zzvt | Religion (Part 3) Gospel, Blues and Denomination Blues

In this column:  Gospel, Blues, Denomination Blues, Getting the blues, Washington Phillips, Rosetta Tharpe, Ry Cooder, Big Bill Broonzy, Hans Theessink and Wilson Blount

 

Getting the blues (gospel and blues)

The blues were generated in the cotton fields, on the levees, or on the front porch of a people who has born unspeakable burdens of privation and destitution. Yet the blues is not bitter, but the blues are profoundly hopeful.
The blues has been called “the devil’s music” or “sinful tunes.”
The black church had become the institution giving meaning and hope to the enslaved African people. Even after emancipation, the Christian faith was the deepest consolation for black people, still enduring oppression and racial prejudice.
But there was an other world to that of the church; a world of secular amusement. Singers were called to repentance, and parents told their children to stay away from the blues and its associated lowlife. But that world has grown and taken on a life of its own.

J. Wesley Jones and choir at the Metropolitan Community Church in Chicago in August 1935

Still, there is another side to this dichotomy.
First, the sin is not necessarily all on one side. Blues singers sang about hypocrisy in the church, and that not every preacher was a righteous person.
Second, the blues allowed people to articulate other feelings. For example, lost love. Abandonment is a constant theme in the blues. Not only do lovers turn away and cause jealousy, anger, and sadness, but white oppressors brought the slaves to North America and as it were abandoned them there to the fate of the cruelty of chattel-slavery in all its guises. Race and lost love are coupled together in African-American folklore.

Big Bill Broonzy (1935)

Big Bill Broonzy - I'm just a bum (1935)

In I’m Just a Bum, the great Big Bill Broonzy sings about rejection:

...
Eeh, when my mother died, my dad give po’ me away,
Lord, I’m just a bum baby, that’s why I got no place to stay

Sometimes I wonder why my dad give po’ me away,
Lord, because I was dark-complexioned, Lord they throwed me away.
...

Big Bill Broonzy – I’m just a bum

All though the church was the most important outlet for emotions and the strongest advocate for education, the church and the blues worked both ways. Connections like that exist. Many blues singers either came out of the church or went back into it. Two gospel singers who began as bluesmen are Georgia Tom Dorsey (Thomas A. Dorsey, not to be confused with the swing band trombonist Tommy Dorsey) and Blind Gary Davis. Ethel Waters began as a blues singer and ended up singing gospel with the Billy Graham campaigns. It works the other way as well. Sister Rosetta Tharpe sang gospel-tres in nightclubs. Blind Willie Johnson sang “judgments songs” during the great influenza of 1918. J. B. Lenoir and Elmore James were itinerant preachers (going from town to town) when they were not performing the blues.

Getting the blues, Stephen Nichols and Eric Brandt, reviewed by William Edgar on thegospelcoalition.org

Georgia Tom Dorsey
Georgia Tom Dorsey (Thomas Andrew Dorsey)

My own experiences on this issue

I had the following experiences when talking to Wilson Blount about blues performances. He said his grandmother was initially against it, but because he wanted it so badly, she agreed if he promised to sing a religious song at every performance.
The same thing happened at a performance with Leontine Dupree, she insisted on singing "Amazing grace" at least that evening.

Denomination Blues

"Denomination Blues" is a gospel blues song composed by Washington Phillips (1880–1954), and recorded by him (vocals and zither) in 1927. In Denomination Blues, Washington Phillips exposes separations from the Christian church and criticizes hypocracy within the church.

The song consists of two parts, below are text fragments from parts 1 and 2.

Part 1
...
Well, the denominations has no right to fight
They ought to just treat each other right
REFRAIN: But that's all, now, I tell you that's all
But you better have Jesus, I tell you that's all
...
The Primitive Baptists, they believe
You can't get to Heaven unless'n you wash your feet
...
Now the Holiness People, when they came in
They said, "Boys, we think you'll make it by livin' above sin."
...

Part 2
...
You're fighting each other and think you're doing well
And then sinnin' on the outside, goin' to hell
...
Now the preachers is preaching, and think they're doing well
And all they want is your money and you can go to hell
...
When Jesus came in at Dividing Day
Gonna call the sheep, turn and drive the goats away
...
It's right to stand together, it's wrong to stand apart
'Cause none's gonna enter but the pure in heart
But that's all, now, I tell you that's all
But you better have Jesus, I tell you that's all

Washington Phillips with his zithers

Washington Phillips – Denomination Blues (Part 1 and 2, self-accompanied on Phonoharp and Celestaphone
)

Other versions of Denomination Blues

In 1938, Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915–73) recorded a gospel version of the song under the title "That's All". She subsequently recorded several versions with orchestral accompaniment.

Rosetta Tharpe – That’s all (Denomination Blues, Part 2)

In 1972, Ry Cooder recorded the song on his album "Into the Purple Valley".

Ry Cooder – Denomination Blues (he combined lyrics of parts 1 and 2)

Ry Cooder (1972)

Hans Theessink and Wilson Blount (like Cooder’s version)

Sources: thegospelcoalition.org, encyclopediaofalabama.org, gotquestions.org, english.stackexchange.com, thegearpage, Thomas Moon: The Verdict Of Big Joe Williams, weeniecampbell.com, BBC news, Talkin' to myself: Blues lyrics, Michael Taft, digitalcitizen.ca, federalcigarjugband.com, pancocojams.blogspot.nl, americanbluesscene.com, YouTube, Wikipedia, Hudson Motors Compagny, Archive Minneapolis, The Cruel Plains, M.H.Price a.o., truewestmagazine.com, The Austin Chronicle, Cambridge Free English Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary, TheSaurus.com, dragonjazz.com/grablue/blues_travel, Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture, Blues by Paul Breman, Blues by David Harrison, Quora.com, urbandictionary.com, Blogs.loc.gov, The Ballad Hunter by Alan Lomax, Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920th by Daphne Duval Harrison, jopiepopie.blogspot.nl, redhotjazz.com, The Blues Lyrics Formula by Michael Taft, American Ballads and Folk Songs by Alan Lomax and John Avery Lomax, The Past Is Not Dead: Essays from the  Southern Quarterly by Douglas B. Chambers, EarlyBlues.com, railroad-line.com,  Jason Lee Davis' RailFan Pages , centertruthjustice.org