Mahalia Jackson Meets the Wise Men: Defining Jazz at the Music Inn
2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 97; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/musqtl/gdu011
ISSN1741-8399
Autores Tópico(s)Theater, Performance, and Music History
ResumoAs a church-based vocalist, as a recording artist who specialized in a form of black vernacular music, and as a pop-cultural celebrity, Mahalia Jackson (1911–72) had the unusual distinction of being discovered three times. Jackson was born and raised in an uptown New Orleans neighborhood bordering the Mississippi River levee where her family attended Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. Migrating to Chicago in late 1931 at the age of twenty, she sang in the choir at Greater Salem Baptist Church and in a pioneering gospel group, the Johnson Singers, before going on to perform almost exclusively as a soloist.1 Jackson built her reputation gradually on the Chicago church circuit and as a traveling song-plugger for pathbreaking gospel song composer Thomas A. Dorsey. She made her first commercial recordings for Decca in 1937, but her true breakthrough came in January 1948 with the unprecedented success of her double-sided single for Apollo Records, “Move on up a Little Higher,” which outsold Apollo's better promoted jazz, rhythm and blues, and pop releases on the way to becoming black gospel's first million-seller. Four months after “Move on up a Little Higher” broke nationally, Jackson was presented by New York gospel promoter Johnny Myers at Harlem's Golden Gate Auditorium on 11 April 1948 in an “East vs. West” battle in song with Brooklyn-based gospel star Ernestine Washington. Jackson returned to the Golden Gate in January 1949 to headline a pair of sold-out concerts, and several additional local concerts were scheduled to meet the overwhelming demand. Jackson's name was still largely unknown among white audiences, but the enthusiasm generated by her Apollo recordings and her New York triumphs brought her unequaled national acclaim as a soloist among black gospel fans. An account in the Norfolk Journal and Guide captured the thirty-seven-year-old singer's growing hype: Mahalia Jackson, famed as the nation's Queen of Gospel Singers, arrived in New York this last week on tour and has smashed local attendance records in churches and auditoriums, winning new laurels and thousands of new followers for the magnetic young spiritual singer. Jamming in New York's Golden Gate auditorium to capacity twice in one day, Miss Jackson sang many numbers that are loved by hundreds of thousands as she sings them on Apollo records, including “Move On Up a Little Higher,” her recent “Dig a Little Deeper” and her new rendition of “I'm Tired.”2
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