Louisiana. Jackson believed that she was “ordained to sing the gospel,” but she did much more. She was an ambassador of goodwill wherever she traveled. People all over the world were attracted to her. Perhaps it was the simplicity of her ways; she said she was “just a good strong Louisiana woman who can cook rice so every grain stands by itself.” Perhaps it was the explicit faith and conviction with which she delivered her messages in song. Jackson brought a wider acceptance and popularity to gospel music in the United States and around the world. Perhaps it was her musical virtuosity that mesmerized her audiences. She also helped make the gospel music industry a multimillion-dollar one and left her imprint on the African American sacred music culture. She achieved universality by living faithfully within the confines of a particular tradition in singing the songs of her people in her own style. Aretha Franklin ended the funeral service by singing for Jackson one of the songs by Thomas A. Dorsey that she loved so well, one that probably epitomized how Jackson had envisioned her transition: “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.”

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