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2.6.12Gospel Music: History and Origins of African American Gospel
African American gospel music started as the spiritual songs of plantation slaves, songs that sounded distinctly unlike the gospel songs heard in white churches, which grew out of Anglo-American hymns.
Once the blues had become established in the north, especially Chicago, African American gospel music and the blues blended into the animated, passionate, melodically embellished style of today’s African American gospel music.
Rev. Thomas Andrew Dorsey (1899 - 1993) of Chicago, the seminal figure in establishing gospel blues as a distinct genre, claimed he had coined the term “gospel song” in the late 1920s. Not true. As far back as the 1870s, P. P. Bliss had published collections of songs in books that had the phrases “Gospel Songs” and “Gospel Hymns” in their titles.
Nevertheless, Rev. Dorsey, a one-time secular blues artist, deserves full credit for founding modern African American gospel music in the 1930s. Dorsey fused his lively, improvised, syncopated blues musical style with evangelical lyrics to create an important musical genre.
Probably the greatest interpreter of gospel music was Mahalia Jackson (1911 - 1972), who, in the early part of her career, worked with Rev. Dorsey.