Thomas Dorsey

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Thomas Dorsey · Thomas Andrew Dorsey was an American musician, composer and church evangelist, born in 1899 in Villa Rica, Georgia, and died in 1993. As a boy he played blues on piano at parties and in barrelhouses in Atlanta, and in 1919 he moved to Chicago. There he wrote blues, worked as an arranger for Paramount and, as a pianist, led Ma Rainey's band. Under the name Georgia Tom he recorded the successful It's Tight Like That together with the guitarist Tampa Red. In total Dorsey wrote some three thousand songs, a third of them gospel.

Music and breakthrough

After a long depression in the 1920s he chose religious music. For fifty years he was music director of the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago, and he brought improvisation, clapping and call-and-response into the church, even though this was often disapproved of. In 1932 he co-founded a national association of gospel choirs, which still exists. After the death of his wife and son he wrote Take My Hand, Precious Lord. Peace in the Valley is also his. Together with Sallie Martin he started the first Black gospel publishing house.

Influence

His music fused the joy of the gospel with the sound of the blues. Apart from the lyrics, he saw little difference between blues and church music. Singers such as Mahalia Jackson, Sallie Martin and Roberta Martin and the singer James Cleveland worked or studied with him. He is called the Father of Gospel Music, although above all he set in motion a movement that made gospel blues known in Black churches and thereby also influenced American music in general.

Listening