Lost Sounds by Tim Brooks

Author:Tim Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2012-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

The facing page in the supplement contained the announcement for “Five Shakespeare Songs,” sung by Raymond Dixon, Reinald Werrenrath, and Harry Macdonough (Victor 17634 and 17662). Clearly the Tuskegee Singers were in a respectable neighborhood.

The following month saw the release of “Go Down Moses” and “I Want to Be Like Jesus,” of which the supplement observed, “‘Go Down Moses’ is a very old song, much used in the cotton fields as a working song. Large numbers of pickers work together to its slow, swaying rhythm, and cheer themselves with singing in these weird harmonies. ‘I Want to Be Like Jesus’ is evidently of later development, but a gentleman who heard these singers sing it at a Chautauqua this summer said, ‘I am not easily moved, but the tears ran down my face, stirred by the deep religious feeling they put into the song.’”6

None of the individual singers was named, although a large group picture was published with the announcements. The eight men are seated together, dressed neatly in matching dark jackets and white pants. Most appear to be relatively youthful, in their twenties or even late teens, and could easily have been students at Tuskegee. (The young man who is second from the right looks strikingly like a youthful Booker T. Washington, but this is obviously a coincidence.) Two somewhat more mature-looking men are at the center. As noted earlier, Tuskegee faculty member and tenor Alvin J. Neely may well have been the leader. Others believed to have been in the group at this time were tenors William J. Williams, Charles Edgar Clayton, and Leroy Brown, baritone William P. Smith, and basses Alfred Taylor and William Wiley.7 Blues and Gospel Records speculates that the eighth member may have been William Levi Dawson (1899–1990), later a noted composer. However, he entered Tuskegee at the age of fourteen in 1914, and no one in the photograph looks quite that young. Dawson later became director of the Tuskegee Choir and chairman of the Music School. Other evidence suggests that he joined the Singers after these initial recordings.8

More than a year later, on September 20, 1915, the Singers returned to the Victor studios to cut ten sides, including two remakes of unissued songs from 1914. The session was not very productive, as only one of the ten was issued. “Roll Jordan Roll,” one of the Fisks’ signature numbers, was done in moderate tempo, again with much emphasis on the group (and tenors) harmonizing. Interestingly, “Go Down Moses” was remade at this time, even though the take from the 1914 session had already been issued.

The Singers returned one more time, on February 14, 1916, mostly to remake unsuccessful sides from the previous two sessions. This time things went better, and out of ten sides attempted, nine were issued. Once again the emphasis was on group harmony, especially on such key lines as “My lord he calls me, he calls my by the thunder!” (in “Steal Away”) and “Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down” (in “Nobody Knows”).

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