MUSIC OF
THE SACRED
In Southcentral Kentucky, religion is closely tied to many facets of life. For many people, music plays a key role in their worship, including as a direct expression of their faith in God. The act of making music can also be a spiritual experience.
1: The Bowling Green Quartet, a Gospel group, in 1929. Photo by E.D. Austin.
2: Union Light Missionary Baptist Church. Photo by Sydney Varajon.
3: John Edmonds and the Angelic Specials.
A Place to Gather for Worship
This sacred music is created and performed by community quartets, amateurs, worshippers, professionals, and aficionados across religions. Like musical traditions, the religions of our region are varied. They include formal congregations such as Adventists, African Methodist Episocopal Zion, Apostolic, Baptist, Buddhism, Catholic, Christian Science, Episcopal, Islamic, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jewish, Latter Day Saints, Lutheran, Messianic Jewish, Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Unitarian Universalist. There are also various independent houses of worship and informal gatherings. Each has its own unique musical traditions and performances. Whether it’s people who perform professionally through radio and television or amateurs who sing at their church service every week, the art form is by and large community-based.
“Old-time southern gospel music is woven into the emotional fiber of the people who loved it as children and have continued to nurture it through the years. The story of this music cries out to be told as a testament to an artistic, religious force that exhilarates, comforts, and extends a promise of wonderful things to come in another life that awaits …on the other side of Jordan.”
Lynwood Montell, Singing the Glory Down, 1991
JOHN EDMONDS & GOSPEL TRADITION
written by wku Folklorist emeritus,
erika brady
Born in 1945 in the Shake Rag section of Bowling Green, John Edmonds’ life as a musician began in his early childhood, when he ardently observed the choirs of local churches and visiting luminaries such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Roberta Martin Singers, and others passing through Bowling Green on the famous 31W performance corridor. He was enthralled by a 1957 television Christmas special featuring Mahalia Jackson and her accompanist, Mildred Falls, and began piano lessons shortly thereafter. Back when Edmonds was growing up, Gospel concerts were a weekly occurrence. John describes what it was like to attend these events:
Sunday night, if you didn't have anything to do you'd always have someplace to go. We'd go to some church, and they would have a gospel concert going on and the places would be packed out. Because Salters Chapel wasn't that large, there would also be people standing outside of the church looking in the windows. And when they would lift the offering, they would go outside and pass the plate around to the people that were standing around too.
JOHN EDMONDS
EXCERPT FROM KFP INTERVIEW
THE ANGELIC SPECIALS
Edmonds quickly mastered both sight reading and playing music by ear. At the age of 15, he anchored the Gospel Ambassadors, a young group who performed regularly on local TV and toured regionally. The Gospel Ambassadors were just one group in a large collection of other Gospel ensembles that were regularly featured on local broadcasts. In 1964 he established his own ensemble, John Edmonds and the Angelic Specials, with whom he toured nationwide.
But my group that I sang with when I was 15 was called the Gospel Ambassadors. And we would do local programs here. There were many, many other groups here. The Faithful Five, the Spiritual Echoes, and they're still singing, The Golden Trumpeteers, and they actually had a radio show every Sunday. And incidentally, my group the Gospel Ambassadors, we had our own TV show at WLTV which became WBKO...even though [these Gospel musicians] weren't big stars throughout the country, everybody in the city looked up to them. People like Pauline Dodson, Patricia Hicks, these were people that were inspirations to me, and they also brought groups into town. So it was pretty big and it was exciting then.
JOHN EDMONDS - EXCERPT FROM KFP INTERVIEW
THE GOSPEL TRUTH
Edmonds was perhaps best known as the leader of the highly respected John Edmonds’ Gospel Truth. Throughout the 14 albums showcasing his solo and ensemble work as a pianist, singer, and arranger, his talent shined clear – but it has been as a live performer, accompanist, and teacher that his gifts of musicianship and sharing the spirit gleamed most brightly.
JOHN'S PLACE IN GOSPEL HISTORY
African American popular music, Gospel included, is frequently seen as constantly in a state of improvisation and self-reinvention, but few musicians have the knack of drawing on the older traditions with loving care as they bring them into a new generation. Wynton Marsalis, Louis Armstrong, and David Baker have all offered audiences the musical opportunity to look backward as well as forward. We would include John Edmonds’ special flair in this category. His exceptional skill as an accompanist was brought to the stage with classic Gospel artists such as the Clara Ward Entertainers, the Roberta Martin Singers, and James Cleveland. His own songwriting was consistently fresh and original, drawing form and imagery from contemporary and pop music as well as from more traditional Gospel classics.
To John, Gospel music wasn’t about believing in any certain faith over another. It was about using music to uplift others universally, no matter their religious background or affiliation.
JOHN EDMONDS
ELISE TAYLOR & SHAPE-NOTE SINGING
Elsie Taylor started singing around age 8 or 9, learning at Union Light Missionary Baptist Church in Edmonson County. Her teacher, Charlie Sturgeon, had been directing choir practices every Friday night at Union Light since a 1950 shape-note class, building on choir practice traditions dating back to 1905.
EXCERPT FROM KFP INTERVIEW
We have a nice choir, we have a good choir. And sometimes, you know, people will, if they want a song sung, and they feel like they want a song sung, they'll tell us, you know, to sing a song. And we'll find it in the books and we'll sing. Well, then sometimes they'll say, Well, let's sing that verse over. Well, we'll sing the same verse over, and you get something. When you sing and if you put something in you gonna get something out of it. It's heartfelt.
What Is Shape-Note Singing?
Kentucky folklorist Lynwood Montell conducted extensive ethnographic research on the Shape-Note tradition as it was practiced at Union Light Missionary Baptist Church. We offer his definition of Shape-Note from his book, Singing The Glory Down:
“A distinct genre of American Folksong, Shape-Note is a form of gospel music that was widespread up until the 1940s. Also known as seven-note, the seven notes are used to teach a system in which the pitch of each note corresponds to its shape, independent of lines and spaces on the musical staff. This particular music tradition is a direct descendent of the four-note system that began in the early 1700s in New England. The practice of shape-note singing is usually less formal. There is room for improvising when singing during a revival or service.”
ELSIE TAYLOR DESCRIBES SHAPE-NOTE IN HER OWN WORDS
“The notes are DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA TI, DO. And you got four lines and four spaces in the songbooks. And then you’ve got the key to the song. One of them is Four Boys Ate a Dead Goat which was for, F, B, A, D, G. And then the other one was Go Down And Eat Breakfast First. And that was G, D, E, B, F. That has got the parts in it that help you key the song.”
REVIVAL'S AT CHURCH IN ELEISE'S WORDS
A main facet of Shape-Note singing are events called Revivals. Congregations host Revivals in different ways, but almost all of them are informal in nature and revolve around the participation of singing.
Usually, on Sunday night, we’ll have services. We don’t have no set time for it to break. When everything’s moved out, then it will break it. But anyway, it’s when the pastor feels like we need a revival, we will have a good revival spirit. The preaching is good, the singing is all good, the prayers are good, it’s all good. But in the revival, the preacher preaches, he reads. We try to sing revival songs, something that’ll help somebody that’s lost, you know. Well if there’s anybody that are lost and they feel like it, they’ll, they’ll come to the altar, you know. And they may not get saved the first night, and they keep coming back. But then eventually in revival, they’ll get saved. It–most of the time. Now, sometimes people don’t get saved. They’ll go, they’ll get saved, maybe on another revival somewhere, or they’ll maybe wait till next year and come back, you know. You have to be convicted, you have to have that load on you to want to get saved, you got to have that. Without conviction, you can’t get saved if you ain’t got that load there. And when that load’s gone, then the Lord saves you, see. Well, my children did, said, ’Mom, how will I know? When I’m lost? And how will I know when I’m saved?’ Well, there’ll be something tell you that you’re lost, it’d be a bad feeling. And then when you get saved, you’ll have a good feeling that bad feeling will be gone. And then you’ll have a good feeling. You’ll know.
Tommy Johnson & The Church
In the 1970s, Tommy was one of the region’s most active guitarists. He played five nights a week on the U.S. 31 nightclub strip, as well as in Nashville and touring with Dixie Line Band. Eventually, the touring lifestyle did not align with his personal needs, and he began to shift to playing locally. Tommy started playing in churches, centering music on his relationship with God.
In ‘88, 1988, I was playing, I had been off the road, I saved my marriage. I was playing a terrible night club. Really rough place. But I went to church, my wife talked me into going to church one Tuesday night and I got saved in 1988. In the same week I was saved I was baptized. I quit being a hard drinking, drug taking, whatever I was, to being a clean-cut professional musician. It was the best thing that ever happened to me personally, because I became a husband, a father to my children. Up to that point I was just that guy snoring on the couch. Smelt like stale beer, you know? After that, I was a responsible man. I’ve only ever been into music and God just kind of took over from there.
I think that's reason why I serve God now because it'd be hard for me to ever be an atheist because I believe totally that I was born with this thing inside of me, because I just never had a problem. Once my dad got me a guitar, never picked up on in my entire life. Once he tuned it and put it in my hands, I could find something on it. And he noticed it immediately. He's like, ‘Good lord. That's interesting.’
TOMMY JOHNSON - EXCERPT FROM KFP INTERVIEW
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