Part of a monthly series on a hymn of the faith.
Precious Lord, take my hand. If just those five words set your heart to humming a tune, and recalling the rest of the words, then you've looked briefly into the broken heart of a well-known blues musician. His name was Thomas A. Dorsey (not to be confused with the big-band leader Tommy Dorsey).He was born in the small Georgia town of Villa Rica, about 20 miles west of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1899. His father was a Black revivalist preacher and his mother a church organist. There he heard the melodies handed down from slaves with their “moaning” styles with elongated notes and embellishments. When the family moved to Atlanta, Thomas became enamored with the “blues” music style. Before long, he was playing in night clubs, including some “speakeasies” connected to the mob bosses. Before long, he moved to Chicago where he rose in the blues performance culture.
When his mother saw him swallowed up by secular music, she repeatedly urged him to turn back and serve the Lord. Yet he ignored her counsel, and often worked around the clock to meet the demands for his type of music. He suffered what is believed to be a mental breakdown; his mother nursed him back to health, but he went right back to paid jazz and blues jobs. Again, his health broke. His sister took him to a church where he experienced a supernatural healing.
This time, he tried to incorporate his new style of music—with blues and jazz syncopation—into church worship services. But it didn't match the more conservative hymns that African-American churches were singing at that time.
He had married and he and his wife were expecting their first baby. She was near her delivery date when he needed to travel to lead a choir event in Indianapolis. While on the platform, he was handed a telegram telling him his wife and baby had died. Coming home, inconsolable in his loss, he eventually went to a piano. In what he described as a mystical inspiration, he began to play a melody and found words to go with it. Later, Dorsey would claim that his song, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” came from God Himself. It would be performed by Mahalia Jackson, and was a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Another of his 3,000 songs (a third of them Gospel) to become well-known was “Peace in the Valley.”
Dorsey eventually took a job at Chicago's Pilgrim Baptist Church where he organized one of the first Gospel choirs. He would serve there from 1932 until the late 1970s, introducing Black Gospel audience participation like clapping, stomping and shouting. He also started a Gospel publishing house for African American composers. Then came a national organization for Gospel choirs and choruses that adapted the “Gospel blues” style.
He later remarried and had a son and daughter, but continued a hectic music performance schedule in the U.S. and overseas. By the 1970s he began to slow down and showed symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. He would die in Chicago at age 93 in 1993, reportedly while listening to music on a “Walkman.”
For listening, one of many YouTube videos of this poignant song:
No comments:
Post a Comment