Table of Contents
“United Sacred Harp Musical Convention in Fyffe, Alabama”
“The Sacred Songs Roll Like Thunder” reads the title of an article by Ted Strongin that appeared in the “Chattanooga Times” of September 20, 1959. The kind of singing the article described often leaves even the best writers grasping for words that do justice to it, but invoking the sound of thunder is a good start. Strongin was writing of a two-day meeting, or “convention,” of the United Sacred Harp Musical Association, held in Fyffe, Alabama, the previous weekend, that drew a few hundred singers ranging in age from 12 to 90, singing beloved hymns full bore all day long.
… In 1959, Lomax had another opportunity to record Sacred Harp singing, thanks to a contract with Atlantic Records to produce a series of albums of southern field recordings. Armed with an early portable Ampex stereo reel-to-reel tape recorder and two RCA ribbon microphones, and assisted by English folksinger Shirley Collins, Lomax came to Fyffe to record the United Sacred Harp Musical Association’s 46th annual convention.
… Lomax and Collins arrived in the late morning of the second day. They recorded 32 hymns in the 90 minutes or so before the lunch break. Then, over the course of about five hours, a further 130 hymns were sung and recorded before the convention adjourned in the early evening.
… Three hymns from the 1959 convention were included in Atlantic Records’ seven album series “Sounds of the South,” which included three hymns from the Sacred Harp. In 1962, the Prestige Folklore label released an entire album of 18 hymns recorded by Lomax and Collins in its “Southern Journey” series. A revised version of this album that included words and notation for the songs was released on vinyl by New World Records in 1977 and then on CD in 1992. In 1997, two full CDs with many previously unreleased songs were released in Rounder Records’ expanded reissue of the Southern Journey series.
–Matthew Barton, “United Sacred Harp Musical Convention in Fyffe, Alabama“
Baltimore Editor’s Note
The preceding paragraphs, excerpted from a linked essay about the recordings, gives larger context to the following news report of a singing that Alan Lomax recorded. The past grows before us. While we venture further away from that event, it is more approachable now than the seconds and hours and days after it completed.
In addition to transcribing the article, I’ve included recordings of the entire convention, available for the first time, I believe, when the Lomax Figital Archive put them online and then Jeremiah Ledbetter put them on YouTube in 2022, stitched together with a timestamped track listing.
The Sacred Songs Roll Like Thunder
By TED STRONGIN
THE SUN was shining. The church door were open. Inside all the benches were filled. Up front In the church one man stood beating time. He was surrounded on four aide by tenors, trebles, altos, and basses arranged in sections.
Outside across the street dry cornstalks were rustling. The singing rolled and thundered out over the green. In front of the church Two men were out there listening.
One of them talked between tunes and phrases a sort of running commentary. He kept Interrupting to point out a note or a verse or to sing along with a favorite line.
He was T.C. Bailey from Arab, Ala. The church was the Corinth Baptist on top of Sand Mountain in Fyffe Ala.
“My granddaddy was a great treble singer,” Bailey said. “A fellow once asked him In a small town ‘Why do you sing those old songs over and over again every year?’
“‘It’s like this Joe’ my granddaddy said ‘when better songs are made we’ll sing em’
‘‘I love baseball about as well as anything In the world” said the Arab man. “But I’m sacrificin’ television all weekend just to hear the singing.”
Uncle Tom Denson, a famous Sacred Harp leader, expressed everybody’s opinion a while ago.
“If some of you don’t like this music” Uncle Tom said, “all I’ve got to say to you is you’d better get out. If you stay here, it’s going to get a-hold of you and you can’t get away”
There are many Sacred Harp groups singing around the South. All do not use the same tunes but they resemble each other in style. The one at Fyffe last weekend was the United Sacred Harp Musical Association, with members in most Southern States even over to Texas.
The book used by United is “Original Sacred Harp” published at headquarters in Haileyville, Ala. All the songs they sing hundreds of them are in the book.
“There’s a song In this book for every human idea” said Bailey “If you can’t find It I’ll find it for you In other words It’s based on life.
“Members of all denominations wrote these songs.
“To me the sacred singing la really dear” Bailey said on the green knoll outside the church.
“I love music the birds too Sacred singin’ means more to me than any other kind.
“Listen to that” he said “It’s ‘The Church’s Desolation.’”
THE HYMN rolled out of the open church doors, leathery and intense, with a penetrating edge to the sound.
“Well may thy servants mourn my God,
The Church’s desolation.
The state of Zion calls aloud
For grief and lamentation.”
It thundered over the knoll. It was not like opera-singing. It was deep and moving.
“Listen to the woman” said Bailey.
“Once she was all alive to Thee
And thousands were converted
But now a sad reverse we see
Her glory is departed.”
“They were wrote back centuries ago,” Bailey said, “as far back as the 16th and 17th Centuries.
“This one here is an old funerial song,” he said “They don’t sing it so loud at funerals.
“They don’t have to have an organ, do they?” The songs went on:
“At Thy command the winds arise
And swell the tow’ring waves
The men astonished mount the skies
And sink in gaping graves.”
The broad band of sound that Sacred Harp singers make is solid and fundamental. It grips the stomach. Harmonies are rough and open. Words are hit with force.
There were a few hundred singers present at Fyffe. A committee had picked leaders, each one of whom took two songs. Over two full days of singing that’s a lot of leaders of all ages teen to ninety.
“We had 400 in Arab In 1956,” said Bailey of an earlier convention.
“One flew In here today from Texas, a doctor. He got up and led a while ago.”
Singers sing most weekends all year “They come to conventions to take part not to listen .
“No money is involved other than the expense,” Bailey said. “No one Is paid. They come on their own.
“They take up a little money for what they call the minutes of singing. They keep track of the numbers they sing. They like to know what their buddies are singin’.
“Never did go to a singin’ school. I’ve been goin’ at it 40 years now,’’ said Bailey.
I go to those old fasola singin’s” He pronounced it “fossil-la”.
“Listen to that high note there”.
It swelled over the countryside:
“Remember you are hast’ning on
To death’s dark gloomy shade
Your joys on earth will soon be gone
Your flesh in dust by laid.”
“There’s another mountain they call Lookout Mountain across here,” Bailey said pointing. “It’s near Chattanooga. They sing there too.
“Makes the grass on the mountains and corn in the valleys grow,” sang Bailey.
“Ain’t no more truer words They’re wrote by inspired people.”
The songs went on:
“Oh let us meet in heav’n
The Christian’s happy home
The house above where ail is love
There’ll be no parting there”
“This is pretty country up here,” Bailey said. “Corn is surroundin’ the churches. There’s three churches here in a row.
“A bunch of singers went’ up to New York” he continued. “A New York newspaper sent for them and paid everything. Forty of them, some of them here today. They went over to a big music hall m New Jersey. They sang at the Waldorf Astoria.
“One of them went to sing. He was so staled that when lie whacked down on the first note his voice wouldn’t even squeak”
Coy Putnam, the man with the squeak, was at Fyffe during the convention last weekend. Putnam remembers that the power of the old songs drove the squeak away. His voice returned in time.
They sang all during the trip on the train everywhere It was the New York Herald Tribune that brought them up in 1932 to a forum.
Earlier another group was brought to New York by Columbia University where it was the wonder of a folk music festival.
The music went on.
“Now that song there,” said Bailey, “believe it or not I don’t believe I ever heard it before.”
“Farewell my dear brethren, the time is at hand
When we must be parted from this social band
Our several engagements now call us away
Our parting is needful and we must obey”
“They’ll spread dinner today,” the Arab man said.
“We want you to enjoy yourself. Everybody’s welcome
‘‘I’ve been to places where you couldn’t eat a 10th of what was put out” he said.
“… to see the wicked things on high” he sang.
“At 3:30 pm tomorrow evenin’ they’ll be going just as strong as right now,” Bailey said. “They’ll be a bit hoarse.
“Come on up and meet Brother Brown,” said he. “He’s president.”
“SACRED Harp is non-sectarian and non-denominational,” said Leman Brown, retiring president “Anyone can sing.”
Sacred Harp came over with the Pilgrims, most people agree. It was sung through New England and then migrated down the mountains with the early settlers.
Now it exists mainly in the Southeast.
Up north, it was gradually overwhelmed by the importation of high class “European” music: Handel, Haydn, and so on, at the turn of the 18th-19th century.
It did not depart unmourned, however.
Benjamin Franklin, more than once in letters, spoke of the “old tunes” that he was sad to see disappearing.
And he described vividly the sound of congregation singing during his boyhood in Boston.
Franklin felt that this music had a special power, its harmonies were exciting, it had crude ranging energy it should have been allowed to develop. It was not “wrong” except by arty European standards said Franklin.
There seems little doubt that Franklin was talking about Sacred Harp or music much like it.
Indeed many of the names In “Original Sacred Harp” are those of New England hymn writers of Revolutionary times.
The hardy stock of early amateur composers included William Billings, Timothy Swan, Nehemiah Shumway, Daniel Reid, Jeremiah Ingalls.
Up north Billings is now famous again. He was rediscovered in the 20th Century. Several composers have used his hymn tunes as the basis for contemporary works.
Genuine Billings, as he wrote the notes himself, is still sung in the Southeast as passed down from generation to generation.
Tape recorders spun busily at Fyffe. Tape is rescuing “Original Sacred Harp” from the threat of oblivion due to radio and TV. And young people are getting interested too in greater numbers according to many at Fyffe.
“Sacred Harp is a-growin’,” said R.H. Burnham, an 89-year-old veteran from Jacksonville, Ala.
One high school student wrote a thesis, Sacred Harp.
“Sacred Harp remains unchangeable” he said “It is like a rock in a desert…
“My maternal grandfather N.E. Denney,” continued the student “taught a Sacred Harp singing school for many years. He was a good teacher and I loved to sit on his knee while he patted his feet and sang his favorite hymn. I still love to hear his bass voice as he lets those notes roll out.”
Carrying on the mighty tradition of Sacred Harp today are thousands of countryfolk scattered over the Southern Highlands.
Among these are famous families of singers and composers: the Densons, Odems, Cagles, all represented at Fyffe last weekend.
Though the tradition is mighty, it is not awesome awful or overbearing. On the contrary Sacred Harpers groups are surelv among the most democratic music groups going.
Practically everyone has a chance at being a leader, as said. Even the Times photographer when he arrived at Fyffe was offered the job (he refused).
The spirit of Sacred Harp is as sturdy and independent now as it was in 1798, when Deacon Janaziah composed an “Ode to Science.”
“The British yokes the Gallic Chain,” wrote the deacon.
“Was surged upon our neck in vain
All haughty tyrants we disdain.”
The Ode is still sung, as it us one of hundreds, new and old, in “Original Sacred Harp”.
The Raw Alan Lomax Recordings
Recordings from the 56th Annual Convention of the United Sacred Harp Musical Association. Recorded by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins at Corinth Baptist Church in Fyffe, Alabama on Saturday September 12, 1959.
Recordings from the 56th Annual Convention of the United Sacred Harp Musical Association. Recorded by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins at Corinth Baptist Church in Fyffe, Alabama on Sunday September 13, 1959.