On this episode of our mini-series Sepia Tones, Dr. William Turner and Dr. Ted Olson welcome a spirited conversation with special guests Dr. Kathy Bullock and Rev. Dr. Virgil Wood. Our guests discuss the African American traditions of spiritual music, gospel, and the unique revival of shape note singing in 20th-century Appalachia. In many cases, music from sacred traditions and communities also became anthems that propelled those struggling in the civil rights movement.
Dr. Kathy Bullock is an arranger, choral conductor, pianist, and recently retired Professor Emerita of Music at Berea College in Kentucky specializing in gospel music, spirituals, and classical works by composers of the African diaspora.
Dr. Virgil Wood is a longtime church leader, educator, and civil rights activist who, among many other accomplishments, helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside the organization’s first president, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. William Turner is a long-time African American studies scholar and retired Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Studies and Regional Ambassador from Berea College. He was also a research assistant to Roots author Alex Haley and co-editor of the groundbreaking Blacks in Appalachia. His memoir called The Harlan Renaissance is available now from West Virginia University Press. In 2021, Turner was honored with Western Carolina University's individual Mountain Heritage Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Southern Appalachian studies.
Dr. Ted Olson is a professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University and the author of many books, articles, reviews, encyclopedia entries, and oral histories. Olson has produced and compiled a number of documentary albums of traditional Appalachian music including GSMA’s On Top of Old Smoky and Big Bend Killing. He’s received a number of awards in his work, including seven Grammy nominations. The East Tennessee Historical Society recently honored Olson with its Ramsey Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2021.
Music featured includes:
On this episode of our mini-series Sepia Tones, Dr. William Turner and Dr. Ted Olson welcome a spirited conversation with special guests Dr. Kathy Bullock and Rev. Dr. Virgil Wood. Our guests discuss the African American traditions of spiritual music, gospel, and the unique revival of shape note singing in 20th-century Appalachia. In many cases, music from sacred traditions and communities also became anthems that propelled those struggling in the civil rights movement.
Dr. Kathy Bullock is an arranger, choral conductor, pianist, and recently retired Professor Emerita of Music at Berea College in Kentucky specializing in gospel music, spirituals, and classical works by composers of the African diaspora.
Dr. Virgil Wood is a longtime church leader, educator, and civil rights activist who, among many other accomplishments, helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside the organization’s first president, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. William Turner is a long-time African American studies scholar and retired Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Studies and Regional Ambassador from Berea College. He was also a research assistant to Roots author Alex Haley and co-editor of the groundbreaking Blacks in Appalachia. His memoir called The Harlan Renaissance is available now from West Virginia University Press. In 2021, Turner was honored with Western Carolina University's individual Mountain Heritage Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Southern Appalachian studies.
Dr. Ted Olson is a professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University and the author of many books, articles, reviews, encyclopedia entries, and oral histories. Olson has produced and compiled a number of documentary albums of traditional Appalachian music including GSMA’s On Top of Old Smoky and Big Bend Killing. He’s received a number of awards in his work, including seven Grammy nominations. The East Tennessee Historical Society recently honored Olson with its Ramsey Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2021.
Music featured includes:
Sepia Tones, Episode #3
“Sacred and Spiritual Music in the Mountains”
Hosts: Bill Turner, Ted Olson
Guests: Dr. Virgil Wood and Dr. Kathy Bullock
[Guitar and banjo music and singing / "John Henry" by Amythyst Kiah and Roy Andrade from Big Bend Killing]
Kathy Bullock
Well, you know, when you're singing together, someone said—a young person—you can't be arguing.
Virgil Wood
Yes, yes, yes!
Kathy Bullock
If you're singing together, you can't be arguing. So, I had some friends said, before they start—whether it's the Senate in the US or Parliament in Britain—if they would all sing before they started, you would have to be on one accord.
Karen Key
Welcome to Smoky Mountain Air and our special mini-series Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music. I’m Karen Key and that was Dr. Kathy Bullock and Dr. Virgil Wood, our special guests, who spoke with Dr. William Turner and Dr. Ted Olson for this episode, sharing their insights about sacred and spiritual music in the Black churches of Appalachia.
This mini-series is funded through the African American Experience Project in collaboration with Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Dr. Turner and Dr. Olson spoke with Dr. Bullock and Dr. Wood on an online video chat.
[Vocal and piano music/ "Come and Go" performed by the Berea Black Music Ensemble led by Dr. Kathy Bullock]
Bill Turner
Welcome to Sepia Tones. My name is Bill Turner, and I am a co-host along with Dr. Ted Olson for this series, which looks at the influence of Black people on Appalachian music.
Today our guests are two wonderful people, who are both quite steeped in this music, both of whom I have the blessing of knowing very well. Dr. Kathy Bullock has for thirty years at least been the professor of music and the head of the Black Music Ensemble at Berea College in Kentucky. Along with Dr. Bullock is Dr. Reverend Virgil A. Wood, and he has this great claim to fame. Dr. Wood helped to organize the March on Washington in 1963. He was one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference along with Dr. Martin Luther King. They were, like, "ace buddies," as they say. I've gotten to know Dr. Wood in the last few years… a fabulous preacher, a man of the cloth, as they say, who speaks to these things between the connection of the music of the Black Church and what he knew about the social justice movement, of which he's still a vital part, living in Houston, Texas.
What do you think about that, Ted?
Ted Olson
Thanks, Bill, for the excellent introduction. The other episodes of Sepia Tones built upon a foundation of truth-telling in mostly secular music. But now we'd like to turn to the music and the traditions of the Black Church in Appalachia.
Let's get started by listening to a Black gospel quartet recording from a 1949 WHAS radio audition. This is "I Have a Friend Above All Others" performed by the Lousiville, Kentucky-based Bethlehem Kings.
[Quartet singing / " I Have a Friend Above All Others " performed by Bethlehem Kings, 1949]
Bill Turner
Dr. Bullock and Dr. Wood, as you know, with you all today, we're hoping to drive down a pathway, or walk down the pathway, whichever way we get there, that leads us to understanding more about the roots and the branches of spirituals and gospel music framed around Appalachia.
And, of course, I guess of us sitting here, Kathy is about as close as we can get right now to physically being at Berea College…
Kathy Bullock
[chuckles]
Bill Turner
…she and Ted; Ted's in Johnson City, Tennessee, and Dr. Wood comes from the Piedmont Blue Ridge area of Virginia—Albemarle County up near Christiansburg Mountain. I think he knows a little bit, and he was ordained as a preacher, I guess about 70 years ago, when he was a late teenager. So we oughta go a long way here.
Virgil Wood
Actually it was 73 years ago.
Bill Turner
Seventy-three years ago. Right. And so that gives us a lot of room, because we're looking here at the relationship between the music and the church, the Black church, the Black music tradition.
And for a number of years, Kathy, 23 at least, I think, you've run the Berea College Black Music Ensemble. So start us there. What's that all about in terms of your professional work as a musicologist, PhD trained at, was it the University of Missouri?
Kathy Bullock
Washington University.
Bill Turner
Washington University. Right. So tell me, what's the Berea College Black Music Ensemble all about?
Kathy Bullock
Well, thank you for asking, Dr. Turner. Thank you for allowing me to be here with you all today. And I get to do the thing I love to do is sing, sing!
Well, the Black Music Ensemble is a student-run organization that sings gospel music, gospel and spirituals. And it's of the kind of organizations that have been all over the country started around the end of the 1960s, around the time when Black students all over with wanting to have places and spaces in the university that reflected their culture and their heritage. And so it began as a student run organization, as most of them did.
And then when I came in '91, we decided to make it an accredited ensemble, like the other ensembles in the music department, so that students would get the same credit for the time that they put into the music, and also to acknowledge its importance.
So I've been there. I just recently retired from Berea after being almost 30 years there and working with the choir during that time. So our primary music—singing—has been gospel and spirituals, and we've done some African songs and a few gospel anthems, but primarily that music which comes out of the Black community and is one that helps us in creating a sense of community, connectedness, and support.
Bill Turner
Let me ask you a question about your experience with students and music from various parts of the Appalachian region. Because I know at Berea College, you've had a critical mass of Black students whose music goes back to Jefferson County, Alabama, in Birmingham, all the way up to those who come from Tennessee where Ted is in Kingsport and Johnson City and Greenville, and in Harlan County, Kentucky, and in Keystone, West Virginia. You've had them from over those years at Berea.
Is there any difference now in a type of faith music students like to do, as opposed to say 25 years ago?
Kathy Bullock
Yes. When I first came, the contemporary gospel songs at that time were being performed—were the songs that were very popular among the young people.
So, I don't know if like—'Soon and Very Soon'—that was probably old by then.
[singing and playing piano, Dr. Wood sings along] "Soon and very soon we are going to meet the King…"
Yes. They were gospel songs that were popular at that particular time. And so the students, a lot of them came from their own communities in churches and where they had heard those and wanted to sing together. And so we joined together, singing those songs.
Over time, more recently as the students come, there are still many that come from communities of faith. But there are others that are attracted to the group because of what they see as the community created and the songs of faith and the inspiration but didn't necessarily grow up with a lot of these. Like, some of the students back early on, I could sing...
[singing] "I loved the Lord, He heard my cry… Love the Lord…"
And some would know. What in the world was that, most. But there will be people saying, oh yeah, my grand-mommy used to sing that my grand-pappy. Or when they would start to sing those lined hymns or old hymns. But nowadays, the students, most of them have not heard any of the older songs as well. And they're more involved with the knowing of the traditional or contemporary songs, and in gospel, those have also evolved.
So they're more songs by small ensembles that would be, well, praise and worship, they call it. More of a newer style of song quality. But there's some that are standard. So, yeah..
Now there's a difference, I got to say that, between spirituals and gospel. This is the music person coming in. Spirituals is what came out of the enslaved people, like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." You can tell it because the words will be in the dialect: "Comin' for, to carry me home" or "Steal away'. Very few words and very simple. We can go back as far as to 1700s to find some songs like that, or, you know…
[singing] "Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home…"
That's a spiritual. And these songs many times with no accompaniment in anything like that. Gospel added....
[plays piano]
…added piano, bass, and drums. And it was written down, instead of through the oral tradition, and you hear the influence of blues and jazz. So gospel would be like today's spiritual, todays. And it's longer, more harmonies. And so that's where they would say, the spiritual...
[singing and playing piano] "Keep your hand on the plow, hold on…"
That would be the spiritual. "Keep your hands on the plow," looking at, you know, out in the fields.
There were several different types of songs or genres or styles that were prominent, which came out of the Black community.
Now today as a gospel might say,
[singing] "Jesus can work it out, Jesus can work it out. Telephone disconnect. Waitin' on my next paycheck. Tell you what you ought to do…"
…or something…
[singing]…"Light bill due…"
You know the words, the text, would deal with today's story. Gospel praise.
Doctor, I heard you singing too. You have a beautiful voice. I heard you singing.
Virgil Wood
Well, thank you, but I'd rather listen to you.
Kathy Bullock
[laughs] I heard you too, Dr. Turner. I said, I don't know if I heard Ted yet. But I would say, sounding good!
Bill Turner
[laughs] If you had a favorite song, Dr. Bullock, that speaks to the Appalachian framework, gospel or spiritual, what would it be?
Kathy Bullock
Now, Dr. Turner, you asking a music person for my favorite song. It's just like, what moment do you catch me on, and that's going to be the favorite at the time. There's so many. Hmm…
Bill Turner
I understand. No problem. I just so much enjoy your music, and I'm just thinking, being at Berea all these many years. I'm thinking about Dr. Wood's long journey in terms of knowing that the spirit doesn't come down without a song.
Virgil Wood
Mm-hmm.
Kathy Bullock
You got that right.
Virgil Wood
Well said.
Kathy Bullock
[playing piano] So if I would sing one of my favorites at the moment, it would be this song. And it's an old one that James Cleveland, a gospel composer and director, had done. It goes like this…
[singing and playing piano] "God has smiled on me, He has set me free. Oh, God has smiled on me, sure been good… to me, yeah."
Virgil Wood
[laughing] Still smiling. Oh my God!
Kathy Bullock
I would sing it at the beginning of every rehearsal. Just, you know, whatever's happening, whatever the day has been or whatever, I can still sing "God Has Smiled On Me" because it's the concept of joy as a decision. I choose—I can't respond to all the craziness and all the challenges that come to me, but I can respond with joy. My words have power. So I'm going to speak life; I'm going to speak joy; I'm going to speak positivity. And I'm going to receive those blessings and be empowered by them.
Bill Turner
Help us doc, when, you know, in terms of your work as a theologian—worship and praise and religious and ceremonial—the music sounds sometimes, the spirituals of the gospel, as much to be celebratory, as they're asking God to intercede. Help us, you know, these messages from the enslaved people about their drudgery. "Wade in the Water"—that was one I remember. "Steal Away." And now you're singing this one "He Has Smiled on Me."
So tell us, Dr. Wood, how much has that meant to you over the course of your 90 years as a man of praise?
Virgil Wood
Well, of those 90 years, my journey has at least been about 83 years. I remember becoming a Christian when I was maybe but eight years, seven or eight years old. My sister was a little older, and when she went up, I had to go up, too. And they weren't sure whether I belonged. They let me say something, and stuff came out that I don't know where it came from. But they said, "Let the boy in!" And I got baptized when I was seven or eight years old.
Now this music thing is the magic of creation. I think God sang before he spoke.
Bill Turner
Did you sing coming up, Reverend Wood when you were a child? Were you in the choir in Albemarle?
Virgil Wood
I was I was in every choir I could be in. I played the trumpet when I was in high school.
The question I want to ask everybody, including your colleagues here today: When you were at a place in your life, when you thought you were up against something that you just couldn't handle, you didn't have any idea that you'd ever get on the other side of it. And, all of a sudden, you found yourself on the other side. You don't know how you got on the other side of trouble, maybe it was 247 years for Black folks. And the divide between 247 years in 1865, and we got on over to 1865. I don't know if—Mahalia wasn't around, but somebody like Mahalia was around, and they said, "My soul looks back and wonders how I got over! Ain't that right, Sister Bullock? How I got over!
Kathy Bullock
[singing and playing piano] "How I got over, over. Soul looks back in wonder, how I got over."
Hoo, yes!
Virgil Wood
Oh my God! Where you been, Sister? I've been looking for you!
Kathy Bullock: I'm a P.K. I'm a preacher's kid, and I'm a church musician, now, Doctor. So all you do is say the word, and I sing the song!
Bill Turner
Fantastic.
[Acapella singing / "Swing Low" performed by Mount Sinai Spirituals at the Berea College Celebration of Traditional Music, 2015]
Hey, Kathy, something that occurs to me when Dr. Wood was talking about this matter of getting over, I grew up in Eastern Kentucky in Harlan County. And my mother was the pianist in a little church for 51 years. And we sang a song that had a place reference to it. And it was called "Rough Side of the Mountain."
[singing] "I'm comin' up…"
Kathy Bullock
[singing and playing piano] "I'm coming up… from the rough side of the mountain. I must hold to God… His powerful hand…"
Yes…
Bill Turner
I knew you knew that. That's a great song.
Kathy Bullock
That's a gospel song. What was so beautiful is that in our church and sacred tradition, they talked about the trials and about God and the future, but they always were involved with, there was always hope, even if the talking about the struggles, the pains, the joys of life.
We also, our churches, as they became more structured, we included hymns. So many of these wonderful hymns that come out, some, uh, very old hymns, like...
[singing and playing piano] "Pass me not, oh, gentle Savior.... "
Bill Turner
Sing it!
Virgil Wood
Keep goin', girl!
Kathy Bullock
I'm making it a little gospel-like…
[singing] "…Hear my humble cry…"
Add a little gospel in the piano…
[singing] "…While all others Thou art calling, do not pass me by…"
Bill Turner
You know, another one we used to do, Kathy, Dr. Wood, back in Harlan County that was appropriate to the space, since we lived in the mountains, my mother loved a song that was shared equally in Black and white spaces. And Tennessee Ernie Ford used sing called "There Will Be Peace in the Valley."
Virgil Wood
"Peace in the Valley," yes.
Kathy Bullock
[singing and playing piano] "There will be peace in the valley for me, I pray. There will be peace in the valley for me, O, I pray…"
Yes. No sorrow…
Bill Turner
[speaking to the music] "There'll be no sadness, no sorrow. O, joy I feel…"
Kathy Bullock
[singing} "Mmm-hmm…"
I have to look at my hymnal for that one…
[singing] "There will be peace…"
And you know, that I idea of Blacks and whites singing the same music connecting and crossing over, that happened all the time, particularly, I think, in the mountain communities and in Appalachia. There was a lot of exchange going on, wouldn't you say, about music?
Now there would be very stylistic changes, like, you know, might sing it in my church…
[singing, drawing out syllables] "There will be peace… yeah… yeah… in the valley…"
There would be a lot of [drawing out syllables] sliding on notes that was part of the Black singing style.
Virgil Wood
Now, before you leave that, let's pause for a minute in the valley…
Kathy Bullock
Let's pause.
Virgil Wood
…because we came out of Death Valley…
Kathy Bullock
Yes.
Virgil Wood
…when the prophets… Let's just talk about Fred Douglas walking around in Death Valley and seeing all the bones of 240-some years.
It's about whether we can follow Jesus from the mountains, through the deep woods, back to the mountaintop. Tell me, how you feelin', Ted?
Ted Olson
Well, you had talked a little while ago about what tune carried me over, what hymn. And that's an easy one for me to answer. And it's a hymn that's helped many a person from every imaginable background, get over that mountain, so to speak. You know, cross over to a place of peace and tranquility and resolution. And that of course was "Amazing Grace."
Virgil Wood
I knew you're gonna say that. Go ahead man. Yes, yes!
Ted Olson
Yeah, and keep in mind that that was a hymn that was created by a tune writer or a composer who had repented his sins in the creation of that hymn.
Virgil Wood
Tell them what his sin was. Slave holder, slave trader and all, John Newton.
Bill Turner: Yeah, Alex Haley wrote about him too, Ted. Go ahead.
Ted Olson
Yeah, there was a very, very powerful documentary film about the whole story of John Newton and the creation of "Amazing Grace."
Virgil Wood
What was the title of that, Ted?
Ted Olson
I think it's called Amazing Grace. The filmmaker and the producer was Bill Moyers…
Virgil Wood
Oh yes.
Ted Olson
…a respected filmmaker, I think for many, many years. In that film, "Amazing Grace," many different people from different backgrounds, singers, singing this incredible hymn and tying the hymn to many different traditions and suggesting that a hymn like that can unify people across all manner of barriers and carry them over, so to speak, to a better happier place and a more resolute place, both individually and collectively.
So, I just wanted to answer that question that you had about what carried me over. And I think, and I'm pleased to say, that it's carried a lot of people over, because we all have our favorite songs and hymns and tunes. And I agree with Kathy that some days maybe it might be another hymn that moves me, but you know, during the hardest of times, it's always "Amazing Grace." It seems like the meaning and the lyric, and there's a freedom of expression that comes with singing it to oneself or out loud.
Virgil Wood
Have you ever heard Winton Phipps do that?
Ted Olson
I have not.
Kathy Bullock
Beautiful job, beautiful.
Virgil Wood
Oh, you gotta hear that, man. You gotta hear it.
Bill Turner
Kathy, do you mind doing a little bit of that, "Amazing Grace"?
Kathy Bullock
[singing and playing piano] "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I—I'm found. Was blind, but now I see…"
Bill Turner: Amen, amen. Fantastic, fantastic.
Virgil Wood
Before you leave that, "I love the Lord. He heard my cry, pitied every groan," that was Daddy King's favorite song.
And I'll tell you why that's critical now. Because if we ever started singing this stuff together, if we can get America singing this music together, from wherever we are to the ends of the earth, we're going to leave all of the foolishness behind us and go forward together. We're going to save America sure enough.
The promise of America is right, but the practice has always been wrong. Always.
Black folks and white folks, super rich and super poor, got to get together and sing first. Before we get down to business, we got to sing first.
Jesus said greater works than these shall you do.
And so, God done provided the songbird, man, come on. The songbird. And I believe he done raised up some prophets, Black and white too. Bill Turner's a prophet. He don't know it yet.
You are too, Ted. I don't know what your disciplines are, but you're a prophet, too. I'm a prophet, but I got to limp to mine, but… Y'all might not have a limp, but I got a limp. I'm messed up as much as Jacob was. [laughs]
Kathy Bullock
[laughs] Well, you know, when you're singing together, someone said—a young person—you can't be arguing.
Virgil Wood
Yes, yes, yes!
Kathy Bullock
If you're singing together, you can't be arguing. So, I had some friends said, before they start—whether it's the Senate in the US or Parliament in Britain—if they would all sing before they started, you would have to be on one accord.
So there is power in, certainly, we're talking about the power of music here, and how it permeates when we think of the Black community, particularly in Appalachia, but even beyond. The power of music to heal, support, encourage, uplift, inspire, connect.
Bill Turner
Well, you know, I just can't express how this has gone. It's the exact way Ted and I imagined these podcasts going, very improvisational almost, wouldn't you say, Ted? Particularly how you can so quickly segue from conversation to singing, Kathy. It's just quite unique. It really is. And…
Kathy Bullock
That's what we do, Doc. When I say I'm a church musician, a Black church musician, and a music professor, and I teach choirs, and my dad's a preacher. It's got to happen. Any of us in that same—that's what we do.
Virgil Wood
Wow.
Bill Turner
In your DNA.
Kathy Bullock
[laughing] Yes, DNA.
[Acapella congregational singing / "Jesus Is a Rock in a Weary Land" performed by members of the Holiness Church by Faith in Ozark, AL, 1968, recorded by Richard H. Tallmadge]
Kathy Bullock
Music, especially out of the African tradition—not only African—but particularly the African worldview, traditional Africa. Music is a part of our life. It's like, in that setting, in that way of looking at the world, if you talk, you sing. If you walk, you dance. And if you say, "Oh, I don't sing. I can't sing." Looking from traditional African, you are saying you do not exist…
Virgil Wood
That's right, that's right, that's right. Amen.
Kathy Bullock
…because only you can sing your song.
Virgil Wood
That's right. I love that. I love it
Kathy Bullock
So people will say, "Oh, these Black folk, they all sing 'cause they speak. Do they dance? Can they move? They dance." And this might be my dance, and that's okay.
Virgil Wood
Hallelujah, Hallelujah.
Kathy Bullock
So because it's such a central part of life, it makes sense then that when they came to these shores in the United States, they would carry that very core desire to share through song. The more I've studied and looked at other cultures', I've come to understand that really pre-technology music is a part of the human experience, you know.
It's just like after technology got in place and things, we kind of forgot. Look at little children. Very naturally, they're going to dance and sing and move. It's a natural thing. We get it kind of taught out of us.
Virgil Wood
That's right. That fire's shut up in your bones.
Kathy Bullock
Yes, yes.
Bill Turner
Well, how often do we hear, you know, "They're natural singers. They have this natural—" you know… We deny this kind of naturalness.
Ted, you're an ethnomusicologist. When you hear Kathy move from just discussing her father, her family, the DNA of music in her life, and then segue immediately to playing something, how do you as a musician feel about that in terms of where it moves your soul?
Ted Olson
Well, I'm awed by that because it's not easy to switch gears from rational discourse about musical elements and the way in which music is shaped and constructed to freely expressing those emotions and that craft that goes behind the making of music.
So I'm just in awe of Kathy's ability to cover all the bases of the musical experience. And I know that her students are extremely lucky to have been trained by her, and to understand the history of the music. In other words, to put the music into a cultural and historical context is something that ethnomusicologists do, and sometimes we get a little over analytical about it. So it's really good to hear that the analysis is all there. The history is all there, but then the free expression of those lessons get demonstrated to the students. And so they take that with them. They not only feel comfortable singing, but they feel comfortable understanding where the music comes from and why it's so important that it be kept alive into the future.
That's a long-winded way of saying "Job well done."
Kathy Bullock
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ted. I would say that my doctorate's in theory, so I come to music and terms of talking about analysis of, and all that, that I love to do that. So I have that piece, but then having a daddy, who was a Baptist minister growing up in Washington, DC, in a large church, urban church, having sisters who we gave concerts all the time and singing. I mean, we were singing at home all the time and at church. So we were practicing it from a very young age, the performance of it, as well as I was getting trained by ear and then learning piano, written. You see? So I was getting both from a very young age, and I think that helps later on when accessing those different ways of expression, you know?
Bill Turner
Kathy, you said something earlier in terms of this messaging of this music back when you played "Amazing Grace" and we talked about that. I want to go back to my street in Kentucky and another song my mother used to play, but I want you to be over-analytical about it as Ted said you don't do. And that's—I think it's really good. Analyze to me very quickly, if you don't mind, what did Thomas Dorsey have in mind when he wrote "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"?
Kathy Bullock
Oh, well, first of all, Thomas Dorsey started off, he was playing the blues. His father was a preacher. And they called him "Georgia Tom," because he went touring and played in set. Now, if you know anything about situations back then, a good church musician did not play that blues stuff, that "devil's music," over on Saturday night and then come Sunday and play at the church house—which is what he did. But you didn't do that!
Why he's so significant as the father of gospel, because he was able to fuse together in the music he wrote those blues aspects, as well as, from the church, the religious or sacred aspects of the text. So he wrote the song "Precious Lord." And it uses some of the blue notes.
[singing] "Precious Lord, take my hand..."
It's been done so many times all over the world that they're variations for it. So it's hard for me to sing just as he wrote it, but there was the passion in it. And it's like gospel—the range is about an octave and a 10th. It uses pretty much traditional chords that you would find in harmony. But the power of it is in the melody and the message, because this occurred after he found out his unborn baby and his wife had died. And then this song emerged as a gift.
[singing] "Lead me on—precious Lord, take my hand—Lead me on, let me stand. I am tired; I am weak; I'm worn, so worn…"
Can you hear it?
[singing] "Through the storms, through the night. Lead me on, to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me on..."
Now that's the way I would sing it without a steady pulse but with a free rhythmic style. I just had to switch because I was getting ready to go to church. You know what I'm saying? It was like, yeah, Lord. But yes, so that song can be done, you know…
[singing] "Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on…"
…in a tripling beat…
[singing] "…let me stand…"
And I think that's a little bit how he wrote it, but if you listen to him sing it, Thomas Dorsey, when he was, he was in his eighties or nineties. "Say, Amen, Somebody" is his documentary and he wrote… He sang the song and he sang it with some of the stops and starts in the way that I sang it, so to get the passion of it. But that song is known the world over because of it. It's simple enough so that you can engage in it. But it's a personal testimony that one is singing to God.
[Guitar strumming and vocals / "Precious Lord" performed by Nat Reese at the Berea College Celebration of Traditional Music, 1991]
Virgil Wood
Can we get three more minutes for her to help us understand how we got from "I'll be Alright," to "We Shall Overcome"? Cause people need to know that it didn't come from the labor movement. It came from Tindley.
Kathy Bullock
Absolutely. Absolutely. Charles Albert Tindley, who was a minister and really a charismatic leader in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
His parents were slaves, and this man moved from that and working as a janitor in the church to becoming the pastor of the church and then the pastor of what they call Tindley Temple and started writing all these hymns. Thousands came to his churches. "I'll Overcome Someday" is a song that he wrote.
And then after that, the song was taken up—was it Pete Seeger who as part of the…
Virgil Wood
Actually the Labor Movement, even before that,
Kathy Bullock
And even before that. And so instead of "I'll overcome," they changed it to "We shall overcome." In the "I," you need to understand, the "I" is collective. When Black people sing "I," they mean, "I" standing for me and everyone in my community. "This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine." When they said "we," that meant people outside of the community were now being added to it. So "We shall overcome." Yes.
And so it ended up with…
[singing] "We shall overcome, we shall overcome…"
Whether it's a hundred, 200 years ago or George Floyd's death recently.
[singing] "We shall overcome someday. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day. We'll walk hand in hand, we'll stand side by side. We shall overcome, someday."
Virgil Wood
And you know, later, Sis, we started singing not "someday" but "today."
Kathy Bullock
"Today."
[singing] "…shall overcome today."
Virgil Wood
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Kathy Bullock
Absolutely, absolutely.
Bill Turner
Fantastic.
Ted Olson
I have a question for Dr. Wood regarding Dr. King, Jr. and his time spent in Appalachia at the Highlander Center.
Virgil Wood
Yes, oh, yes.
Ted Olson
Could you share some stories about how he came to the Highlander Center there in East Tennessee and what he gained from spending time there in fellowship with other people—what he brought to them, and what they gave to them?
Virgil Wood
That's right. Miles Horton… And when King would come there, they would see the big billboards on the road saying, "The Biggest Liar," "Communist," all that kind of stuff. But when they got to Highlander, it was almost like, he and Rosa Parks, a finishing school in a way. And I like the part where Rosa Parks started this whole thing, then Martin picked it up in Montgomery…
But Rosa Parks had been at Highlander two weeks before she decided not to give up that seat. A lot of people don’t know that. She had been at Highlander. And that's where she really shaped her own sole resilience, so that when she sat in that seat praying to the Lord, and a big, scruffy policeman standing over her sweating, saying, "If you don't get up, I'm going to have to arrest you. And I'm going to have to just read this to you three times…" And as he was reading it, she told me herself, she was praying. Her favorite scripture, the 27th Psalm…
"The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? When my enemies—even my enemies and my foes—came upon to eat of my flesh, they stumbled and fell…"
And when she got to that point, he said, "I got to arrest you now." Do you know what she said to him? Do you know, Bill?
Bill Turner
No, sir.
Virgil Wood
She said, "You may do that." [laughs] "You may do that" She gave him permission to arrest her! She wasn't getting arrested; she was permitting them! She was permitting the empire to arrest her!
There's no way to tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement without always remembering Highlander Folk School. And it was based on the Danish Folk School system, as you know. The Danish Folk School system is what Leon Sullivan took and created OIC [Opportunities Industrialization Centers] out of the scholarship of Alain Locke, the philosopher who studied at Harvard under the man who got the whole concept of "Beloved Community" started, Josiah Royce.
Bill Turner
Yeah, and that matter of going back to Highlander, I think Septima Clark, a Black woman out of South Carolina, was quite a part of working with Pete Seeger and others to make the… into the kind of anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, "We Shall Overcome." So, it did have a big story there at Highlander. No doubt about that.
Ted, do you have any thoughts here?
Ted Olson
Well, I guess one thought, perhaps Dr. Bullock could answer this one, has to do with a theme we talked about earlier, which is how music brought people together.
Even when there were separate religious traditions, people would join together in song and worship. I'm thinking specifically about the shape note tradition. And I'm thinking about Mississippi and Alabama and places where the shape note singing traditions were very deeply entwined with cultural life.
And there were separate traditions, but I've heard stories that people would come together for these large shape note gatherings in the summertime, Blacks, whites mixed happily rejoicing and learning that very difficult tradition of shape note singing. Just curious if our special guests have any thoughts about, how a tradition that people revere so deeply that they've really gone out of their way to preserve it, study it and then kind of keep it alive, is so important to keep alive exactly because it brings people together.
Kathy Bullock
The first thought that I had as you said that was, every kind of music that I've been exploring that occurred in the United States, just about every one, Black folk were involved in it. [laughs] Whether they were involved with being part of creating the music, like the spiritual, or performing it, like, and in shape note, like the colored shape note tradition that I found out or, up here, the Shakers. There were Black Shakers who wrote music as well as the Shakers and the Quakers, you know, in all of the traditions—the revival, the whole revival sweeping the country in earlier years. There were Black people, even slave people who were sitting and singing and contributing. So it's something about music certainly.
I don't know a lot, in particular, about the colored shape note tradition. I know about the whole shape note tradition and the singing coming over from Europe, and that was used partly for training people how to read music, you know, by changing the symbols of the notes to represent different solfege syllables—So, Fa, La, that kind of thing. And then the music that emerged from that, a lot of it pretty contrapuntal and very exciting music.
So I just know that the convention took place and continued to do so. And sometimes folks down the street—you can hear folks singing in the shape note tradition because, in some ways, like gospel, it's designed to invite people in, to invite folks to come and to sing it, to share.
There's some music that is designed to be where you sit and you listen—you actively listen to it after people have put through years of performing it. And there's others that you as the congregation, the community, you are to share and sing. And there's a lot that's in between.
[Voices raised in shape note singing / "Amazing Grace" performed by The Wiregrass Singers from 1979]
Ted Olson
That performance of "Amazing Grace" comes from Berea College where it was performed at the Symposium of Rural Hymnody in 1979. But the tradition itself comes from southeastern Alabama in the town of Ozark, Alabama, where this group The Wiregrass Singers Sacred Harp Singers are keeping alive the tradition created by Judge Jackson, who was a hymn leader in the 1930s. He created something called The Colored Sacred Harp Book.
Now The Colored Sacred Harp Book compiled a number of arrangements of traditional hymns placed on the page in the form of shape notes to create what is sometimes thought to be a simplified system of sight reading of music to create kind of a choral effect where there would be four parts to a performance of a particular hymn using different shapes to signify the different parts.
Southeastern Alabama is a place near and dear to Bill's heart, and we thought we'd ask Bill a little about his family connections to that part of Alabama and these gospel singing traditions, shape note singing and the sacred harp.
Bill Turner
Well, yeah, Ted, the tradition of this type of singing is in my DNA. As I've told you many times, my folks who came into Eastern Kentucky in the coal camps and even into Southwest Virginia, and particularly southern West Virginia, the vast majority, the critical mass of them at the turn of the 20th Century came out of rural Alabama. These people migrated and they brought their songs with them. And I can remember so well because my grandmother often led these songs. My mother knew these songs. She played in that same church for 55 years, I think. And even as a little boy, shape note, lining out, and this reference to "We're gonna do a Dr. Watts song…" I heard that so many times…
Kathy Bullock
Yes!
Virgil Wood
Old Dr. Watts, yeah.
Kathy Bullock
Absolutely. I was just thinking about that. Cause I thought only Black folks did that lined hymn stuff. In Washington, DC, a lot of Blacks migrated from the Carolinas and Virginia and stopped in DC. So the elders, the seniors would do some lined hymns singing. It's died out a lot since then. So I would hear that.
Then I came and they took us on a trip as faculty to parts of Eastern Kentucky. So we could learn more about the population. And I went to Little Dove Old Regular Baptist Dhurch, and these folks started doing this lined hymn. I was—"What?!" It was so exciting.
Bill Turner
That’s in a placed called Red Fox, Kentucky. Yeah, I know exactly where you were then.
Kathy Bullock
And then I was in Scotland and talking with some people who are members from the Hebrides and Lewis, the Isle of Lewis, off the coast of Scotland where the early psalmody singing took place and they still do it. I didn't make it all the way up there, but I made it part in and I talked to them about that tradition and how there were many people from Scotland who migrated particularly into the Carolinas and bringing those traditions.
I was so excited. They've done some work about places there and places in, I think it's Georgia. They did a collaboration in music. So I'm just excited to learn about this Old Regular Baptist music and the singing style.
Bill Turner
Well, Kathy, you know our friend Dr. Carl Smith…
Kathy Bullock
Yes.
Bill Turner
He headed up the music department of Kentucky State University for many years. He did his dissertation for Carnegie-Mellon when he codified in Black Appalachian context for this music. He did it at an Old Regular Baptist Church in Red Fox, Kentucky, which is over near Hazard. And they're doing those same songs this coming Sunday, I'm pretty sure.
Kathy Bullock
Yes. Doctor Watts, old hymns. I was talking to a Pastor Blythe here, and he said they just call them "the old hymns," old songs and the tunes. But the lined hymns, my daddy from South Carolina, they called it singing long meter. Long-meter singing.
Bill Turner
Kathy, if we could only clone you and just spread your spirit across what we've been trying to do on this podcast, we'd have it made. Thank you so much. This has been fantastic. Really, the way you guys have blended exactly what we've talked about from the side of Dr. Wood's background as a preacher, a man mastered in theological discourse, social justice advocate. And then you, and Ted and I just sitting here, going along for the ride. This is really fantastic.
Virgil Wood
If you would do a clip for me, I would appreciate if you'd just do something for me before we go. My daddy's favorite hymn was "I Must Tell Jesus… all of my sorrows… I cannot bear these burdens." Would you sing that for us, Doc? Do you feel like it?
Kathy Bullock
Oh, yes, sir! Now you mean the regular hymn?
Virgil Wood
Yes.
Kathy Bullock
Okay.
[singing] "I must tell Jesus all of my sorrows. I cannot bear these burdens alone. In my distress He kindly will aid me. He ever loves and cares for his own. I must tell Jesus! I must tell Jesus! I cannot bear these burdens alone. I must tell Jesus. I must tell Jesus. Jesus can help me, Jesus alone."
Virgil Wood
Thank you, Sister.
Bill Turner
I almost want to say, let the church say amen. Thank you so much, you guys.
Virgil Wood
Thank you, Brother Bill.
Ted Olson
Thank you.
Kathy Bullock: Thank you all.
[Guitar and banjo music and singing / "John Henry" by Amythyst Kiah and Roy Andrade from Big Bend Killing.
Karen Key
Thank you to guest hosts Dr. William Turner and Dr. Ted Olson, who will be bringing us this podcast mini-series, Sepia Tones, over the next several months.
Dr. William Turner is a long-time African American studies scholar and retired Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Studies and Regional Ambassador from Berea College. He was also a research assistant to Roots author Alex Haley and co-editor of the groundbreaking Blacks in Appalachia. His memoir called The Harlan Renaissance is available now from West Virginia University Press. In 2021, Turner was honored with Western Carolina University's individual Mountain Heritage Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Southern Appalachian studies.
Dr. Ted Olson is a music historian and professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is the author of many books, articles, reviews, encyclopedia entries, and oral histories. Olson has produced and compiled a number of documentary albums of traditional Appalachian music including GSMA’s own On Top of Old Smoky and Big Bend Killing. His work has received a number of awards, including seven Grammy nominations. The East Tennessee Historical Society honored Olson with its Ramsey Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2021.
Valerie Polk
Special thanks also to guests, Dr. Kathy Bullock and Dr. Virgil Wood.
Dr. Kathy Bullock is an arranger, choral conductor, pianist, and former Professor Emerita of Music at Berea College in Kentucky specializing in gospel music, spirituals, and classical works by composers of the African diaspora. Her powerful performances of spiritual music are captured on From My Heart to Yours: Sacred Songs Along My Journey. We appreciate the music she performed for this podcast and especially want to thank her for that delightful contribution.
Dr. Virgil Wood is a respected church leader and educator whose work began during the civil rights movement alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He is an ordained Baptist minister and holds a doctorate in education from Harvard University. Dr. Wood served on the national executive board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and coordinated the state of Virginia in the historic March on Washington on August 28, 1963. His books include In Love We Still Trust: Lessons We Learned from Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr. and An Introduction to Black Church Economic Studies.
Music featured in this episode includes:
"John Henry" performed by Amythyst Kiah and Roy Andrade from GSMA’s album Big Bend Killing;
And a selection of music used courtesy of the Berea Sound Archives, including:
"Come and Go" performed by the Berea Black Music Ensemble and our guest Dr. Kathy Bullock at the Berea Celebration of Traditional Music in 2014;
"I Have a Friend Above All Others" performed by the Bethlehem Kings Quartet in 1949;
"Swing Low" performed by Mount Sinai Spirituals at the Berea College Celebration of Traditional Music in 2015;
"Jesus Is a Rock in a Weary Land" performed by members of the Holiness Church by Faith in Ozark, AL, in 1968, recorded by Richard H. Tallmadge
"Precious Lord" performed by Nat Reese at the Berea College Celebration of Traditional Music in 1991
"Amazing Grace" performed by the Wiregrass Sacred Harp Singers during the Symposium of Rural Hymnody at Berea College in 1979;
And a special thanks again to Dr. Kathy Bullock for the wonderful selection of music she performed for our podcast.
[Old-time guitar music from Old-Time Smoky Mountain Music and bird song]
Karen Key
Our theme music is from Old-Time Smoky Mountain Music, GSMA’s Grammy-nominated music collection available at SmokiesInformation.org. Bird recordings by Mark Dunaway. Thanks for listening!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Great Smoky Mountains Association is an educational, non-profit partner of the National Park Service. We support the perpetual preservation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park by promoting greater public interest and appreciation through education, interpretation, and research. Learn more about our work and the benefits of membership by visiting our website at SmokiesInformation.org.