On the fourth Sunday and the Saturday before in September of 2012 I was able to be part of my first Sacred Harp convention—the Rocky Mountain Convention.
How do you compress two days of volume, of the high fierce notes that for me are so characteristic of this music, into a few paragraphs? Sacred Harp singing, I’ve learned, is one of those things that, in the ungrammatical phrase, “you hadda been there” to really get the full impact of. This Convention wasn’t an exception—no matter how high my expectations, it exceeded them. And I’m not sure that I can adequately put into words the impact the Convention had on me—I’m not sure anyone could.
Certain things stand out.
There’s the experience of leading. We all know just how important standing in the hollow square is to really hearing sacred harp singing. It sounds great from back in your section, whatever it may be. It sounds even better on the front bench. But the focus of all that sound isn’t the third row, or even the front bench—it’s the center of the square. There’s a reason leaders will often bring a novice up with them—once you’ve heard the music from that spot you can never be the same. Some of us who sing are religious and some aren’t. I am, and for me leading, with the exposure to that “original surround sound,” is a religious experience. Over the weekend I was able to lead four times, twice each day, and I worshipped my God as surely during those times as I ever have in church. And even if I weren’t at all religious, there’s still something about 40 voices all singing—and, being sacred harp singers, singing loudly—that transcends mere singing, and becomes something much more than the notes on the page and the methods of singing and leading.
There’s the experience of hearing. Two songs in particular struck me. One was “Clamanda” (p. 42). I’ve loved that one since I first heard it on disc two of Awake, My Soul. But to sit on the tenor at a convention, and actually be part of the driving beat, so reminiscent of an army marching into combat, is something else entirely. Hitting the accents in the chorus—”WELL ARMED with HELmet, SWORD, and SHIELD”—almost made the walls shake, and we were singing in a building with adobe walls two or three feet thick. At that point we had, as I like to put it, blown the roof off and were well on the way to blowing the walls out.
And the second is “Consecration” (p. 448t). This is one of those songs that there’s just not enough of. You want to keep singing it, and keep singing it, because it just lends itself to singing. I had planned to call it, but someone beat me to it, and led it almost exactly as I would have. This is another song with strong accents, accents that demand that you hit them, and hit them hard, producing a pounding beat that defies anyone to stop the singing. Especially in the second section, where the time switches to three over four, it’s easy to understand what Richard Ivey means in—I’m mentioning it again—Awake, My Soul. He says that when he’s singing it feels like the ground’s shaking under him, and it feels like the shaking will lift him off his feet with its power. And though I wanted to keep singing, when the leader finished, and we stopped, I was breathless from the beauty and joy of the music. I didn’t actually feel the ground shake—but something shook, and I’ll remember it for a long time.
And then there’s the memorial lesson. From years in church I’ve learned that “family” can mean more than just your relatives. And sacred harp singers are a family—and though that’s a cliché, it’s the truth. I don’t know whether they were saying it in 1844 when B. F. White first published The Sacred Harp, but if they weren’t, it can’t have been very long afterward when singers began seeing themselves that way. I had the honor and privilege of conducting this year’s memorial lesson, and to my surprise I found myself almost choking up as I began. I didn’t recognize any of the names on either list—but it didn’t matter. Those singers—whether deceased or shut in—are family, and without ever meeting them I missed them, and wished that they could have been with us to sing.
When I come to die, years from now as I hope, or tomorrow as it may be, I have no doubt that Sacred Harp music will be in my heart. I’ve listened to different kids of music for decades now. But though I haven’t even sung Sacred Harp two years yet, I’ve sung it. It’s all well and good to listen to CDs. It’s wonderful that I can watch DVDs of singings. But there is nothing in the world like singing sacred harp music. Our music, by its very nature, demands that you get involved; its sound is not merely an invitation, but an insistence on participation.
My voice is individual, just as were those voices around me in my section and in the other sections of the hollow square. And on certain notes my voice might have momentarily stood out distinct from the whole. But the reason I was there was not to sing by myself for others to admire. I was there to be part of the class, to lend my voice with its distinctive qualities to the entire class. And when I sang at the Convention, what I sang was more than just my voice—it was something far greater than any one person. All our voices together were something far greater than the sum of our individual voices.
I recently gave a talk at Camp Fasola about the community-building aspects of the Sacred Harp tradition, and I would like to share my ideas again here. Shape-note singers, of course, already know very well the fellowship and bonding that comes from singing together, so I know that I am “preaching to the choir” so to speak. I would like nevertheless to examine Sacred Harp traditions more closely and explore some specific new ideas that I have that support our shared belief in the power of fasola. Namely, let us explore why Sacred Harp is a more useful music-making endeavor than most other American and European musical traditions. We shall see if we can discover how each of the Departments of Music in the rudiments and the organizational structures governing an all-day singing support and promote the goals of harmony and unity through singing together.
The Western Concert Hall
Christopher Small, in his book Musicking, contrasts the type of traditional music making in most non-Western cultures with Western art music’s most elevated form, the symphony concert. Small laments that in the concert hall
The western concert hall.
[w]e are prepared to laugh, to weep, to shudder, to be excited, or to be moved to the depth of our being, all in the company of people the majority of whom we have never seen before, to whom we shall probably address not a word or a gesture, and whom we shall in all probability never see again. What we accept as the norm is, in fact, the exception among the human race as a whole.1
Westernized industrialized nations all have “concert music,” but this is the only culture in the world that forces audiences into internalized individual responses to music rather than social participatory community music making.
Reasons for Making Music
We may actually have some difficulty pinning down what the purpose of the symphony concert is for those involved. We can likely come to consensus that it has something to do with eliciting an aesthetic or emotional reaction from the listeners, and that there is also a social purpose, most closely akin to “conspicuous consumption,” or an opportunity to “see and be seen.” If we look at community-oriented social participatory music-making traditions like Sacred Harp and like most music making in the world outside of Western culture, we can more easily discern the purposes for making music. Drawing on the work of others, I have devised a list of reasons to participate in music:
To unite disparate people’s activities toward a common goal
For more information on how we can fight against the forces that discourage creativity in our society, see David Kelley’s TED Talk "How to Build Your Creative Confidence."
Let us discuss each reason in turn. Every human being possesses creative capacity, whether or not that person thinks of him/herself as a creative person. Even though our culture frequently discourages innovative thinking, in order to contribute to society, one must learn to innovate. How to practice and improve one’s creativity is a bit of a paradox. One must simply “be creative” repeatedly, with the courage to weather judgment of one’s first feeble attempts. Through simply engaging in creative activities, one begins to think of oneself more and more as a creative person. Music-making is one excellent way to practice creativity. Thomas Turino, in his book Music as Social Life, identifies “flow” as a primary goal of music-making and defines “flow” as heightened concentration, where distractions vanish, and the actor is fully in the present.
The [“flow”] experience actually leads to a feeling of timelessness, or being out of normal time, and to feelings of transcending one’s normal self. . . . People find “flow” experience restful and liberating, because the problems and aspects of ourselves that sometimes get in our way from reaching a clear, open state of mind disappear during intense concentration. . . . This open state of mind is fundamental for psychic growth and integration.5
A ritual is any human act that serves to communicate a set of cultural values. According to Christopher Small, music’s main purpose is to rehearse the gestures of ideal relationships, and music is therefore an excellent medium for the expression of cultural values. What are these gestures, and how are they expressed in music? Since one can interpret a wide variety of musical phenomena as gestures, let us begin with a simple example. One rudimentary type of musical gesture is a melody that ascends. Because higher pitches often require more energy to produce (with the voice), an ascending melody often depicts a gesture of striving toward a goal. One can find music’s most immediate gestures in the music’s rhythm, or how the music “moves.” Is the music fast and furious, slow and sombre, or irregular and halting? The musical movements give rise to ideas of activity and relationship.
The language of gesture thus includes verbs, but not nouns. Music can depict nouns through sound effects, for example the sound of a babbling brook, a chirping bird, or a speeding locomotive. But beyond identifying onomatopoeia in music, a listener cannot discover who is performing the gesture, and upon whom the act is being performed. So musical language requires the listener to imagine the relationship that would include such a gesture. The relationships can be between human beings, between a person and the environment, or between a person and God.
When people make music together and agree upon the cultural values conveyed through the musical gestures and idealized relationships, this has the effect of building social unity. Many people all over the world have therefore discovered the power that music possesses to unite disparate people’s activities toward a common goal. Work songs exemplify this purpose for music-making, but the goal, as we shall see in Sacred Harp singing, does not have to be a physical task.
The Philosophy of Community Music-Making
Community music-making strives much more to embody gestures that express idealized rela- tionships than to make precisely the right sounds in the right way. As a result, amateur musical communities place far less importance on musical ability than the concert music profession does. Musical ability does not necessarily indicate mastery of the gestures and relationships modeled. The process of learning how to make the musical gestures is what ultimately rewards the musician. The sound is just evidence—a trace or record of our experimentation process and our degree of success engaging with the gestures and relationships.
Because music communicates using the language of gestures, expressing the actions but leaving the forces involved anonymous, the relationships thus remain hypothetical, not specific relaionships in the real world. Making mistakes in the music does not particularly damage the event. If one makes a serious mistake when acting in a real relationship with real people, one could harm that relationship, but an amateur musician does not have to apologize for messing up the musical gestures that build the hypothetical relationships expressed through the music. Further, if one tries out some music and finds that one disagrees with the content of the music, there is no obligation attached. One will have learned something just by trying out the gestures that one then found disagreeable.
Music-making also models relationships in an even more important way than the content of the music or of the text. It is through how people make the music. One can discover the culturally valued relationships modeled in everything from the venue chosen to the way that people organize themselves in order to engage in the music-making. This is where community music making and Sacred Harp in particular truly excel as musical traditions. Christopher Small provides the following three relationships to examine when evaluating a type of music-making:
Relationships between the people and physical setting
Relationships among those taking part
Relationships between the sounds that are being made
Community Music Traditions in 21st-Century America
Let us now examine some of the participatory amateur music-making opportunities that we can presently find in the United States. If you feel like you need to make some music, you can join a community choir, community band, or community orchestra, you could go dancing,6 you could sing karaoke with your friends or start a garage band, or you could play Guitar Hero or Rock Band.7 We shall also talk about Sacred Harp singing and the values that it promotes.
Several of the many participatory amateur music-making opportunities presently available in the United States.
Relationship Types
What are the relationships expressed in these types of music-making events? First, we should talk about the possible types of relationships that we might encounter in the organizational structures surrounding the music-making and in the gestures of the music itself. Anthropologist Alan Fiske, in his study of relational structures, has provided us with three cross-cultural types of human relationships that will be useful and adequate for our purposes here:
Dominance “Don’t mess with me.” This is a very high maintenance relationship.
Reciprocity “Tit for tat.” Relationships of commerce, the basis for democratic society.
Communality “Share and share alike.” Relationships of kinship, family, tribe, or community.
For more information on Alan Fiske’s relational models, see this video on "Language as a Window into Human Nature."
These relationship types may not seem equally desirable, but our human nature requires all three types. In different forms these relationship types all can either benefit all parties or harm one or more involved. In the United States, educators make an effort to train “leadership skills” so that those in dominance relationships can maintain a positive relationship. People can only maintain a communality relationship when they can put the health of the relationship above feelings of fairness and equality. Because this rarely happens among diverse people, even people who share the same worldview sometimes must resort to the structures for maintining positive reciprocity relationships. We shall see that the degree to which these principles of positive relationships are built into a musical tradition’s practices form a useful way of measuring how well it provides for the musical, social, and spiritual experiences of its participants.
Relationships Modeled by Classical Music
Let us now examine the relationships that seem to be promoted by the types of music performed in most community music-making events in America. First, let us examine Classical music. Most works of concert music (symphonies, concertos, tone poems, etc.) pantomime a narrative about overcoming struggles against a force that seeks to destroy order (usually portrayed as a masculine ideal of order and a feminine force of disorder).8 Concert music presents the imagined protagonist’s triumph in his struggle to restore order and hierarchy as a life-changing event, where a new order is established that differs from the tranquility before the struggle.9 Most classical music’s traditional music-making venues and traditions also show preference for dominance relationships, or at least reciprocity relationships—that is, one must pay for a ticket to experience the professional musicians’ expertise. Those that come to hear classical music have no say in the music-making. The musicians onstage also organize themselves into a strict hierarchy of power in making decisions about the musical interpretation and details of performance practice. The musical director chooses the repertory to be performed, and the conductor (usually the same person) makes all of the important musical decisions for the group.
Relationships Modeled by Rock Music
Suppose instead that we would rather join a Rock band to satisfy our musical desires. What types of relationships does this popular genre of American music endorse? Rock music often promotes rebellion and anarchy, describes dysfunctional romantic relationships, and seems to express a kind of solipsism through endless repetition of a groove. Presentational performance is perpetuated in much of rock music as well, but the music is frequently intended for dancing and as ambience for social occasions. The volume at which the music is almost always played, however, seems not to encourage conversation as the main type of social interaction.10 The high level of violent imagery in the staging of a lot of rock music also becomes troublesome when viewed from our perspective that music should convey our cultural values.
All of the amateur music-making opportunities that I have listed also express many positive relationship ideals. Let us use Sacred Harp to examine these, since this musical culture promotes positive relationships so effectively.
Relationships Modeled in the Traditions of Sacred Harp Singing
When we sing Sacred Harp, we sit in a hollow square with everyone in the room facing the center. The fact that this places the whole group of singers on more-or-less equal footing, and that we make no distinction between performer and audience, is amplified and exemplified in the hollow square arrangement. This has the effect of emphasizing both the participatory nature of our tradition and the primarily social purpose of our music making.
Gray Court Pioneer Day Sacred Harp Singing, Sept. 8, 2012. Photograph by Robert T. Kelley.
We also, with very few exceptions, always sing the shapes before singing the words. Our practice of solmizing every song connects us to our singing-school origins, and offers an invitation to participate. Less experienced singers get a chance to practice the song before singing the words. Through singing on the notes, we also gradually become better at sight-singing new music written in shapes. Our carrying a singing-school practice into our social music-making events forms a self-preservation and self-improvement device, and singers tell stories of shape-note traditions that died out when singers stopped singing the shapes.
The venue for music-making also needs to be examined here. Shape-note singers like to sing in meeting houses and primitive country churches. Singers perceive these plain surroundings as ideal acoustically for singing (at least for singing without any distinction between performer and listener) and adequate for food and fellowship, and they provide no distractions from the main purpose of our music-making. Singers hold excellent singing locations in high esteem and make great efforts to travel to singings where the community is welcoming and the venue is conducive to a highly spiritual singing experience.
We have a tradition of offering all singers the privilege of leading a song. Many others have commented on the inherently democratic sensibility exemplified in our system of sharing the job of leading the music among all members of the group who wish to do so. This is an excellent example of how our music-making methods and culture model ideal relationships. But we can learn even more by examining our willingness to allow anyone in the group temporarily to take on a dominance relationship, and we try as much as we can to render their song choice in the way that they want to hear it.
The fact that the leader can choose any song in the book that has not already been sung that day is also worth examining. The texts in The Sacred Harp express relationships among people and between the singer and God. The leader may choose a particular song in order to explore the relationships in the music itself, or in the text, or both. The tune that the leader selects for singing a popular text carries a particular emotional response to the relationships expressed in the text. For example, we can easily see the different emotional responses inherent in choosing “Huntington” (p. 193 in The Sacred Harp) as opposed to “Greenwich” (p. 183) for the singing of “Lord what a thoughtless wretch was I”, or choosing “Concord” (p. 313t) versus “Novakoski” (p. 481) for singing the Isaac Watts hymn “Come, we that love the Lord.”
Thomas Turino explains why all participatory social music-making traditions possess the feature that they discourage displays of virtuosity.
Music making is as much about social relations and fostering participation as it is about sound production and the creative drives of particular musicians. Those who wish to prioritize their own creative urges would do better to perform in presentational contexts.11
In Sacred Harp singing, we discourage ostentation in the square and encourage restraint, dignity, and composure when leading. The speed at which one leads a song has bearing on this issue. Leading any song so fast that only a practiced few can spit out the correct syllables quickly enough privileges the virtuosity of a few at the expense of the social unity of the group and therefore creates a destructive ostentation. But there is more to be read in the speed at which we choose to lead a song: It can indicate the degree to which the leader wants the class to deliberate on the meaning of the text. Slower leading can also suggest a desire for the class to deliberate on the traditions and “proper ways” of conducting ourselves at a singing.
In shape-note singing, we sing in harmony together (both metaphorically and literally). A simplistic view of this might lead one to assert that to make the ultimate statement of unity everyone should sing the melody together in unison. As we all should already know, however, the more complicated reality of human existence is that people are not all the same. In the “dispersed harmony” of Sacred Harp singing, we bring highly individualistic melodies together into harmonious union. We are showing that each person has a role to play in our community, and not all of the jobs are alike.
Some elements of the music itself clearly relate to our relationship ideals as well. The rudiments no longer discuss the science of composition in depth, but the 1844 B. F. White rudiments prescribe how to use discords carefully to make the concords more satisfying. There is an obvious metaphor here for disagreements among people in our community. We resolve our dissonances.
The gestures in the melody and rhythm of Sacred Harp music are worth studying, but in the interest of space here, let us only explore one unique feature of Sacred Harp singing, accent, and how it expresses our values. When people read a text out loud together, they must come to terms on the inflection, stress, and timing. Likewise in Sacred Harp singing, we accent the music based on the meaning and scansion of the text. Accent can be seen as a gesture of agreement among people about the text that they are reading. Good accent does not necessarily indicate an agreement on the veracity of the message. But it does amount to an agreement on the meaning of the text. How we accent confirms how we interpret the words. We can all say or sing words that we do not believe in literally. But unless we understand what they mean and inflect them appropriately, the unified delivery will not come off. It is the unified delivery of texts whose overarching meaning conveys our values that fosters unity among the singers. Ultimately, as a day of singing proceeds with good accent, this unification of meter and meaning, text and music, and hearts and minds, builds the connection that people feel with each other while singing.
Laura Clawson, in her book I Belong to This Band, Hallelujah!: Community, Spirituality, and Tradition among Sacred Harp Singers12 provides an in-depth study of how Sacred Harp singers navigate through differing views about the texts in the Sacred Harp, as well as conflicting religious, sexual, and political identities among singers, while still encouraging people of diverse cultural backgrounds into the communality of the “fasola folk.” While I direct the reader to Clawson’s book and Kiri Miller’s Traveling Home: Sacred Harp Singing and American Pluralism13 to explore this topic, let us take a moment here to consider the relationships that singers have with the text and how we can sing together about particular religious or political ideals, but at the same time we avoid discussing them at a singing. When speaking about a controversial idea, one must take great care to convey that one is not endorsing nor denouncing it, and even then one runs the risk of misunderstanding.14 Singing communicates a text differently from speaking, however. Speech is complicated and could be literal or figurative, factual or hypothetical, critical or descriptive, and abstract or specific. People nevertheless tend to interpret speaking as more literal, factual, critical, and specific. In singing, however, it becomes difficult to express that one is actually espousing the ideas being sung, especially in group singing. Music contains only generalized and hypothetical relationships, and sung texts become an object for more detached interpretation than statements made in public speech or conversation. Each singer has a reaction to the messages in the text that is being sung, and these individual reactions can differ wildly and even conflict without disturbing the unity-building effects of singing that text together with the other singers.
With all of the unwritten rules for maintaining a spirit of welcome and communality at a singing, Sacred Harp singers also have more formalized standards when it comes to the func- tioning of the singing convention and the schedule of the all-day singing. To varying degrees, different singings and singing communities operate by Robert’s Rules of Order, most of them probably functioning most of the time in a more informal manner. In fact, virtually all singings today seem to work perfectly well without the traditional meeting-house traditions of Primitive Baptist associations and singing societies. Why do we still at least pay lip service to operating by Robert’s Rules and observing the singing traditions outlined in the rudiments?15 Sacred Harp has built within its organizational structures the principle that our music-making is modeling idealized relationships. When it comes to discussing the nitty gritty business among people that do not necessarily agree, we want to model a principle of fairness and reciprocity. We are expressing our ideal that the whole world would conduct business fairly in the way that we do. Sacred Harp thus operates within all three types of relationships, allowing individuals into temporary positions of dominance for the purpose of using their individuality to strengthen the community, and enforcing time-honored procedures of reciprocity when conducting business, so that a feeling of fairness and equality strengthens the communality that Sacred Harp strives to achieve as its normal mode of proceeding.
We can see how, simply through singing together, Sacred Harp seeks to build a community of trust and constantly add new members who, even though highly diverse, benefit from the fellowship and music-making. People do not sing together and share food with people with whom they have a dominance or reciprocity relationship. These activities create a communality relationship. This explains why singers freely open their homes to each other to spend the night before and after singings. In the foregoing discussion, I have hinted at a higher purpose as well. When you make communal music that models ideal communal relationships, you open up the possibility of accomplishing tremendous and amazing things together. When we come together to sing, we are modeling our ideals about community to the rest of the world and setting forth our highest hopes for the future of society.
Christopher Small, Musicking (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 39. [↩]
David Kelley, “How to Build Your Creative Confidence,” TED Talk, May 2012, http://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence.html. [↩]
Thomas Turino, Music As Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). [↩]
I include any kind of dancing here, from square dancing and contradancing to ballroom dancing and dubstep. Christopher Small includes dancing as a music-making activity, because more than almost any other way of interacting with music, through dancing one physically embodies the gestures found in the music. [↩]
Ethnomusicologist and Sacred Harp singer Kiri Miller, in her book Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), addresses the heightened interactions with musical gesture that these video games provide beyond just listening. [↩]
For more on the gendered narratives in Classical music, see Christopher Small’s book, Musicking, and Susan McClary’s book, Feminine Endings (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). [↩]
The hero’s journey is an archetype that parallels this typical musical narrative. [↩]
I leave to the reader’s imagination the question of what types of socializing are encouraged by music that drowns out conversation. [↩]
Laura Clawson, I Belong to This Band, Hallelujah!: Community, Spirituality, and Tradition among Sacred Harp Singers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 9–10, 124–125, 130–132. [↩]
Kiri Miller, Traveling Home: Sacred Harp Singing and American Pluralism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008). [↩]
For example, someone might tune into a conversation after the disclaimers have been made. [↩]
John Garst, “Rudiments of Music,” in The Sacred Harp, p. 25. [↩]
As some will know I was fortunate enough to retire from work in July 2011, escaping in the nick of time before my employer revised the retirement age upwards by a number of years. What better way to celebrate than with a “big trip” to sing in Alabama and Georgia during the summer of 2012.
A number of friends in the UK asked how I would spend the time between singings. Well, with composers’ graves to find, historic sites and civil war battlefields to visit, and one of the largest surviving carousels in the USA not far from Atlanta I knew that I would definitely not be at a loss for things to do.
On Thursday August 2nd, towards the end of my travels, I visited the Genealogy Room at Buchanan Library in the old Haralson County Court House. Having learned from Warren Steel’s book, The Makers of the Sacred Harp, that S. M. Brown, composer of four songs in the 1991 edition including “Span of Life” (p. 379), had settled in Haralson County and had been the first secretary of the Tallapoosa Musical Convention I decided to take the opportunity to search for information about him. Warren had been unsure of his first given name at the time of writing his book.
Imagine my joy when I found, in The History of Haralson County, Georgia, 1983, compiled by the Haralson County Historical Society, a whole article by one of S. M. Brown’s great grandchildren. This began as follows:
SILAS MERCER BROWN
Silas Mercer Brown (1811–1881), my great grandfather, was married to Eliza Chandler (1815–…) on August 16, 1836. Our earliest record showed this family migrated from South Carolina, first settling in Jasper County, then in Polk County, and on to Haralson County for permanent residence near Buchanan, in the early 19th Century. He was active in the Primitive Baptist Church and an ardent lover of Sacred Harp music. Some of his songs are included in the original Sacred Harp Song Book and are still being sung.
This confirmed that this was indeed “our” S. M. Brown. The unnamed writer of the article continued:
My great grandparents had ten children, one of whom was my grandfather Samuel Wyatt Brown (1843–1925). He was a teenager when the Civil War was begun and saw active duty in the battles of Atlanta and Chickamauga. He knew hunger and hardship, and was taken prisoner, yet had many witty stories to tell. One was the time when a young Confederate soldier told him that he wished he was a baby, and a gal baby at that.
When the war was over, grandpa was stationed in Tennessee, so he walked back home to Haralson County to the delight of his anxious, watchful family.
Life was very hard since the Yankees had destroyed their homes, taken their livestock and other necessities. People boiled the dirt from the smoke house, where the meat had drained, to get salt for seasoning their food.
It seems likely that Samuel Wyatt Brown was the S. W. Brown whom Earl Thurman refers to as being one of the “chief architects” of and “leading singers” at the Chattahochee Convention, although the writer of the Haralson article does not mention anything of his grandfather’s participation in Sacred Harp singing. Karen Rollins has kindly checked and found that S. M. Brown and S. W. Brown, together with J. F. Brown, all joined the Chattahoochee Convention at Cedar Creek Church in Coweta County in August 1867. Unfortunately there are no minutes in the record book for the Chattahoochee Convention of 1925, when Samuel would have been mentioned in the memorial lesson. The writer continued:
On December 31st, 1867, S. W. Brown married Nancy Catherine Williams (1843–1901), daughter of S. H. Williams. He farmed to support a family of six boys and four girls. Their children were: Frances Elizabeth, Susan Emma, Roland Mercer, Thomas Elmore, Henry Wyatt, Mary Lazora, Noble Newton, Martha Catherine, Isaac Robinson and Samuel Chambers. Typhoid fever struck the family in 1901, taking the mother and two young adult sons within a few months. Then in 1902, he married Nancy Aldridge, continued to farm, take his daily walks and entertain with his wife.
It would seem that the love of music continued with the writer’s father, Roland Mercer Brown. The writer described him as “a progressive, hard-working farmer, [who] cultivated several hundred acres of land, using as many as fourteen mules,” and also as “an ardent lover of sacred music, which he sang and encouraged the young people to study” and someone who “supported progressive programs of the church, the county, and the state.” Unfortunately the writer does not specify the type of sacred music that Roland Mercer loved so much.
That article gave me the information I needed to look up Silas Mercer Brown in the Haralson County Cemetery Book, which showed that he had been buried in the cemetery of Macedonia Primitive Baptist Church on Macedonia Church Road off Highway 120 between Buchanan and Tallapoosa. After copying down the information and the directions, which dated from 2002, I set off to find the cemetery.
Driving west along the 120 I found no sign whatever of Macedonia Church Road. Explorations down the only likely looking road yielded nothing and my GPS persisted in taking me to Haralson County High School. So I parked at the High School and asked a couple of the students there for directions to the school’s office, where I enquired about the church. The first reaction of the helpful ladies there was that no services had been held at the church for many years but when I explained that I was looking for a grave one of them drew a rough map for me. It looked as if the church was down the road I had already tried, but how had I missed it?
As I walked back to the car a young workman who had followed me out of the office said that he was driving home down that very road. He kindly offered to point out the church to me if I followed him. This was not the first time during my trip that a kind stranger appeared and offered help just when I needed it the most.
We did indeed turn down the road that I had explored before. When the man slowed down and pointed out the location to me from his van I realized why I had driven right past it. I would never have found it without his help. All that could be seen from the road was a locked metal gate to a dirt road. On closer inspection I saw a very faded, peeling, hand painted sign, propped up at ground level, saying “Macedonia Primitive Baptist Church Est 1840.”
Hand painted sign for Macedonia Primitive Baptist Church
Parking the car beside the gate I set off along the road on foot and before too long came to the church and its small cemetery, where it appeared that even though the church was no longer used someone regularly cut the grass.
Brown's grave clearly shows his first name and his complete dates: SILAS M. BROWN / SEPT. 19 1811 / MAR. 29 1881
Here I found the grave of Silas Mercer Brown marked by a reasonably modern flat memorial that, judging by the number of very badly weathered, broken and collapsed stones, may well have replaced an older upright memorial.
I could find no memorial for his wife Eliza, but there were a number of stones nearby for which only the footings remained.
The Brown plot, with Silas’s stone in the foreground and the church in the distance behind. A broken stone and a place where footings only remained can also be seen.
There was an old upright memorial for Samuel Wyatt Brown, and a more modern flat memorial for Sam’s first wife Nancy Catherine. There was no memorial for his second wife.
Memorials for Sam W. Brown (left) and Catherine, his wife (above). Although Sam fought in the Civil War there was no Confederate Stone for him. His inscription reads: SAM W. BROWN / JAN 26 1843 / MAY 9 1925.
After taking pictures of the other memorials in the Brown plot I decamped to the shade for a drink of water before taking the usual notes. Just as I had sat down, enjoying the feeling of being the only visitor at the cemetery, a member of the Sheriff’s department appeared on foot. He had seen my car by the gate and had come to investigate. I did not notice his rank (he was a youngish man) but did see that he went by the appropriate surname of Browning. I explained the significance of the Brown graves, told him a little about Sacred Harp, showed him page 379 in my book and asked him if I could stay to make the necessary notes. He thought for a while—clearly the rules did not cover the eventuality of a woman from England visiting the grave of a Sacred Harp composer—but in the end said that he guessed there was no reason why not. He told me that he had been in his job for seven years and there had been no services at the church in all that time.
After a short rest I made my usual notes and took a leisurely look round the outside of the church and the rest of the small cemetery, which contained a number of seemingly very old now nameless graves.
Macedonia Primitive Baptist Church (left) and an old grave in the church cemetery (right).
On my way back to the hotel I made sure to stop to write down the name of the road that the church was on.
Any fellow grave visiting Sacred Harpers should drive west from Buchanan, Georgia, towards Tallapoosa on Highway 120 and turn left on Estvanko Road between Haralson County Middle School and Haralson County High School. If you get to the High School you have missed the turn. The gate to the dirt road that leads to the church is almost a mile along Estvanko Road on the left.
I had never expected to discover new information about one of our composers and this remains one of the most treasured memories of my trip.
Title page of Hymns for Sunday Schools, published in 1824 by The Protestant Episcopal Sunday and Adult School Society of Philadelphia.
One of the things that seems to intrigue new singers is the role of the leader, standing in the center of the hollow square beating time. Many assume that this practice is unique to Sacred Harp singing, but evidence from early sources suggests that our current leading style has origins in pre-revolutionary days. For example, William Tans’ur, whose writings were widely known in New England, wrote in his Melody of the Heart or the Psalmist’s Pocket Companion (1737):
Common time is measured by the motion of the hand or foot, which motions represent the motions of a Pendulum by putting it down and taking it up in equal motion. Common time is measured in even numbers … So your hand or foot must be down and up in every bar, in equal time as the figures and letters direct. Triple time, moves by odd numbers … Two to be performed with the hand or foot down and one up as above.
While this is a pretty good summary of what the leader does, Tans’ur does not say whether this movement of the hand, or foot, is to be done by a single person or by everyone. I have seen similar descriptions of beating time in other early hymnals, but they but are equally vague about the role of the leader.
I have recently discovered a copy of a small words-only hymnal that casts a new light on leading. Hymns for Sunday Schools, published in 1824 by The Protestant Episcopal Sunday and Adult School Society of Philadelphia, has on its title page, like many such books, an image of children. However this one shows them with oblong books. The child on the right is beating time with an emphatic motion much like modern singers are taught to lead—he even looks up confidently from his book. Though the child on the left is concentrating on the music, he is also beating time. His more restrained motion evokes the current practice of singers in the class as they mark time along with the leader. This image suggests that remarkably little has changed over two hundred years in the practice of leading music, at least from a Sacred Harp singer’s perspective.
An engraving showing children singing out of oblong books and beating time much like modern singers are taught to lead. From Hymns for Sunday Schools, published in 1824 by The Protestant Episcopal Sunday and Adult School Society of Philadelphia. Photography by Laura Densmore.
Few images from the time period portray this type of leading. More typical is an engraving printed in Hymns for Sunday Schools, published in Philadelphia in 1828 by The American Sunday School Union (ASSU). Here the children are kneeling while singing from conventional upright sheets and there is no leader.
This more typical engraving depicts a children kneeling while singing from conventional upright sheets. From Hymns for Sunday School, published in Philadelphia in 1828 by The American Sunday School Union.
Publications by ASSU required unanimous approval by a Publications Committee, which had to have members of at least three different denominations, ensuring that all works were free of denominational bias. This committee included members of the Episcopal Church, so we may take it that they approved of this book and the image. It would therefore appear that their 1824 image of a leader beating time was not only one of the earliest images of leadership but one of the last of it, at least in the Episcopal Church. The musical practice represented in the second image reflects shifting musical tastes during the period, as the American shape note tradition gradually gave way to a European-influenced choral style.
Editor’s Note: Lisa Grayson’s popular A Beginner’s Guide to Shape-Note Singing has been a fixture for years at our singings across the country and beyond, welcoming newcomers to large annual singing conventions and local regular singings alike. You can access the new Fifth Edition of A Beginner’s Guide on fasola.org, and read about the guide’s creation below.
As much as Sacred Harp feels imbued in every part of my life now, I can still remember when I stumbled upon the music in 1991 at the University of Chicago Folk Festival. Although I arrived only three songs before the session was over, the singing exerted its tractor beam on me, as it has on so many others, and my heart knew that I was at home not only in the music itself, but among the singers, all strangers to me.
I wanted more. I wanted to immerse myself in the Sacred Harp sound and experience. However, I was utterly baffled when I opened the tunebook.
Three years later, I had managed (with much help from kindly singers, including many wonderful souls North and South who no longer grace the hollow square today) to figure out the basics. To my astonishment, after three years of trying, and failing, to sight read, I could at least stumble through some slow tunes. And new singers were approaching me, often sheepishly, to ask the same questions I had when I first opened the Sacred Harp.
By then, I had written a few columns for the Chicago Sacred Harp Newsletter as the cranky Dr. Mixolydian Moad. I started to create a one-page guide for our singings, explaining to newcomers what they were encountering in the room: where the parts were seated, how shape notes work, why we beat time, etc. What began as a single flyer soon became a series of handouts. People seemed to like them, but the pages generally mouldered in the bottom of book bags.
After polling a few singers from different parts of the country, I realized that there was no published general introduction to Sacred Harp—outside of the rudiments, of course. In 1994 I decided to publish a booklet that would fit inside the tunebook, something I could create on my home computer (I was working as a publication designer at the time) printed inexpensively and sold for little. Thus the guide, first printed with a lurid lemon yellow cover, was born.
Fourth Edition (2009) of Lisa Grayson’s Beginner’s Guide.
People started approaching me at singings with suggestions for revisions and additions, and I tried to pay attention. The book is in its fifth edition now. Sure, I’ve fixed mistakes, but I’ve also had to revise and expand the contacts and resources section: Think of all the web pages, not to mention new singings, that have sprung up since 1994!
For the first few years, through about 1998 or so, the Chicago Sacred Harp Singers (i.e., Ted Mercer) paid for the cost of printing the booklets and recouped the expenses as they sold. Multiple orders for single copies came to Ted’s storefront office, where many a pizza party had been held after mailing out Sacred Harp newsletters and postcards. I took over the printing and sales, and soon realized just how much hard work Ted had put into production and promotion of that little booklet.
A few years ago, Annie Grieshop helped me find a relatively cheap printer and even schlepped boxes of the guide from Iowa to Chicago. I soon realized, however, that as much as I loved the publishing world, I was not cut out for sales and distribution. And I was getting into heated arguments with local postal clerks over international shipping rates, suddenly an issue with the overseas spread of Sacred Harp. So this year, after suggestions and encouragement, notably from Chris Thorman in California, I decided to publish the guide online. It’s available as a free download on the Fasola.org resources page.
I don’t know how many copies of the guide are in circulation, but it must be over a thousand by now. I will continue to update it, albeit irregularly. Thanks to everyone who has taken time to comment on the beginner’s guide, and extra thanks to everyone who helped me to sing.
Editor’s Note: The lottery for shares in the Sacred Harp Publishing Company was conducted on March 23, 2013. Read a list of the names drawn in the lottery.
The lottery will be held on March 23, 2013 after the Saturday session of the Georgia State Sacred Harp Convention at Emmaus Primitive Baptist Church in Carrollton. Names of those participating in the lottery will be placed on index cards, folded, and placed in a container. Cards will then be drawn by an officer of the Publishing Company with other officers and board members present as observers. People not present at the drawing will be notified as to whether their name has been drawn by e-mail or other means. If you have submitted your name, please make sure that Karen Rollins, Executive Secretary of the Publishing Company, has up-to-date contact information.
Those whose names are drawn will have the opportunity to purchase up to two shares in the Company at $25.00/share. The Company will retain the list of additional names in the order they were drawn as a waiting list to be used if any future shares become available. As the Company is a non-profit organization, the value of these shares will remain fixed at $25.00 and the shares will not pay dividends. This lottery system is a new process for enabling interested singers to purchase a share of stock. The Board of Directors believes this will be an equitable way to sell currently available shares and any future shares which become available.
For the holiday season the Sacred Harp Publishing Company is offering special deals on copies of The Sacred Harp, Makers of the Sacred Harp, and Legacy of the Sacred Harp! These special holiday prices are for orders anywhere in the United States. You can …
Get a copy of Makers of the Sacred Harp or The Legacy of the Sacred Harpfree with your order of a single copy of The Sacred Harp!
Get a copy of Makers of the Sacred Harp (softcover) or The Legacy of the Sacred Harp for just $10, shipping included!
Get a hardcover copy of Makers for just $40, shipping included!
Take advantage of these special low prices to buy a Sacred Harp songbook and Makers or Legacy for a friend of yours you think might be interested in Sacred Harp singing, or give Makers (Warren Steel’s long awaited companion to The Sacred Harp and comprehensive guide to the texts and tunes of our songbook) or Legacy (Chloe Webb’s mining of Sacred Harp and family history) as a gift to one of your singing friends.
Happy holidays from the Sacred Harp Publishing Company!
Editor’s Note: The window for entering your name into the lottery is now closed. The lottery was conducted on March 23, 2013. Read a list of the names drawn in the lottery.
The Sacred Harp Publishing Company is governed by shareholders who elect its Board of Directors at a biennial stockholders’ meeting and are eligible to serve on the Board. The Company recently declared a number of long-inactive shares to be abandoned and will be granting interested singers the opportunity to purchase these shares through a lottery to be held in March of 2013.
To enter your name into the lottery, please contact Karen Rollins, Executive Secretary of the Company, by mail (1040 New Mexico Rd., Bowdon, GA 30108) or e-mail (purplekk1728@aol.com), with your name, contact information, and a message indicating that you would like to be included in the lottery. The Company will continue to accept names for the lottery through February 2013. All the names submitted will be drawn from a hat and placed on a list in the order they are drawn. Starting from the top of the list, those whose names are drawn will have the opportunity to purchase up to 2 shares in the Company at $25.00/share until the available shares are exhausted. The remaining names will be placed, in order, on a waiting list which will be used to sell additional shares, as they become available, until the list is exhausted. As the Company is a non-profit organization, the value of these shares will remain fixed at $25.00 and the shares will not pay dividends.
This lottery system is a new process for enabling interested singers to purchase a share of stock. The Board of Directors believe this will be an equitable way to sell these abandoned shares and any future shares which become available.
I’m excited to announce the publication of the second issue of The Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter.
Printable version of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2.9 MB PDF).
This issue features Chloe Webb’s fascinating account of the life of Lorraine Miles McFarland, the girl depicted on the cover of Awake, My Soul as well as a preview of the forthcoming shape note songbook the Shenandoah Harmony. A special section of this issue is a selection of reports on each of the five all-day singings and conventions held on the fifth Sunday this past April (and the Saturday before). It is a testament to the vitality of Sacred Harp singing that all the singings held that weekend were a success. These singing reports also display the wonderful variety in our singings: those described ranged in attendance from over 200 to fewer than 15, and featured a variety of locations, songbooks, dinner on the grounds dishes, and traditions.
Please continue to write us and leave comments with your feedback. We welcome your news, questions, corrections, and ideas for future articles. And keep an eye out for our third issue!
Lorraine Miles, age six, led “The Last Words of Copernicus” (p. 112 in The Sacred Harp) to win a gold piece in a children’s singing contest at the 1930 Sacred Harp Singing Convention in Mineral Wells, Texas. Photograph by George Pullen Jackson.
Without a doubt, the most recognizable face to Sacred Harp singers today is that of a little girl leading a song, one arm raised and holding in the other a large rectangular songbook. The sepia-toned photograph was chosen by Matt and Erica Hinton for the cover of their documentary Awake My Soul, the Story of the Sacred Harp. Singers across the country quickly fell in love with the little girl and wanted to know what had become of her.
While a companion soundtrackwas being completed, bass player Murry Hammond said it should be easy to find her. The Hintons had already been searching for three years and knew only that her name was Lorraine Miles and that the photo from the archives of hymnology historian George Pullen Jackson was taken in 1930 at a Sacred Harp singing convention in Mineral Wells, Texas. Following a hunch, Hammond began his own search, and within a few days, he told them a librarian in Mineral Wells had confirmed that Lorraine Miles McFarland was a current resident of the city. He even had her contact information. Hinton immediately phoned McFarland and surprised her with news that her face was on CDs, DVDs, and T-shirts all across the country.
Lorraine McFarland is petite, lively, and very attractive, with a ready smile and quiet sense of humor. She lives with her older daughter and son-in-law in the home that Lorraine and her late husband bought in 1976 when he retired from the military and they returned to her hometown. She’d been a six-year-old schoolgirl at the 1930 Sacred Harp convention in Mineral Wells, where W. T. Coston of Dallas sponsored a children’s singing contest. Lorraine led a song, “The Last Words of Copernicus” (p. 112 in The Sacred Harp), and won a valuable gold piece. She proudly presented the prize to her father, who was struggling to support his family of eight children. They ate “pret-ty good” for about two weeks, she says with a smile.
From an April 1, 1971 newspaper article commemorating the 1930 singing convention.
In a laminated newspaper photo of a large group of well-dressed people on the steps of the Mineral Wells Convention Hall, she pointed to two small girls dressed in white on the front row. “There I am right there, peeking around my sister Nettie. That’s the day I won the gold piece.”
Mr. Coston was so pleased with the children’s singing that he invited all of them to spend a weekend at the Coston home in Dallas, which Lorraine described as “more like a grand hotel, not just a house.” At the time, the Miles’ home lacked electricity and indoor plumbing. The most memorable feature of the Coston home was a huge bathroom with tile floors. It was summertime; she and Nettie lay down and pressed their faces to the delightfully cool floor.
Lorraine and Nettie’s mother, Lula Hearn Miles, had come to Texas with her parents shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. The Hearn family had sung Sacred Harp music in Alabama and brought the music to Texas with them. Lorraine’s mother encouraged all of her children to learn shape note music, often singing at home, and arranged for them to attend a singing school taught in Mineral Wells by the well-known shape note singing master, “Uncle” Tom Denson.
The family sang together for fun, like her mother’s family had done, and frequently put on their own “shows.” One Christmas, the family was exuberantly singing together when someone began pounding on the front door. They were living in a duplex, and they suddenly realized they were disturbing the neighbors. They prepared to apologize on opening the door, but instead, the neighbor demanded, “What station are you listening to?! We can’t find it on our radio!”
In the Miles’ home, the radio was always tuned to a station with music, and someone was always singing along. That’s how Lorraine learned to yodel. Her oldest brother Fred thought she was “pret-ty good,” she laughs. He came to school one day to mysteriously get her out of class. When they’d left the building, he told her he was taking her to Fort Worth for an audition at radio station KFJZ. She was put into a booth and handed a microphone. She sang a yodeling song and giggled at the end, which must have added to her charm, for she was offered a job on the popular radio show, “Hayride.” However, the family had no automobile of their own, and with no way to get to Fort Worth on a regular basis, she soon had to quit.
But Fred was a good promoter, and soon Lorraine was singing with a band called the “Washboard Swingsters” on a show broadcast locally in Mineral Wells. Western swing music was wildly popular, and “Little Lorraine, the yodeling schoolgirl,” was an instant sensation on the show’s daily broadcast at noon, which was prime time. An elderly Fort Worth woman recalls listening to the show every day as she washed lunch dishes.
Lorraine sometimes performed with the Washboard Swingsters in Fort Worth—notably, for an engagement during the Stock Show at the Silver Spur, which was “the” night club in the city. One night, Lorraine lost her voice as she began to sing. She tried again, but nothing came out. Amon G. Carter, owner and publisher of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, was sitting front and center with a table of guests. Suddenly, a woman at Carter’s table arose, took Lorraine’s arm and said, “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll fill in for you.” The woman was Ann Miller. While the fifteen-year-old Lorraine recuperated, the Hollywood star Ann Miller sang and danced, thrilling the live audience as she continued to do for decades on film and on Broadway.
“Little Lorraine, the yodeling schoolgirl” on Fort Worth radio station WBAP with the “Washboard Swingsters” (later known as the Crazy Gang).
The Washboard Swingsters were also a hit, and Lorraine’s voice returned. Radio station WBAP in Fort Worth, which aired such stars as W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys, hired the Swingsters and Little Lorraine to broadcast directly from the Crazy Water Hotel, right there at home.
Newspaper advertisement for a Crazy Gang live performance.
Water from local wells tasted terrible but became renowned for miraculous healing powers when a mentally disturbed woman, called the “crazy lady,” regained emotional stability after habitually sipping water from one of the wells, thereafter called the Crazy Well. Large hotels had been built for thousands of visitors who came to baths and spas in Mineral Wells during the 1920s, but after the stock market crash in 1929, people could no longer afford to travel. Owners of the Crazy Water Hotel, Carr and Hal Collins, who had first hired Lorraine, decided to take the water to the people—not by expensive bottling and shipping but by packaging the crystalline residue after the water had been boiled. When reconstituted, a single $1.50 box of crystals would make five gallons of Crazy Water. The Swingsters and Little Lorraine had become immensely popular, and the Mineral Wells Chamber of Commerce hired the “Crazy Gang” to tour all over Texas with a road show promoting the town and “Crazy Water Crystals.”
Lorraine was unaware of the wide breadth of the broadcast span until a sister in Odessa wrote the family that she had heard Lorraine on a Del Rio radio station broadcasting from Mexico. The show was actually broadcast on the NBC network to the entire nation from the lobby of the Crazy Water Hotel. The United States and Canada had formed an agreement that assigned and regulated radio frequencies, with 50,000 watts as the highest broadcasting power. However, Mexico was not part of the agreement, and stations could broadcast from Mexico with as much as 500,000 watts. Until the practice was stopped, some U.S. stations installed transmission equipment across the border in Mexico, and transcription disks were transported from studios—such as that in the Crazy Water Hotel—to the station’s office in Del Rio, Texas.
Theatre marquee for a Crazy Gang appearance.
Lorraine, age 15, performed at the Silver Spur in Fort Worth.
After the broadcast one day, Lorraine was told to bring her parents with her the next day: two talent scouts from Hollywood wanted to talk with them. The scouts said they had heard and seen Lorraine perform and thought she could have a successful career in the motion picture industry. They offered her a year of training in California, with auditions and management advice—all expenses paid. All they wanted in return was the right to be her agent.
Lorraine did not want to go. As a high school senior, she could not bear missing out on any more teenage fun. She tried to get her father’s attention, mouthing, “No, no!” Finally, he began to speak. He thanked the men for their generous offer, then he said, “But I don’t think this is the right thing for Lorraine right now.”
Sgt. “Mac” McFarland in 1941; he took her breath away.
Lorraine’s dancing and skating skills were also noticed. Her sister Nettie invited Lorraine to go with her to a dance at the U.S.O. Club; a sergeant wanted to meet her. The now seventeen-year-old Lorraine was offended that she would be interested in meeting an old man. But the dance sounded exciting; she had heard from her friends that there were young soldiers still in their teens at the U.S.O. She was on the dance floor when Nettie approached her from behind and said, “Lorraine, I’d like you to meet Sgt. A.J. McFarland.” There, in full dress uniform, was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Their eyes met, taking her breath away.
“Mac” McFarland later admitted that he’d seen her skating and devised a way to meet her. He was from Oklahoma and was only nineteen years old (although his “military” age was twenty-one). They were married a month later, a short while before her eighteenth birthday, and Mac—or rather, the military—took her off to see the world.
But she had not been forgotten in Mineral Wells. Lorraine soon received a phone call from Hal Collins, president of the Crazy Water, telling her that he was going to run for governor of the State of Texas. The current governor, the former radio star, W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, had decided not to run for re-election but would instead run for the U.S. Senate. (O’Daniel’s political race for governor was loosely parodied—though fictionally set in Mississippi—in the film, O Brother, Where art Thou? The real-life campaign in Texas was the only political race that O’Daniel’s opponent Lyndon B. Johnson ever lost.)
Collins told Lorraine that he and O’Daniel were planning a joint campaign tour across the state, and they wanted her to join them. The rest of the Crazy Gang was already on board. The offer was $127 plus expenses for the two-week tour. Mac was making $68 per month in the military. He said, “Go.”
Lorraine and the Crazy Gang on tour.
They traveled by bus and automobile, while a truck with a bed served as the stage. Pat, Mike, and Molly O’Daniel, the governor’s grown children, not much older than Lorraine, traveled with them. When pressed for details of the tour’s campaign promises, she admitted that she didn’t actually listen to the speeches. An article in the June 2, 1941 issue of Time magazine reported that at campaign rallies, Collins gave a mattress to the largest family present. As the campaign’s headliner, Governor “Pappy” O’Daniel, who’d first gained fame as announcer and manager of the Light Crust Doughboys, sometimes carried a broom, promising to sweep out corruption.
Site of Nuremberg trials in 1947; Lorraine attended nearly every day.
Lorraine did eventually see a big part of the world with Mac. After the war was over, she joined him when he was stationed in bombed-out Nuremburg, Germany, where she attended the Nuremburg trials nearly every day. Returning to Nuremburg a few years later, she found it transformed into a sparkling, thoroughly modern city. Lorraine and Mac traveled to other distant countries—France, Italy, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Thailand—through their fifty-one years of marriage.
While she was visiting her parents in Mineral Wells after her younger daughter was born, Lorraine’s father held the new baby on his lap and watched contentedly as her older child played nearby. As Lorraine talked of her life and her family, he said on seeing her happiness, he was glad they had turned down the offer from the Hollywood talent scouts. The subject had never been discussed after the decision was made, but he must have occasionally pondered “what-ifs.”
Lorraine and Mac in Venice in the late 1950s.
Lorraine and her family had sung Sacred Harp music until the singings ceased in Mineral Wells. Eventually, the old Convention Hall where W. T. Coston awarded gold pieces was demolished. A few months after the interview with Matt Hinton, Lorraine attended the East Texas Sacred Harp Singing Convention in Henderson, Texas, her first Sacred Harp singing in more than seventy-five years. She led “The Last Words of Copernicus” with Mike Hinton—no relation to Matt, but the grandson of her early singing school instructor, “Uncle” Tom Denson. There she stood, with one arm raised and holding in the other a long, rectangular songbook. “Fa-La-Sol,” she sang. Voices found a pitch, and then filled the room with pulsing sound. It all came back to her; she didn’t miss a beat.
Mike Hinton, grandson of Lorraine’s early Sacred Harp instructor, with Lorraine Miles McFarland at the 2010 East Texas Sacred Harp Convention in Henderson, Texas.
Lorraine Miles McFarland, Awake My Soul cover girl, in 2010—eighty years after the 1930 Mineral Wells Sacred Harp Singing Convention.
