Roots of shout band music stretch back to Africa, with important input from the gospel quartet singing of the mid-twentieth century, all passed down person-to-person’ without written notes. The massed trombones, anchored by drums, a sousaphone and often a baritone horn, create a high-energy driving sound that is very different from New Orleans jazz, perhaps its closest cousin. It’s a tradition found only in the United House of Prayer for All People, an African-American urban Pentecostal denomination concentrated in the southeastern U.S. Hear it once, and your soul will never forget shout band music. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts …. … my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
The Monday night shout band service at the United House of Prayer is underway. With a mighty chord, the massed trombones swing into action. As the last syllables ring out, the band leader rears back an opening note, his trombone slide reaching for the ceiling. “Let us give thanks for this gathering! Let this worship keep our young people away from drugs, away from the street!”Īs he speaks, the drummer comes in under his words, setting up an insistent rhythm. Two keyboard players echo the ends of his phrases as he drives home his message. As they exhort the crowd, half a dozen young players, most in their teens and early twenties, arrange themselves at the front of the room in a rough semicircle around the drummer.Īt the mike now, a teenaged junior elder, dressed in a sharp, gray, single-breasted suit, takes charge. Several church elders in their fifties and sixties, dressed in dark suits, take turns at the microphone. Opening devotions are already going on as musicians drift in, setting up drums and unpacking trombones. It’s eight o’clock on a Monday night, at the Mother House of the United House of Prayer for All People in Charlotte, North Carolina. Praise Him with trumpet sound … praise, him with timbrel and dance praise him with sounding cymbals …. I’m Robert Darden … “Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments” is produced by KWBU, the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University Libraries and is funded by generous support from the Prichard Foundation.God’s Trombones: The Shout Band Tradition in the United House of Prayer for All People MUSIC: “He Gave Us You,” Gospel Cavaliers, 45 But “He Gave Us You” is a tantalizing little gem, a sweet-spirited hint at another direction that gospel music MIGHT have gone – but didn’t – in 1960. The Cavaliers released this single, “He Gave Us You,” in 1960 and followed a year later with the LP, Love With Thee. Soloist Louis Johnson was a crooner and their songs were often more spare – actually more modern sounding – than just about anything else out there. Also on Sharp were the little known Gospel Cavaliers, who didn’t sound like anyone else. Sharp released everything from the Gospel Caravans to legendary blues artists Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. So, from 1960 to about 1963, Savoy created its subsidiary, Sharp Records, also based in Newark, to experiment and handle the over-flow of riches.
The early 1960s, the mighty Savoy Records label dominated gospel music – it had the biggest artists, with the best budgets and the most extensive promotion.
Welcome to Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments.
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