‘Gospel Boogie’: white southern gospel music in transition, 1945–55

Abstract

It has become a truism to say that most forms of traditional music in the American South were to some extent ‘commercialised’ by the end of the 1920s: certainly this is true of fiddle and instrumental traditions, country singing, the blues and jazz. By the middle of the Depression most of these musics had gained access to the mass media, either through phonograph records or radio. Throughout the Depression amateur musicians gave way to semi-professional, and then fully professional, musicians who spent most of their time playing music. While these changes meant erosion of regional styles and dilution of tradition, they also meant an improvement in the quality of musicianship, more creativity, more experimentation and an expansion of audience. However, some forms of traditional southern music did not follow this pattern. White gospel music is one. White southern gospel music - and the term here specifically excludes Sacred Harp music, church music, hymns - has for too long been linked to white country music and seen as a sub-category of that music. Yet in many ways, white gospel music had little in common with mainstream country, and when it emerged as a genre of its own in the days before the Second World War, it followed a development pattern that is very distinct from that of country or any of its sub-genres. This becomes even more obvious as we begin to make cautious, tentative inroads into the serious study of this brand of music which has attracted millions of Southerners and Midwesterners. The question that I want to explore is just what happened in the 1940s to cause white gospel suddenly to make serious inroads into American pop music in general.