Editors’ note: In 1964, Hugh McGraw, then executive secretary of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company, gave a talk on the past, present, and future of Sacred Harp singing for the Harpeth Valley, Tennessee, Sacred Harp singers. His audience included prominent scholars and clergy such as music educator Irving Wolfe and Presbyterian minister Priestley Miller (composer of “The Lamb of God,” on p. 572 in The Sacred Harp). In the following excerpt from his talk, McGraw reflects on the state of Sacred Harp singing in 1964 and addresses common misconceptions about the style.

Criticisms of Sacred Harp Music

There are more singings now than ever before. I would say there are over 375 singings held annually in churches, schools, courthouses, back rooms, and even in cafes (and they are always opened and closed by prayer).

As you all know, this music is not “listener’s music,” it is singer’s music. You have got to sing it to understand it. Quite frequently you hear people say, “it all sounds alike to me,” or “I can’t hear any tune to it.” I shall regard such criticism as simply untrue and the result of pure ignorance. Sacred Harp music is written in four-part harmony and it is composed in such a manner that each part is equally interesting to the singer. And, of course, the melody carries the tune of the song and is the most important.

Hugh McGraw leads a singing school on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. at the 1970 Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife. Photograph by Dick Levine.

The other criticism you hear is “it all sounds like minor.” Well about one half of our songs are minor, and the singer enjoys both major and minor.

You hear people say, “It’s ‘OLD-FOGY.’” Now what does Old Fogy mean? The word “fogy” means a steward or caretaker, and the word “old” was a tried and trusted one who took care of such things as were worth preserving, and certainly what we are doing to The Sacred Harp is preserving it. When we speak of Old Fogy things we might as well include, for instance, the language we speak, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the houses we live in, the laws we obey, and last but not least, the God we worship. Now what could be more old fogy than these things I have just named? But brother, I don’t want to do without any of them, and I guess I will just die “old fogy.”

All I can say about Sacred Harp music could be summed up in a few words. Uncle Tom Denson once said, “If you don’t like it, you had better stay away from it, because it will get hold of you and you can’t get away.”

Singers Today

I would say that there are 10,000 singers in the Southern states and more joining in every year. I would say that 50,000 Sacred Harp song books have been sold in the last fifty years and I would predict that the next fifty years will see 100,000 sold.

With these modern-time people, they don’t think anything about going 500 to 600 miles to an all day singing. They have new cars; some go by airplane, trains. That is a vast improvement over the horse and buggy days. I have heard some of the older people say that sometimes it would take a week to get to a singing and a week to get back.

However, the old tradition is still carried on just like our grandfathers carried it on before us, and I don’t think that will ever change. Anything that is good enough to last 120 years will last forever.

People have made the remark that Sacred Harp singings are dying out. That is an untrue statement. There are more people singing today than ever before. More singing schools are taught each year. More young people are starting out learning to sing the music, and you know yourself that anything that the young people do and enjoy is certainly something that will go on and on.

I would like to encourage more young people to start singing, because there is no greater entertainment than a sweet song. I don’t just promote Sacred Harp music—any music is enjoyable and soothing to the ear. Music will never, never, never die.

Introduction

When it comes to the hymnody of the nineteenth century South, The Sacred Harp often comes to mind. After all, The Sacred Harp is still celebrated in singing practically every weekend across the United States. One singing school teacher whose compilations often get overlooked these days, however, is William “Singing Billy” Walker, a South Carolina native whose tunebook, Southern Harmony (1835), successfully rivaled the popularity and sales of The Sacred Harp.1 Indeed, according to one of Walker’s Philadelphia publishers, nearly 600,000 copies of Southern Harmony had been sold by 1866,2 an astronomical figure for the South at this time. Walker’s very name, it seems, was a household term familiar to virtually all southerners in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, as a quotation from Walker’s obituary attests: “The Southern Harmony and his name, the distinguished name of the author, are as familiar as household duties in the habitations of the South.”3 Indeed, I would argue that William Walker was not only South Carolina’s best known composer of hymn tunes, but has significantly influenced the face of American music today.4

William Walker

William Walker, A. S. H. Photograph from the collection of George Pullen Jackson.

Walker’s extended family would prove extremely useful to him in years to come. Distant relatives included the famous Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, the Rev. John Landrum (the first pastor of the First Baptist Church of Spartanburg), and the Rev. Newton Pinckney Walker (founder of South Carolina’s Institution for the Deaf and Blind at nearby Cedar Springs). More importantly, his sister-in-law had married Benjamin Franklin White, who in 1844 would collaborate with E. J. King in compiling The Sacred Harp.

Walker’s musical experiences began at a very young age. By the time he was five, his mother had taught him three hymns with tunes reflecting the Anglo-American folk idiom.5 Walker  composed his first piece, “Solemn Call,” a fuging tune, at age eighteen, in 1827.6 Further evidence of Walker’s early musical activity is found in a manuscript collection containing pieces which in 1835 were included in Walker’s first published singing school tunebook, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (hereafter Southern Harmony).7

In 1835 the then twenty-six year old Walker married Amy Shands Golightly (1811–1897). The Walkers had a long and fruitful marriage with ten children. They became members of the newly organized First Baptist Church of Spartanburg in 1839. During his thirty-six years in that church, Walker, quite familiar with Baptist traditions of worship and music, served as a deacon, a frequent messenger to the Baptist association, and a leader of congregational singing.8

Location of Spartanburg, South Carolina. Walker was a prominent resident of Spartanburg for much of his life.

Despite the limits of his own formal education, Walker strongly supported formal educational institutions within his own community. In 1835 he was a trustee of the newly founded Spartanburg Male Academy, and in the same year he was one of eleven subscribers who pledged $1,300 to establish the Female Seminary in Spartanburg.9 On July 4, 1851, William Walker took part in the cornerstone laying ceremonies of Spartanburg’s Wofford College.10

Along with his musical activities, Walker operated a bookstore in Spartanburg, a business that was really both a book and stationery store. Walker’s Southern Harmony was an important factor in the success of his bookstore, enabling him to sell merchandise at lower prices, as mentioned in an advertisement on January 8, 1857 in The Spartanburg Express:

I have made permanent arrangements with several large book houses in New York and Philadelphia, to exchange my music work, the Southern Harmony, as cash prices for their books, etc. At cash prices nett. [sic] I will therefore be able to sell books and stationery lower than they have ever been sold in Spartanburg, and as I desire to do a cash business, I will sell at Columbia and Charleston prices.

This advertisement illustrates Walker’s business acumen. It also documents that Walker was not simply a southerner whose works were sold only in the South. Southern Harmony was sold in the North as well as in the South. This is all the more remarkable since this was a time of increasing sectional conflict leading to the Civil War.

Walker’s impressive personal library attests to the fact that his interest in books went far beyond the mercenary. In the words of his biographer, “He was possessed of a mind of a literary turn, and had a large and valuable library, and having been engaged for some years in the introduction and sale of books in the town of Spartanburg, he became possessed of many rare and valuable books of general interest.”11

From about the mid-1850s Walker taught in normal music schools, established to train singing school teachers, using his own tunebooks as textbooks. Walker’s professional activities as a singing school instructor ranged far, in his own words, extending thousands of miles across the South and Middle Western states.12 Altogether, Walker taught music for forty-five years.13

Walker’s Tunebooks

Title page of the Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist, 1860 edition. Courtesy of Archive.org.

In addition to Southern Harmony, Walker compiled one other major tunebook and two minor ones. Walker’s second tunebook, in four-shape notation like Southern Harmony, was the Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist of 1846, designed as a supplement to Southern Harmony but with more hymns suitable for use in revivals. Walker’s third tunebook, The Christian Harmony, was a major collection published in 1867 in which he switched from four-shape to seven-shape notation and incorporated more music of Boston-based music educator Lowell Mason and his followers, further evidence of his northern connections. Walker’s last collection, entitled Fruits and Flowers, was designed for children in both common schools and Sunday schools. Published in 1870 just five years before his death, Walker’s preface included an address to children:

Well, children, I have been engaged for many years in making music-books for the grown people, so I thought I would now make a music book for you, that you might all learn to sing while you are little folks. My mother learned [sic] me to sing when I was a little fellow about three years old. My dear children, don’t you want to sing? It seems to me that I can almost hear you say, Yes sir, that we do. Well then, get your parents to buy you a copy of Fruits and Flowers.14

Southern Harmony

Walker’s compilations, like other singing school tunebooks, made substantial contributions in their day to the publication of hymns in the South. Especially during the antebellum period, a hymnal was a words-only volume, often published in miniature editions that could be carried to church in one’s pocket. Congregational singing in the South among such mainline denominations as Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians was commonly unaccompanied. It was often lined-out, as is still practiced by some white and black Primitive Baptist and Old Regular Baptist congregations as well as by other African-American congregations in the U.S. South and Presbyterian congregations in Scotland. In cases where churchgoers could read music, they probably learned using shape notes in singing schools.

Walker’s Southern Harmony and his later Christian Harmony were two tunebooks among hundreds of singing-school collections published in the United States since the days of William Billings in the late 1700s. From about 1800, singing-school tunebooks began to be published in a four-shape system of shaped note heads corresponding to the then four-shape Elizabethan sol-fa solmization. The ascending major scale would have shapes to represent the syllables fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, mi, fa. Although largely rejected in the Northeast, shape notes became very popular in parts of Pennsylvania on through the Shenandoah Valley to the South and Midwest as far as Missouri. In these areas it became practically impossible to get a tunebook published unless it was in shape notes.

Walker’s tunebooks, like others of its time, served several purposes. They functioned as textbooks for singing schools that taught multitudes how to read music. Southern Harmony, like other singing-schools tunebooks of its day, begins with an introduction to music reading, including the use of shape notes. Indeed, the books subtitle reads, “an easy introduction to the grounds of music, the rudiments of music, and plain rules for beginners.”

Title page of the Southern Harmony, and Musical Companion, 1847 edition. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

In addition to its use as a textbook for singing schools, Walker’s tunebook furnished music for congregational singing of hymn texts already published in words-only hymnals. Hymnals listed on the title page of Southern Harmony are Watts’s Hymns and Psalms, Mercer’s Cluster, Dossey’s Choice, Dover Selection, Methodist Hymn Book, and Baptist Harmony. Southern pastors compiled most of these hymnals. One pastor known to Walker was his fellow South Carolinian, Staunton S. Burdett, then pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church near Lancaster. Burdett’s Baptist Harmony was published only a year prior to Walker’s Southern Harmony. Burdett’s name is listed on the title page of Southern Harmony, for he stocked and sold copies of Walker’s tunebook. Most of the tunes for congregational use are found in Part I of Southern Harmony.

Beginnings of Parts I and II of the Southern Harmony, 1847 edition. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The singing schools and churches were not the only intended users of Walker’s tunebooks. They provided a repertory of challenging pieces for more advanced singers. Part II of Southern Harmony is described on the title page as “containing some of the more lengthy and elegant pieces commonly used at concerts, or singing societies.” This section includes most of the fuging tunes and anthems, such as William Billings’ well-known “Easter Anthem.”

Perhaps the most interesting repertory of Walker’s Southern Harmony is the folk hymn, and it is in this genre that Walker made his greatest contribution to American music. Walker and other rural-oriented singing-school teacher/compilers drew from the rich oral tradition of Anglo-American folksong to provide melodies for many hymn texts. Sometimes the folk melody and hymn text had already been coupled. In other instances, Walker and others fitted secular folk melodies to already well-known hymn texts. It is likely that Walker and some of his contemporaries had so fully absorbed this Anglo-American idiom that they themselves composed tunes in the style.

The best known of all American folk hymns is “Amazing Grace,” set to the tune “New Britain,” published together for the first time in the 1835 first edition of Southern Harmony. The text, written by the converted slave-trader who became an Anglican minister, John Newton, contained the same six stanzas found in Olney Hymns (1779) and was already well known. The tune “New Britain” had also been previously published, but with other texts. No earlier wedding of the tune and text has been documented. The melody, as was normal in this era, is in the tenor part, the middle of three voices.

“New Britain,” from Southern Harmony, 1847 edition. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Also typical of these folk hymns is the angular line of the melody and the use of gapped scales—in this case pentatonic, omitting the fourth and seventh degrees. In harmonizing these folk melodies, Walker and his contemporaries thought linearly as well as vertically, conceiving each voice part as a melody in itself. This practice sometimes produced chords without thirds, along with parallel perfect fifths and parallel octaves.

Another type of folk hymnody, a type that came from the camp meeting revivals, was what George Pullen Jackson called the “revival spiritual.” Ellen Jane Lorenz has defined this type as “informal hymns often with refrain and chorus, taking form in camp and revival meetings.”15 One of the best known of the revival spirituals, “The Promised Land,” was first published in 1835 in the first edition of Southern Harmony. To the hymn text, “On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand” by the English Baptist pastor, Samuel Stennett, an unknown American added the refrain beginning, “I am bound for the promised land.” Walker credits the tune to “Miss M. Durham,” who has been identified as Matilda Durham of the Spartanburg area, who married Andrew Hoy and later lived in Cobb County, Georgia, northwest of Atlanta. The tune was later recast in major and reharmonized to accommodate the newer gospel hymn tradition, the form in which it appears in several current hymnals.

“The Promised Land,” from Southern Harmony, 1847 edition. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

There is yet a third widely-sung folk hymn text and tune that Walker, as far as documents show, brought together in print for the first time. In the second edition of Southern Harmony, published by Walker and the recently identified Elijah King, “Esq.,” of Flat Rock, Henderson County, North Carolina,16 there is an appendix which includes “Wondrous Love,” credited to Christopher. The text, “What wondrous love is this, O my soul,” had been published anonymously in two hymnals in 1811.17 It was another thirty-nine years before this anonymous text appeared in print together with this beautiful tune. Walker also published “Wondrous Love” in his 1867 tunebook, The Christian Harmony. There he described “Wondrous Love” as a “very popular old Southern tune” and indicated that it was “arranged by James Christopher of Spartanburg.” The melody had existed for a number of years in oral tradition, and James Christopher wrote it down and harmonized it. In Southern Harmony Walker included only the first stanza, an omission he later rectified in his Christian Harmony by providing six stanzas. The text of Wondrous Love is in the same meter as the ballad of Captain Kidd and many other songs.18

“Wondrous Love,” from Southern Harmony, 1847 edition. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

It is clear that Walker was a tune collector, arranger, and a composer in the idiom of the folk hymns that surrounded him. In the preface to the first edition of Southern Harmony Walker wrote:

I have composed the parts to a great many good airs (which I could not find in any publication, nor in manuscript) and assigned my name as the author. I have also composed several tunes wholly, and inserted them in this work, which also bear my name.

Walker also published melodies from oral tradition harmonized by others, including Spartanburg area musicians of the singing-school shape-note tradition, such as Matilda Durham Hoy (“The Promised Land”) and James Christopher (“Wondrous Love”). It is this form of harmonized sacred folk tunes, arising out of the hill-country of Upper South Carolina that gave Walker’s tunebooks, especially his Southern Harmony, much of its distinctive appeal to the South of his day.

Walker’s Legacy

Crowds gathered for the 1935 “Big Singing” at the Marshall County courthouse in Benton, Kentucky. Photographs from the collection of George Pullen Jackson.

The music of William Walker’s tunebooks may be found today primarily in three contexts. The first context is the traditional shape-note singing. Two of Walker’s four tunebooks are still used today in singings year after year. The only singing that currently makes exclusive use of Southern Harmony is the Big Singing Day each fourth Sunday in May at Benton, Kentucky.19 Walker’s Christian Harmony, his post-Civil War tunebook in seven-shape notation, is far more widely used in singings than his Southern Harmony. Into the early 2000s, two different editions of the book were in use across the South, from Mississippi to North Carolina. A 1994 reprint of the 1872 edition of Christian Harmony20 was used in a number of annual singings in western North Carolina.21 In Alabama, Mississippi, and North Georgia, singers used an edition of Christian Harmony extensively revised by Alabamians John Deason and O. A. Parris that was published in 1958 and revised and reissued again in 1994.22 In 2010, a committee of singers including representatives from each of these singing communities published an expanded edition of the book including all the songs from each of the two editions just mentioned, as well as a handful of additional songs by current singers.23

Tunebook singings had completely disappeared in from Walker’s home state of South Carolina until 1994, when a singing was established on the campus of Wofford College in Spartanburg. This singing, now known as the “South Carolina State Singing in Memory of William Walker,” meets on the Saturday before the third Sunday in March and uses Southern Harmony, Christian Harmony, and The Sacred Harp. This singing concludes with a short walk to Spartanburg’s historic Magnolia Cemetery for a closing song and prayer of thanks with singers gathered around Walker’s grave. Growing out of the Wofford singing in recent years is an annual singing at Furman University in Greenville, on the Saturday before the fourth Sunday in May.

Walker’s legacy in traditional shape-note singing is not limited to the present-day use of Southern Harmony and Christian Harmony. Mark T. Godfrey has analyzed the frequency of song use from The Sacred Harp drawing on annual volumes of the Directory and Minutes of Sacred Harp Singings from 1995–2013.24 Walker’s “Hallelujah” and “New Britain,” also from Southern Harmony, ranked as the first and second most commonly led songs among the 554 in The Sacred Harp for the period from 1995–2013. Another song from Southern Harmony, “Wondrous Love,” ranked thirteenth. These same three tunes placed among the top songs used for memorial lessons at Sacred Harp singings: “New Britain” ranked third, “Hallelujah” ranked ninth, and “Wondrous Love” ranked tenth. Among the top songs for closing Sacred Harp singings in the period from 1995–2013, number one was “Parting Hand” from Southern Harmony, number four was “Hallelujah,” and number seven was “New Britain.” Thus the popularity of Walker’s tunes and those from Southern Harmony at present-day Sacred Harp singings also constitutes a significant part of his legacy.

Grave of William Walker, Spartanburg, South Carolina, before 1939. Photograph from the collection of George Pullen Jackson.

The second context in which the music of Walker’s tunebooks is found today is in choral arrangements. Choirs in churches and schools have sung countless arrangements of “Amazing Grace” across the English-speaking world.25 “Wondrous Love” has also appeared in numerous choral arrangements. Walker’s life itself has served as the impetus for an opera. In 1952 Donald Davidson of the English Department of Vanderbilt University and composer Charles F. Bryan of Peabody College collaborated in the production of a light opera, Singin’ Billy, based on the life of William Walker.26

The third context, one that Walker shares with other shape-note composers of his era, constitutes his greatest legacy. This context is that of congregational song, the inclusion of early American folk hymnody in current hymnals of practically every major American denomination. It is notable that some of these folk hymns, such as “Amazing Grace” and “Wondrous Love,” have gained ecumenical acceptance, appearing in practically every major new hymnal. While Lowell Mason and his colleagues in the Northeast were composing and arranging hymn tunes based on classical European models, southerners such as William Walker, Benjamin Franklin White, Elisha James King and others were composing and arranging hymn tunes based on Anglo-American tunes in wide oral circulation. These folk hymns of the shape-note tradition from this Carolina contributor are a wonderful treasure of early American song that constitutes a continuing gift to singing congregations and the American heritage even now in the twenty-first century.

Acknowledgements

This essay was adapted by Jesse P. Karlsberg from an article published in the Journal of the South Carolina Baptist Historical Society 29 (2005–2006). Mark. T. Godfrey provided updated statistics on song use for this revised version of the essay.

1. The most extensive treatment of The Sacred Harp is Buell E. Cobb, Jr. The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and Its Music (Athens and London: Brown Trasher Books, University of Georgia Press, 1978, 1989). [↩]
2. Preface to The Christian Harmony (Philadelphia: E. W. Miller and William Walker, 1867), iii. Preface dated October 1866. [↩]
3. T. O. P. Vernon, “Late Prof. Walker of S. C.,” Musical Million 7, no. 1ff, January, 1876. [↩]
4. Unless otherwise indicated, biographical data on Walker is based on Harry Lee Eskew, “The Life and Work of William Walker” (MSM thesis, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1960). [↩]
5. These three tunes are found in Walker’s Christian Harmony, revised edition (Philadelphia: Miller’s Bible and Publishing House, 1873). Their names with their page numbers and first lines are: “Solemn Thought” (p. 361, “Remember, sinful youth, you must die, you must die”), “That Glorious Day” (p. 114, “That glorious day is drawing nigh”), and “French Broad” (p. 208, “High o’er the hills the mountains rise”). [↩]
6. Ibid., 155. The fuging tune features a repeated homophonic opening section followed by a section of imitative entrances, the latter section also being repeated, and concluding with a return da capo for a final repetition of the opening section, making an AABBA form. [↩]
7. See Milburn Price, “Miss Elizabeth Adams’ Music Book: A Manuscript Predecessor of William Walker’s Southern Harmony,” The Hymn 29, no. 2 (April 1978): 70–75. [↩]
8. Walker’s associational activities are described in Alfred Merrill Smoak, Jr., “William Walker’s Southern Harmony” (MCM thesis, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1973), 17–22. [↩]
9. Fronde Kennedy, A History of Spartanburg County (Spartanburg, SC: The Spartanburg Branch, American Association of University Women, 1940), 60–61. [↩]
10. John B. O. Landrum, History of Spartanburg County (Atlanta: The Franklin Printing and Publishing Company, 1900; reprint, Spartanburg, SC: The Spartanburg Journal, 1954), 368–369. [↩]
11. Ibid. [↩]
12. Walker, Christian Harmony, iii. [↩]
13. This information is given on Walker’s tombstone in Spartanburg’s historic Magnolia Cemetery. The full inscription reads: “In memory of William Walker, A. S. H. [author of Southern Harmony] Died Sept 24, 1875 in the 67th year of his age. He was a devoted husband and kind father. A consistent Baptist 47 years. Taught music 45 years. The author of 4 books of sacred music. He rests from his labors. He died in the triumphs of faith. Sing praises unto the Lord.” [↩]
14. William Walker, Fruits and Flowers (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott and Company, 1873), 3. [↩]
15. Ellen Jane Lorenz, Glory Hallelujah! The Story of the Campmeeting Spiritual (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1980), 131. [↩]
16. Tarik Wareh identified Elijah King (1809–1880) based on census records and other historical documents. Elijah King is the only “E. King” who resided in Henderson County around the time the second edition of Southern Harmony was published. His father, Benjamin Sylvanus King, “was a noted Baptist preacher, ordained in 1800 at French Broad Baptist Church,” Wareh reports. The younger King moved to Texas in the 1850s, where he lived until his death in 1880. Personal correspondence with Tarik Wareh, January 7, 2014. [↩]
17. Six stanzas were published in Stith Mead, A General Selection of the Newest and Most Admired Hymns and Spiritual Songs Now in Use, second ed. (Lynchburg, VA, 1811), no. 121, and seven stanzas in Starke Dupuy, A Selection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs from the Best Authors (Frankfort, KY, 1811), no. 198. [↩]
18. See Ellen Jane [Lorenz] Porter, “Two Early American Tunes: Fraternal Twins?” The Hymn 29, no. 4 (1978); and Ellen Jane [Lorenz] Porter and John E. Garst, “More Tunes in the Captain Kidd Meter,” The Hymn 30, no. 4 (1979), 252–262. [↩]
19. See Deborah Carlton Loftis, “Big Singing Day in Benton, Kentucky: A Study of the History, Ethnic Identity, and Musical Style of Southern Harmony Singers” (PhD diss., University of Kentucky, 1987). [↩]
20. Published by Folk Heritage Books, 21 Miller Road, Asheville, NC. 28805. This reprint includes four popular tunes added to the original edition on pages 381A–381D. This edition is out of print. [↩]
21. See Harry Eskew, “Christian Harmony Singing in Alabama: Its Adaptation and Survival,” in Singing Baptists: Studies in Baptist Hymnody in America (Nashville: Church Street Press, 1994), 265–276. [↩]
22. Published by the Alabama Christian Harmony Singing Association. This edition is also out of print. [↩]
23. Published by the Christian Harmony Music Company, for ordering information see TheChristianHarmony.com. [↩]
24. Mark T. Godfrey, “Analysis of the Minutes of Sacred Harp Singings, 1995–2013,” unpublished dataset, 2013. [↩]
25. Although Walker first published “Amazing Grace” with the tune “New Britain,” the shape of the melody and harmony by which it is best known today first appeared as arranged in E. O. Excell’s Make His Praise Glorious (Chicago, 1900), no. 235. [↩]
26. A reprint of the score and a book of lyrics with introductory notes to this opera was published with a 1985 copyright date by the Foundation for American Education, P. O. Box 11708. Columbia, S.C., 29211. [↩]

My aunt Jerusha Henrietta Denson was born on July 5^th, 1893 at Carrollton, Georgia. She was called “Rush” by her family. At school her name was changed to Ruth, which stuck for the rest of her life. She was one of eight children born to Thomas Jackson Denson and Amanda Burdette Denson—her brothers were Paine and Howard Denson, and her sisters were Annie Eugenia (Aaron) and Maggie Frances (Cagle). Three other children died as infants. Ruth also had three half-sisters—twenty years younger than her or more—who were born to Thomas and his third wife, Lola Mahalia Akers: Vera Mildred (Nunn), Violet Beatrice (Hinton), and Tommye Mahalia (Mauldin). Interestingly, Tommye was the only child named after their father.

From left to right: Annie Denson Aaron, Ruth Denson Edwards, and Maggie Frances Denson Cagle, the three daughters of Thomas Jackson and Amanda Burdette Denson.

Ruth Denson married a “dashing” young man named Lewis D. “Bud” Edwards in 1917. I only heard her mention him one time when she said, “He was a sweet ole thing.” They were divorced and little else is known about him. She never married again. Ruth spent her working life as a fourth grade teacher in Cullman, Alabama. She used to say that she liked to teach fourth graders because “I could mold them and make something out of them.” She refused offers to be promoted into administration. She lived for over forty years in a room on the second floor of a large, stately old home in Cullman that had been converted into a “rooming house.”

Ruth Denson and Lewis D. “Bud” Edwards. The two married in 1917 but soon divorced.

After retirement, she remained in Cullman until the owner of “The White House” died and the house was sold. Aunt Ruth arranged to move to Jasper, Alabama to live with one of her younger half-sisters and her husband, Earnest and Vera Nunn. Uncle Earnest was a carpenter and he built a large addition to their home where Aunt Ruth had a very nice sitting room and desk, along with a large bedroom and bath. She was quick to let us know that “I paid for the materials to build ‘my apartment.’” She had several old large book cases that had been in Uncle Paine’s law offices, with the glass doors that opened up and then slid over the shelf. She lived in that home until a few months before her death in April, 1978.

Aunt Ruth had volumes of books, Sacred Harp tunebooks, files, and other memorabilia. She was a devoted correspondent and wrote letters up until the time her eyesight prevented her from seeing well enough to write. Since I was in the Army (beginning in 1965) and away from Alabama, I corresponded with her for many years. I still have several dozen letters that she wrote to me in Texas, Vietnam, Bangkok and other locations. She was cute in responding to a letter—If I sent her a “long letter” with lots of news she would begin her reply with “I was happy to receive your good letter.” If, on the other hand, I sent her just a short note, she would simply reply “I received your letter.”

Most of her books and furniture stayed in Aunt Vera Nunn’s home until Vera died in 1989. At that time, family members were asked to look at things which were still in the house and to take anything that they would like to have. One of the items that I took was a Bible that belonged to Aunt Ruth. I also took a book of poems, One Hundred and One Famous Poems published in Chicago in 1920. Inside the cover she wrote “Property of Ruth D. Edwards, Cullman City School, 4^th grade.” There was a handwritten list of twenty-six poems that were apparently important and meaningful to her. I also have some Sacred Harp books that she had, including a copy of the 1929 printing of the Original Sacred Harp (James edition) that belonged to Thomas Jackson Denson. The cover had come loose from the binding, and thread was used to keep it attached to the pages. There were a number of notations in the book that Tom Denson had written, presumably for corrections for the next edition of what was to be known as the 1936 Original Sacred Harp, Denson Revision. The Denson relatives agreed to donate the book to the Sacred Harp Museum in Carrollton, Georgia.

The Bible that I inherited from Aunt Ruth is The Schofield Reference Bible; there is nothing to indicate when she purchased or received this Bible, though it lists several copyright dates, the latest being 1945. She had written many notes in the front and back pages, as well as on the partially blank pages after certain chapters. Also, there were a number of “things” that Aunt Ruth had in her Bible: letters, notes, articles, poems, place marks. More than just random notes and scraps, these items give an intimate glimpse of Aunt Ruth’s character, reflecting the things that were most important to her in her life and her belief.

Part of the Denson family tree. Inscribed by Ruth Denson Edwards on a blank page near the front of her Bible.

One theme in the notes in her Bible was the importance of family. On a blank page near the front, she recorded part of the Denson family tree: “The elder Denson Brothers. Levi Phillips—father of T J Denson. James, Nimrod, Cicero and Ezra.” She noted that they were “educated in England in the early 1800s . . . Levi Phillip studied for the ministry. He preached his first sermon in John Wesley’s church in England, according to Grandmother Julia Ann Jones Denson, his wife.” I am unable to confirm or deny this information. Aunt Ruth told us that Levi Phillip Denson was “a circuit riding Methodist minister” who served churches in the west Georgia and east Alabama area while they lived in Arbacoochee, Alabama. On the back pages of the Bible Aunt Ruth wrote the names of “My Grandparents” and the names of all the children of Thomas J. Denson. She also wrote some genealogy of the Denson and Burdette families (Amanda Burdette was her mother).

Other notes are more lighthearted in their approach to family, like the cartoon from the Saturday Evening Post which shows two little boys sitting on a curb. One is saying to the other: “I know I’m not adopted because if I was they would have sent me back by now.” Aunt Ruth had a good sense of humor and loved to tell stories for willing listeners.

Favorite Bible verses, inscribed by Ruth Denson Edwards on the inside front cover of her Bible.

Another important theme in her notes was her faith. Inside the front cover, she copied out part of Second Thessalonians, Chapter 3:

Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received from us. . . . Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us. . . . But ye, brethren, be not weary of doing well.

In the pages of the Bible there is a poem which from a copy of the Sunday Birmingham News titled “Poem for the Living,” by Theodora Kroeber. A few lines of the poem:

When I am dead,
Cry for me a little.
Think of me sometimes,
But not too much.
It is not good for you
Or your wife or your children,
To allow your thoughts to dwell
Too long on the dead.
Think of me now and again
As I was in life
At the moment which it is pleasant to recall,
But not too long.
Leave me in peace
As I shall leave you, too, in peace.
While you live,
Let your thoughts be on the living.

Ruth Denson Edwards also copied the inscription on the Liberty Bell from Leviticus 25:10 and a quote from her father, T. J. Denson, onto the inside front cover of her Bible.

She was also very proud of her country. One of her notes in the front pages reads, “Inscription on Liberty Bell: ‘Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.’ Leviticitus 25:10.” And there was one more quotation: “‘I can teach you to sing but only God can teach you to sing with the spirit.’ Thomas Jackson Denson, 1863–1935.” Aunt Ruth told us that “Dad Thomas” would tell that to his singing school students.

There was also a copy of a poem, “In Flanders Fields,” written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae of Canada in 1918. Aunt Ruth would often quote this poem if she happened to pass by a National Cemetery. Here are a few lines:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard among the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and we loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Field.

Other notes give us insight into Sacred Harp history. There is a two page typewritten letter from Paine Denson written on September 26, 1944, just after the Sacred Harp Centennial Celebration in Double Springs, Alabama from September 18–24, 1944. This event celebrated the one hundred years of Sacred Harp singing since Benjamin Franklin White published the first Sacred Harp in 1844. (A copy of the “Report of the Sacred Harp Centennial Celebration” is available online.) In his letter, Uncle Paine wrote the following:

Dear Sister: Well, the ordeal is over and it was an howling success, as far as I could see, from every standpoint. It was good to see you in your role as Secretary. The poise and dignity that accompanied you at every turn made me feel glad to have a sister who could play such a roll. . . . I guess that is enough, or rather it is about as good as I can do in an effort to communicate to how I felt about it. It won’t be done any better in the next century that you did your part that time.

This was high praise from Paine Denson. He was not known to be overly complimentary and in this instance, he was expressing his admiration to his younger sister. I am sure that is why she kept this letter for over forty years in her Bible.

Dr. George Pullen Jackson speaks at the unveiling of a monument honoring T. J. and S. M. Denson during the 1944 Centennial Celebration of The Sacred Harp. Winston County Courthouse, Double Springs, Alabama.

The Centennial Celebration was also the occasion when the monument to Seaborn and Thomas Denson was unveiled in front of the courthouse in Double Springs, Alabama. Paine wrote these words to Ruth: “The monument was beautiful and now that it is up we MUST carry on in keeping the sentiments it represents and never let the family name down.”

An April 27, 1948 letter from Paine Denson that Ruth Denson Edwards tucked into the pages of her Bible.

There is another letter in her Bible that was written in April 1948 after Paine and Ruth had travelled to Detroit, Michigan for a program where Dr. George Pullen Jackson was an active participant. The event was a large music association convention and it is my understanding that Dr. Jackson had a group of singers give a demonstration of Sacred Harp during the meeting. Aunt Ruth also spoke during the Sacred Harp session, and apparently had to bring the audience to order. Uncle Paine wrote,

I’m still thinking over and enjoying our trip to Detroit. Your method of quieting that audience down was strictly up to the minute. It worked and worked well too. I liked the way you did that. Of course, I did not know what it would be. You have a way of keeping me guessing. It is no use trying to prime you for you will and always do the right thing when your time to act comes.

Siblings Paine Denson and Ruth Denson Edwards (ca. 1945–1950).

“Cousin Paine’s own selections for his funeral,” to be sung “Words only.”

On a small piece of paper is a penciled list of numbers with “words only” written at the top of the list. The numbers are: 27, 457, 111, 68, 349, and 329. There is a note written in different handwriting that says, “Cousin Paine’s own selections for his funeral in his own handwriting.”

Another page, handwritten by Aunt Ruth, appears to be a rough draft of comments. The name at the end of the page is R. E. “Bob” Denson, but the writing is Aunt Ruth’s (Ruth and Bob were double first cousins). It is undated, but there is a reference to the 1966 edition of the tunebook.

Is the Sacred Harp Dragging Its Feet?

Recently I heard some pessimistic people prophesy that in fifteen or twenty years Sacred Harp singing would become extinct. When asked why they thought so, the reply was, “Because people have lost interest in Sacred Harp music and do not support the singing as they did in past years. Therefore the life is being dragged out of the singings.”

I cannot and will not accept that idea. The Sacred Harp is not dragging its feet. For the past twelve years, I have attended a singing almost every Sunday somewhere in Georgia, Mississippi or Alabama, and every singing has been well attended. Local singers give visitors a warm welcome and each time the day is too short for all the leaders to be used. At the social hour the singers enjoy the delicious food prepared by the ladies of the community and the delightful fellowship of friends. No, the Sacred Harp is not dragging its feet. In fact, it is more popular today than ever before and with the advent of the 1966 Edition, it will enter a new era of popularity and prosperity.

Double first cousins Robert E. “Bob” Denson and Ruth Denson Edwards at Addison Methodist Church for the Denson Memorial, 1960s.

On a small piece of paper, Aunt Ruth wrote a quotation by Richmond Flowers, a political figure in Alabama: “The mantle of leadership is not the cloak of comfort, but the robe of responsibility.” Aunt Ruth would often say that the mantle of Sacred Harp leadership passed from the Densons to Hugh McGraw during the 1960s. He and Aunt Ruth talked weekly for many years. She loved him and was a constant source of encouragement to him. He was very good and kind to her and would drive from Georgia to Cullman, Alabama to pick her up to go to singings. In many ways she looked to Hugh as the “son she never had.”

Reminding us of her long career as a primary school teacher, she also placed a poem in her Bible about teaching. It was clipped from what appears to be a National Retired Teachers Association magazine. The title is “After Fifty Years in the Classroom” by Miss Clare Audrey Sission, Warsaw, KY:

I’ve finished my work and laid aside
My paper, my pencil, and my pen,
As I look about I see my boys,
Who have all become worthwhile men.

The little girls that I taught to read,
To cipher, to count and to spell,
Have now become grown, and I see,
Them serve their homes and their country well.

“What’s my reward?” you’re eager to ask,
“And now what will I do today?”
I’ll find my gift in the lives of those
I have guided along the way.

And when at last the shadows shall fall,
And I am looking up to pray,
I can say, “Dear God, I did my best,
I pine not for my yesterday.”

Ruth Denson Edwards with her fourth grade class at Cullman City School.

This was a very appropriate poem for Aunt Ruth to keep and cherish. She truly took delight in the hundreds of children that she taught. She received dozens of cards from former students at Christmas and other times during the year. She taught the children and even grandchildren of some of her early students. She would often talk about her students and was very proud of so many of them.

Finally, I will quote the words that I used as part of the memorial lesson at the United Kingdom Sacred Harp Convention in September, 2012. These words have no title, date, or any other indication of their intended purpose. It is my belief that she wrote these words to use at a memorial lesson where she would be a participant. She was often asked to be a participant well into her later years and she was honored to be asked to participate. She was eloquent and much the teacher and would not speak until everyone in the room stopped talking. These are the words she wrote:

A scrap of paper, perhaps written for use at a memorial lesson, tucked into Ruth Denson Edwards’s Bible.

You know, when death comes to each old and well-loved friend, we die a little too. Something goes out of us – Something that is missing to the end of our lives. Somehow though the long days pass on into line – – – the Loom of Life goes on and on weaving a beautiful pattern even though one, two or three lovely strands are gone.

Ruth Denson Edwards with her nephew Mike Hinton, on a trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (ca. 1950—1951).

Ruth Denson Edwards was a “one of a kind” person. She loved her family, she was very proud of her heritage; she lived and loved Sacred Harp music and devoted much of her life to the Sacred Harp Publishing Company. She served as the recording secretary for many years and wrote the poignant and eloquent section titled “Music” that is still featured at the front of The Sacred Harp songbook. She was happiest sitting in the alto section in the last seat on the front row next to the treble section. She had an almost “regal” bearing and formality about her when she was at singings; she enjoyed a good laugh, but she reveled in the singing. Minutes of singings where she was present show that she led a great variety of tunes. She was the “matriarch” of our family for many years. She would tell marvelous stories of her Dad and Mother and other family members, and about growing up and attending singings with her father. She was very much a “presence” in family gatherings and she relished that role. She was our primary “link” to her “set” of children and to our grandfather. Here we are, thirty-five years after her death and her legacy of promoting Sacred Harp singing has not faded. As she wrote, “Music . . . is the sweet union which keeps men in close relation with the hearts of men while they live in the world and which will strike the sweet chords in that spirit land where mortality does not enter and where spiritual songs are sung throughout Eternal Ages.” A fitting tribute, the epitaph that Hugh McGraw composed for her tombstone in the Denson family plot at Fairview Cemetery in Double Springs, Alabama reads, “Here lies a queen of the Sacred Harp.”

Ruth Denson Edwards.

Editor’s Note: This essay on Sacred Harp singing in the Cullman County Courthouse is excerpted from Buell Cobb’s forthcoming Sacred Harp memoir. Thanks to Buell for permission to include it in this issue of the Newsletter.

It is no longer—as it may once have been—the biggest and best convention in all the land. But well into the twenty-first century, it carries a distinction nonetheless: it’s the last of its kind. An annual courthouse singing—and one dating back over a hundred years.

The old Cullman County Courthouse.

The start-up date for the Cullman County Sacred Harp Convention is difficult to pinpoint. Various sources say 1880s, 1891, 1898, 1900, 1901. . . . At some point, the printed minutes failed to record what was so evident, and so the train of time was lost.

The convention wasn’t, to start with, that remarkable. County seats up and down the state sported such a courthouse event: Huntsville, Fayette, Tuscaloosa, Russellville, Moulton, Decatur, Jasper, Double Springs, Guntersville, Ft. Payne, Gadsden, Ashville, Ashland, Dadeville, Alexander City, Andalusia, Greenville, Elba, Dothan and more (in total, as many as twenty-seven of Alabama’s sixty-seven counties). Other Southern states boasted a courthouse singing here or there for some period, but nothing like the flourishing in Alabama, the state which, for the twentieth century and beyond, has represented the heartland of Sacred Harp singing. Even an urban center like Birmingham, seat of Jefferson County, held an annual courthouse singing as late as the 1950s.

When Sacred Harpers could take over the local courthouse for a one- , two- or three-day sit-in, sing-in, pray-and-eat-in, you had to know that four-shaped music still ruled!—tenor, bass, treble and alto settling into those uptown surroundings as assumptively as a summer robin flouncing about in a courtyard bird bath. Over time, though, every other annual courthouse singing disappeared, as in each case the broader community that bolstered it lost interest and the class of local singers slimmed down or withered entirely.

In its heyday, the Cullman Convention, always the second Sunday in July and Saturday before, drew wonder—and hot and thirsty crowds. Longtime convention-goer Velton Chafin once told a story that brought specificity to the picture. At the courthouse event some years before, he said, he had come out of the singing chamber during one of the session’s breaks and nodded to an older gentleman seated on a bench in the hallway. “Having a good singing, aren’t we?” “Yeah,” the old fellow had grudged, “but it’s not like it used to be. . . .”

That line might be every old-timer’s refrain, but Velton, tarrying there for a bit, was repaid with a neat little narrative from someone who had first experienced the convention decades before.

It was in the ’30s, the old gentleman said, and he was driving from Tennessee to Birmingham down U.S. 31. Cullman was a spot along that journey. Approaching the township, he said, he came upon “a traffic jam.” Velton later surmised that this was not so much automobile traffic—though some of that, for sure—but mainly crowds of people, maybe some wagons, a few horses and mules, crossing the roadway. As the man drew closer, he saw a policeman directing the traffic. Edging forward to the intersection, he asked the officer what in the world was going on. . . .

“Oh, there’s a fasola singin’ at the courthouse.”  The terminology piqued the traveler’s curiosity. He was soon able to park and make his way over to the big building.

“You couldn’t get in the courtroom at all,” the old fellow told Velton. Even the hallways were jammed. And outside pulsed this great throng of people—country folk come to town for the biggest two days of the year. And out the open windows, soaring sounds that captured the Tennessean’s imagination.

A youthful Mary Kitchens (now Gardner) starting a lesson at the 1943 Cullman Courthouse Convention, with a class that shows Marcus Cagle, Paine and Bob Denson, Raymond Sutton, Ted Knight, Millard McWhorter, Joe Akers, and Elsie Myers McCullar, among others. George Pullen Jackson, from whose collection this photograph is taken, stands in the bass section with his right arm raised. Even during war-time, the convention attracted a packed crowd, with the basses stretched all the way around behind the leader (what do you think those bass entrances must have sounded like?), and the ever-long-suffering altos, squeezed between the bass and the trebles. Digitized by Matt Hinton.

A Cullman Tribune report of one year’s singing from that decade confirms the hubbub: it estimated the 1937 crowd at 5,000.

Five thousand. Well might the food committee from any of today’s conventions read that figure and gulp. There likely wouldn’t have been a food committee at all in that era, though—nor any responsibility for feeding the multitude. Families and individuals generally provided their own repast, although a commonly heard line might have been something like, “Come over here and eat with us—I’ve got ham, cornbread and a mess of turnip greens. . . .”

Nor, of course, would all those folk have been singers—or even intentional listeners. Some doubtless would have been there out of mere crowd-envy, maybe a bit of restless-leg twitching. Many more would have come to mix with either town or country friends and relatives they rarely got to see, to swap farming stories or speculation about prospects for rain. But singing was the core and cause of it all. And there likely wouldn’t have been anyone there—including now a late passer-through from Tennessee, or Birmingham, Montgomery or Mobile—who wouldn’t have understood that.

For several years in the ’30s, a blaring full-page Tribune ad greeted the event: “Cullman Hangs Out the Welcome Sign to the Annual Court House Singers.” The ad’s twenty-one listed merchant-sponsors “look forward,” it said, “to the great crowds that will fill our streets on these two great days.”

The lead article on the front page of the Tribune the week following the 1935 convention mentioned the “record breaking attendance” both days. “The weather was ideal except the heat,” the article stated, “and the farmers being well up with farm work gave an excellent opportunity for all who wished to visit Cullman, take part in the singing and listen to the old songs so dearly loved by thousands of old and young people.” And in possible reference to the traffic jams the convention often created: “So far as we have been able to learn not a single accident occurred to mar the pleasure of any one.”

Among the “beloved leaders” there for the event, the article stated, was “Hon. Thomas Denson of Jasper, and one of his brothers from Winston County who organized the Cullman courthouse singing years ago.” Tom Denson would die two months to the day from the convention’s closing session, and his older brother, Seaborn, would die two months before the following year’s session. The mid- to late-’30s, though, would have been an exciting time in the central Sacred Harp world with the publication of the Denson brothers’ 1936 revision of The Sacred Harp, especially in this area where Tom and Seab had taught so many hundreds to sing. Songbooks, probably for the first time in years, would have been plentiful—and highly prized. It must have been a joyful time, even in the Great Depression era, to sing or listen to singing.

Although the new songbooks were not yet off the press, the 1936 convention would surely have been abuzz about the prospects. But it was not to be. A week before the convention, a huge front-page headline in the Tribune warned, “Sacred Harp Singing Called Off.” An outbreak of polio in the state—infantile paralysis it was called at the time—had resulted in the Board of Health urging that all gatherings be suspended until the epidemic passed.

Two songs in the new revision sure to have been celebrated in those years were additions, and eventual classics, “Soar Away” (p. 455 in The Sacred Harp) and “Sacred Mount” (p. 456) by A. M. (Marcus) Cagle, who had grown up in western Cullman County and who lived in the area until 1937. A handsome figure and dynamic (and volatile) personality, Cagle may have been the territory’s preeminent singer, leader, and keyer of music—though he would be better known today for having contributed, over a period of five decades, eleven tunes to the songbook’s several editions, more than the total number of pieces by all but a handful of composers.

For three years in the 1960s I attended the Cullman convention when Marcus Cagle was present, and each time got to see him lead a lesson of two songs, as was the custom then—though not in either case one of his own compositions. In 1968, five months before his death at eighty-four, he and I sat together on the long front bench of the tenor. That scene, as best I can summon it now, represents to me of one of Sacred Harp’s finest features: a bringing together of people from different generations, different backgrounds, different ways of life. There we were, sitting side by side, blending voices and chatting, the young man and the much older man—he in fact three and a half times my age—a newbie with one of the great Sacred Harp composers of the songbook’s two centuries. Looking back now from a vantage point well within the twenty-first century, I realize I was singing that day with someone who had composed the durable tunes “Present Joys” (p. 318 in The Sacred Harp), “New Hope” (p. 316), and “Jordan” (p. 439) in 1908!  He in his turn had sung with men and women who had sung with B. F. White. Thus do the generations overlap in this tradition, which so casually, gracefully fosters such a sharing.

Lon Odem, before his “pear-shaped” period, 1944.

Other names in Sacred Harp lore passed through the Cullman courthouse chamber in those years. Among the most popular of the 1936 book’s new “class songs” was “Odem” (p. 340), whose lead-off phrase in the chorus, “Give me the roses while I live,” would become one of the favorite sentiments in the book. That song by Tom Denson was named for a near-legendary figure from the era: Lonnie P. Odem, the financial sponsor of the book and the estate owner of Odem’s Chapel, the convention-worthy structure built near his home in St. Joseph, Tennessee, for the sole purpose of Sacred Harp singing. Odem was cited in the book’s first pages, under his photograph (though his name was spelled there as Odom), as “a good singer, the Sacred Harp’s best friend and the man who made this book possible. His love for T. J. Denson has known no bounds.” By the 1960s, the Odem-and-Denson-family relationship had strained, with Odem attempting and then losing a legal struggle with the then-stewards of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company over ownership of the songbook rights.

Sitting in the courthouse in 1967, I heard the arranging committee summon “Lon Odem.” Out of the class then emerged this short, slightly pear-shaped (by then) figure, who called for and led “World Unknown” (p. 428) and “Sweet Morning,” (p. 421) both without the aid of a book. If I could relive that day, I would certainly swap what was probably idle chatter with others for a meeting and conversation with this (for me) mysterious figure, who could have told so much about one of the most bustling periods in Sacred Harp history.

I always enjoyed the sessions I attended, the earliest ones especially. But I confess to feeling a greater draw, an altogether unfair attraction in fact, to thoughts of the singings before my time: those colorful early convention years and the tapestry of life surrounding a ritual so central to the community’s interest. It sets my imagination a-runnin’. I could fantasize, for example, about having the lemonade or Co-Cola concession the day of, or the hat and bonnet business beginning a few weeks out from, the big event. But even more—for just one time!—to enter the forbidding past and mill about in that hustling host, hear the bursts of music from out the high windows, push my way inside the hallways and into the courtroom itself, with all those old men crowding the bass, standing against the walls—most of them surely thankful on a hot July day for the big ceiling fans that labored above them, further sweetening the harmonies they made. Ah yes, to be there just once. . . .