Tommy Dorsey

• Born: July 01, 1899, Villa Rica, GA
• Died: January 23, 1993
• Active: '20s, '30s
• Genres: Blues
• Instrument: Songwriter
• Representative Albums: "The Essential," "Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 (1928-1930)," "Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2 (1930-1934)"

Biography

Biographers of Georgia Tom Dorsey like to make comments such as "his life was a living testimony of the power of God." But there was also the trashy side to the man, expressed best in song titles such as "Terrible Operation Blues" and "Pig Meat Blues." When everything is balanced out, however, it has to be admitted that this is a case where an African-American performer chose the church over the honky tonk. In gospel music, his work as a composer and arranger is acknowledged to be so significant that he is often referred to as the father of gospel music. In country blues, he is just one of the gang, although the he kept great company with the likes of Ma Rainey and Tampa Red.

Dorsey grew up in Atlanta, raised by a Baptist minister and encouraged mightily in musical aptitude that revealed itself strongly when Dorsey was still an infant. He reportedly drank in music as if he was hooked up to a milking machine, checking out circus music, blues, jazz, vaudeville, hymns, and even hillbilly songs. All these styles influenced the music he created during his career, although when it comes to jazz, the matter is sometimes exaggerated by blunderers who assume a relation to famed big band brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. Anyway, blues and ragtime were the main interests of the Atlanta Dorsey when, as a teenager, he began gigging behind the simple stage name of Georgia Tom.

In 1918 he moved to Chicago, picking up action with area jazzmen, starting up his own Wildcats Jazz Band, and going on tour with the classic female blues empress Ma Rainey. Yet hustling song sheets became his main way of earning money simply because these live gigs were so poorly compensated. By 1932, Dorsey became more and more associated with the music of the church, starting up one of the first gospel choirs, and initiating the first publishing firm exclusively devoted to the compositions of black gospel artists. Dorsey could place himself high on the list of such performers, composing some of the most familiar gospel songs such as the valuable "Precious Lord," the serene "Peace in the Valley," the sincere "I Don't Know Why," and the probing "Search Me Lord." His involvement in the Chicago gospel scene included pushing forward the important careers of singers Mahalia Jackson and Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith. Dorsey lived to the ripe age of 94. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide

Essential Buy this CD

Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2 (1930-1934) Buy this CD

Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2 (1930-1934) Buy this CD

Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 (1928-1930) Buy this CD

• Born: Nov 19, 1905
• Died: Nov 26, 1956
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '40s-'50s, '80s
• Major Genres: Music, Comedy
• Career Highlights: Broadway Rhythm, Ship Ahoy
• First Major Screen Credit: Ship Ahoy (1942)

Biography

A trombonist and orchestra leader who appeared in several films, Tommy Dorsey is the brother of musician Jimmy Dorsey. ~ All Movie Guide

Stage Bands on Film Buy this Movie	Swing: The Best of the Big Bands, Vol. 1 Buy this Movie	Swing: The Best of the Big Bands, Vol. 2 Buy this Movie	A Song Is Born Buy this Movie
The Fabulous Dorseys Buy this Movie	Du Barry Was a Lady Buy this Movie	Broadway Rhythm Buy this Movie	Ship Ahoy Buy this Movie

Thomas Andrew Dorsey (1900-1993), often called the Father of Gospel Music, migrated from Atlanta to Chicago as a young man, thus exemplifying the experience of many southern blacks of his day. This journey is also critical to an understanding of what Michael W. Harris called "the rise of gospel blues" in his book of that title, which chronicles the role Dorsey's music played in urban churches.

There was a great deal of early resistance to Dorsey's work, partly because it was rooted in the rural southern African American culture from which the old-line urban churches sought to distance themselves in favor of assimilation. These churches discouraged expressive congregational participation and attempted to incorporate white church traditions in both service and music. In addition, the blues factor of the gospel blues equation had associations with secular venues and activities often discouraged by the church. It is perhaps Dorsey's greatest achievement that he was able to overcome this opposition and thus preserve important aspects of black musical expression as it had existed in both the spiritual and secular realms.

Dorsey, one of five children, was born in Villa Rica, Georgia on July 1, 1900, but soon moved with his family to Atlanta. His father was a Baptist minister with a flamboyant pulpit style. His mother played a portable organ and piano wherever the elder Dorsey preached. Young Dorsey was influenced musically by his mother's brother, an itinerant blues musician. He also was influenced by her brother-in-law, a teacher who favored shaped note singing - also known as "fasola" (fa-so-la), a rambunctious, 19th-century congregational style propagated by songbooks and popular in the rural South in which four distinct shapes (the diamond, for one) correspond to specific notes on the musical scale. In The Rise of Gospel Blues Michael Harris noted, "Other than slave spirituals, the white Protestant hymns and shaped note music, Dorsey describes a type of 'moaning' as the only other style of religious song he recalls." He left school early and was soon hanging around theaters and dance halls. His association with musicians there encouraged him to practice at home on his mother's organ, and by age 12, he claimed that he could play the piano very well. Before long he was earning money playing at private parties and bordellos. In order to improve his skills and identify himself as a professional, he briefly took piano lessons from a teacher associated with Morehouse College, as well as a harmony course at the college itself.

Moved to Chicago

Dorsey's desire to become a professional musician motivated him to move to Philadelphia in 1916. However, his plans soon changed and he settled in Chicago, then abuzz with both migrant workers and migrant musicians. According to Harris, Dorsey's piano style was already somewhat out of vogue by then. Although he was still able to find work, he remained on the periphery of the music community. Harris observed the Dorsey was held back by his lack of technique and repertoire, which prevented him from joining the union. A further obstacle was the sheer size and wealth of the musical community. In order to increase his chances for employment, he enrolled in the Chicago School of Composition and Arranging. Thus, for the rest of his life, Dorsey able to find work as a composer and arranger. By 1920, he was prospering. However, the demanding schedule of playing at night, working at other jobs during the day, and studying in between led him to the first of two nervous breakdowns. He was so ill that his mother had to go to Chicago to bring him back to Atlanta.

Dorsey returned to Chicago in 1921. His uncle encouraged him to attend the National Baptist Convention, where he was impressed by the singing of W. M. Nix. As Dorsey related in The Rise of Gospel Blues: "My inner-being was thrilled. My soul was a deluge of divine rapture; my emotions were aroused; my heart was inspired to become a great singer and worker in the Kingdom of the Lord - and impress people just as this great singer did that Sunday morning." Dorsey soon began composing sacred songs and took a job as director of music at New Hope Baptist Church on Chicago's South Side, where he described the congregation's singing of spirituals "like down home," noting that the congregants also clapped to his music.

Dorsey's conversion was fleeting. He was soon playing with the Whispering Syncopators, making a salary commensurate with professional theater musicians. As the popularity of the blues increased in New York and Chicago, especially among non-black audiences, Dorsey was able to adapt his style to the tastes of the day. Singers like Bessie Smith, who embodied the southern tradition, were also popular, especially among black Americans.

Debut at Grand Theater

In 1924, Dorsey made his debut as "Georgia Tom" with Ma Rainey at the Grand Theater. He continued to tour with her, even after he wed in 1925, until he suffered the second of his breakdowns in 1926. The pressures of touring overwhelmed him and Dorsey considered suicide. His sister-in-law convinced him to attend church. While at a service, he had a vision, after which he pledged to work for the Lord. It was not long before he penned his first gospel blues, "If You See My Savior, Tell Him That You Saw Me," which was inspired by the death of a friend.

But the Lord's work would not be easy for him. Dorsey was convinced that the same experiences that had engendered secular blues should also inform church music. As he was quoted as saying in The Rise of Gospel Blues: "If a woman has lost a man, a man has lost a woman, his feeling reacts to the blues; he feels like expressing it. The same thing acts for a gospel song. Now you're not singing blues; you're singing gospel, good news song, singing about the Creator; but it's the same feeling, a grasping of the heart." In a purely musical sense, the blues was merely a collection of improvisational techniques to Dorsey. Nevertheless, imparting a bluesy feel to a traditional arrangement was shocking to many, though Dorsey was able to vary the effect depending on his audience and their reaction. He was soon making printed copies of his gospel blues. However, since he relied on the performer to embellish the music, they did not sell well. Before long he was back to writing and performing secular blues. In 1928, "It's Tight Like That" became a hit, selling seven million copies.

Although Dorsey claimed to have been thrown out of some of the best churches, Harris observed that the time was right for Dorsey's eventual success. There were increasing numbers of store-front churches that appealed to southern migrants, and there was a booming trade in recorded sermons of the type Dorsey's father might have delivered. Harris even linked the blues soloist to the preacher, as each embodies the yearning of a people and manifests that yearning principally through improvisation. There were also a growing number of influential choirs in Chicago, challenging the musical norms of the established churches, though Dorsey was usually more associated with the rise of the solo tradition. In the late 1920s, he would begin work with one of the great gospel soloists of all time, Mahalia Jackson. According to Dorsey, she asked him to coach her, and for two months they worked together on technique and repertoire. They would tour together in the 1940s.

Personal Tragedy

In 1931, Dorsey again experienced great personal tragedy. The death in childbirth of both his wife and newborn son devastated him. As he related in the documentary Say Amen Somebody, "People tried to tell me things that were soothing to me … none of which have ever been soothing from that day to this." Out of that tragedy he wrote "Precious Lord," the song for which he is best known. This work has been translated into 50 languages and recorded with success by gospel and secular singers alike, including Elvis Presley. A second song, "Peace in the Valley," was a hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford and others. In 1932 Dorsey was appointed musical director of Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago, a post he held until his retirement in 1983. 1932 was also the year he formed the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses with blues singer Sallie Martin. Their collaboration would continue over the years as his fame spread, Martin often accompanying him on his tours around the country. She also helped him with his publishing business, which quickly became so successful that people nationwide called any piece of gospel sheet music a "Dorsey."

Dorsey remarried in 1941. His career continued to flourish. He would eventually compose over 3,000 songs. Well known within the African American community, Dorsey nonetheless remained relatively obscure outside of it - though people were singing his songs all over the world - until he became the subject of a BBC documentary in 1976. His appearance with another great gospel singer, Willie Mae Ford Smith, in the documentary Say Amen Somebody also afforded him considerable exposure. In that film, after being helped into a room, he addresses a group of people, moving comfortably in and out of song all the while. He was ordained a minister in his sixties, formalizing the union of song and worship. The Pilgrim Baptist Church created the T. A. Dorsey Choir to honor him in 1983. Dorsey died of Alzheimer's disease on January 23, 1993 in Chicago, Illinois. However, he lives on each Sunday as voices rise in praise, singing the gospel across the land.

Books

Harris, Michael W., The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church, Oxford University Press, 1992.

We'll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers, edited by Bernice Johnson Reagon, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

Periodicals

Ann Arbor News, February 24, 1993.

Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1993.

Down Beat, April 1993.

Entertainment Weekly, February 5, 1993.

Jet, February 8, 1993.

Newsweek, February 8, 1993.

New York Times, January 25, 1993.

Time, February 8, 1993.

Village Voice, October 5, 1982.

Washington Post, January 25, 1993; January 31, 1993.

composer; music arranger; pianist

Personal Information

Born Thomas Andrew Dorsey, July 1, 1899, in Villa Rica, Georgia; died in Chicago on January 23, 1993; son of Thomas Madison Dorsey (preacher and farmer) and Etta Plant Spencer; married Nettie Harper, 1925 (deceased, 1932); children: Thomas Andrew Dorsey, Jr. (deceased, 1932).
Education: studied music at Chicago School of Composition and Arranging.

Career

Performed as blues-style pianist in Atlanta, early 1910s; worked for a short time in steel mills of Gary, IN, c.1916; performed in local house party district, Chicago, 1919; arranged music for syncopated society bands and composed vaudeville blues numbers; published first gospel song, 1921; worked as a studio pianist and arranger for the Chicago Music Publishing Company, mid-1920s; assembled Gertrude "Ma" Rainey's back-up group "Wild Cats of Jazz" and toured as the band's pianist, 1924; published gospel numbers and began recording blues under the name "Georgia Tom" with Hudson "Tampa Red" Whittaker, 1928; performed at the National Baptist Convention, 1930; performed with singer/evangelist Theodore Frye at Ebenezer Church, Chicago, c.1930-32; became choral director of Pilgrim Baptist Church, Chicago, 1932- c.1972; teamed up with singer Sallie Martin and toured gospel music circuit, 1932; toured with Mahalia Jackson, 1939-1944; served as assistant pastor at Pilgrim Baptist and toured as lecturer, c.1940-1960s; made occasional appearances at gospel conventions, late 1970s; appeared in documentary Say Amen, Somebody, 1983.

Life's Work

Deemed the "father of gospel music," Thomas Dorsey emerged, during the early 1930s, as the creator of an African American religious music style known as the gospel blues--an idiom responsible for ushering in the "Golden Age of Gospel Music." In his long career Dorsey published nearly 400 compositions, including a large body of religious and secular music. Like many other African musicians of the 1920s, he moved freely between the performance of blues and gospel. After working as a blues pianist he worked as a composer of vaudeville blues and eventually became a popular blues recording artist. Despite criticism regarding his involvement in the 1920s hokum fad, Dorsey proved an able composer and pianist who exhibited a stylistic quality that walked the line between city and country blues traditions. With his final redemption and abandonment of blues in 1932, he took the stylistic foundations and inflections of blues music, infused them into gospel blues, and over the following decades found fame as an African American religious composer and chorus director at Chicago's Pilgrim Baptist Church.

Thomas Andrew Dorsey was born the son of Reverend Thomas M. Dorsey and Etta Plant Spencer on July 1, 1899, in Villa Rica, Georgia, a small town 30 miles west of Atlanta. Without funds to build a home on their farmland in Villa Rica, Reverend Dorsey and his wife--who originally purchased the land--moved their family to Atlanta. Not long afterward, the Dorseys took up residence in Forsyth, Georgia, where for two years, despite Reverend Dorsey's position as a church pastor, the family lived in a state of bare subsistence. Back in Villa Rica in 1903, Reverend Thomas resorted to farming as the main source of family income and served in the area as a guest preacher. Between working in the fields and traveling with his father to various churches, Thomas spent three months of the year attending his father's auxiliary elementary school.

Dorsey's mother sang in the church choir and lead group vocals during hymns and spirituals. As Michael W. Harris noted in, The Rise of the Gospel Blues, "Etta seems to have created an ambience in their home, the musical aspect of which was totally her doing." Apart from listening to his mother play the organ, Dorsey heard the blues guitar playing of Etta's brother, Phil Plant. Dorsey's early exposure to religious music and blues would later surface in a dichotomous career, which in its early years straddled the fence between the secular world of nightclubs and brothels and the sounds of the church.

In 1908 the Dorsey family returned to Atlanta. Demoted several grades in school, Dorsey lost interest in his studies and directed his attention to learning the styles of local pianists who performed in the thriving theater scene along Atlanta's Decatur Street. By age 12 he left school to become a professional pianist. At Decatur Street's Eighty-One Theater--home to such visiting performers as Gertrude "Ma" Rainey and Bessie Smith--he sold soft drinks and popcorn during intermission and studied the talents of the establishment's main pianist, Ed Butler. He also learned from pianists James Hennenway (or Hemingway) and Lark Lee. Proficient at the keyboard at an early age, Dorsey began playing house parties throughout Atlanta's black districts, including bordellos where he earned the nickname "Barrelhouse Tom." Working in theaters and playing a variety of styles, Dorsey later explained in The Rise of the Gospel Blues that at this "time I didn't understand blues or nothing . . . . All of the music sounded just about alike to me . . . . I had become very popular with the younger set, or now you would say teenagers, and I lucked up on a few good-looking clothes."

Despite his local reputation as a house party pianist, Dorsey was determined to learn to read music--a skill he believed would allow him to join more socially-respected musicians. He took private lessons from Mrs. Graves, a woman affiliated with Atlanta Baptist College--now Morehouse College. Still averse to formal instruction, however, he soon returned to the house party scene and continued to teach himself the rudiments of written music through instruction books.

After settling in Chicago in 1919, Dorsey played the local house party circuit and by 1922 joined "The Whispering Syncopators" led by Will Walker. Around this time, while studying at the Chicago School of Composition and Arranging, Dorsey engaged in the lucrative trade of scoring and arranging music for syncopated society bands. Influenced by the commercial blues compositions of W. C. Handy, Dorsey found success in the song writing field in 1923 with his number "I Want a Daddy I Call My Own." The number was recorded by singer Monette Moore, who subsequently recorded Dorsey's "Muddy Water Blues." In the same year, New Orleans trumpeter King Oliver recorded Dorsey's "Riverside Blues." As Michael Harris noted, in The Rise of Gospel Blues, "With one piece published by a large popular music company, and three recorded by two of the most famous artists of the time, Dorsey had become at last one of the major blues composers in Chicago. In little more than a year, Dorsey had risen from relative obscurity to a position of prominence."

In the mid-1920s, as recorded blues replaced the popularity of the published vaudeville blues industry, Dorsey turned his attention to arranging music. Hired by the Chicago Music Publishing Company, owned by Mayo Williams, Dorsey worked as composer, arranger, and studio pianist. In 1924, he was recruited as the accompanying pianist with "Ma" Rainey. The job also included the duty of assembling and leading the "Wild Cats Jazz Band," Rainey's back-up musicians. Dorsey later recounted Rainey's stage presence, as quoted in Looking Up At Down: "[S]he would open the door and step out into the spotlight with her glittering gown that weighed twenty pounds and wearing a necklace of five, ten and twenty gold pieces." For the next two years, Dorsey traveled with the band on the Theater Owner's Booking Association circuit, until severe psychological depression temporarily forced him to leave music.

After attending church he experienced a spiritual healing that renewed his conviction in his worldly pursuits. Soon after, the sudden death of a neighbor inspired him to write one his most famous religious compositions, "If You See My Savior, Tell Him That You Saw Me." Just as Dorsey looked to W. C. Handy as a model for his early vaudeville blues, he first modeled his religious compositions after the music of Charles Albert Tindley. As C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya wrote, in The Black Church in the African American Experience, "[Dorsey's] blues-like gospel songs reflect the same eschatology [concern with death] as the Tindley hymns in their quest for the glorious hereafter."

In need of a more reliable source of steady income, Dorsey ventured back into the composition and performance of blues. Under the name "Georgia Tom," he made recordings for the Vocalion Record Company along with guitarist and vocalist Hudson "Tampa Red" Whittaker, a talented and influential Georgia-born slide guitarist. The combination of Dorsey and Whittaker contributed to a new trend of guitar-piano blues that reflected an urban style. In November, Georgia Tom and Tampa Red recorded their 1928 double-entendre number, "Tight Like That." The song sold nearly one-million copies, inspired two other recorded versions by Dorsey and Whittaker, and generated numerous derivatives by other artists.

During his blues career Dorsey made about 40 recordings as a vocalist. He recorded numerous albums with other musicians such as Scrapper Blackwell and Big Bill Broonzy. In 1929 Dorsey and Whittaker recorded for the Paramount label as the Hokum Boys, initiating a new blues genre that drew upon minstrelsy antecedents, ragtime, and vaudeville. Dorsey also recognized his debt to New Orleans-born banjoist and guitarist "Papa" Charlie Jackson. Though criticized by several blues writers and historians, the hokum tradition exemplified by Dorsey and Whittaker did not produce music totally devoid of blues content or inventive wit. The duo also produced tracks of serious, down-home style blues exhibiting a forceful sound. Stephen Calt wrote, in the liner notes to Georgia Tom Dorsey, that Dorsey "probably ranked as the most self-conscious, serious and accomplished blues lyricist of his time. Far from debasing the medium, he raised the blues to new levels of inventiveness, and brought a degree of wit and sophistication that had never previously been known to blues lyrics."

While still performing as a blues artist, Dorsey experienced a career breakthrough in the gospel realm in 1930 when he performed at the National Baptist Convention. Not long afterward, he performed with a Mississippi-born singing evangelist, Theodore Frye, at Chicago's Ebenezer Church. At Ebenezer, Dorsey often stood while playing the keyboard, accompanying Frye as he sang and "strutted" in front of the congregation. "I always had rhythm in my bones," recalled Dorsey in Reflections on Afro-American Music. "I like the solid beat. I like the long, moaning, groaning tone. I like the rock. You know how they rock and shout in church . . . . This rhythm I brought into the gospel songs."

In 1932 Dorsey accepted an invitation to become choir director of Chicago's Pilgrim Baptist Church--a post he held for nearly 40 years. That same year, he began his musical association with singer Sallie Martin. "Dorsey's genius and Sallie's fervor proved an irresistible combination," observed Tony Heilbut, in The Gospel Sound. "Within a year's time, gospel choruses especially trained to sing Dorsey's tunes began sprouting all over Chicago's South Side." In the documentary, Say Amen, Somebody, Sallie Martin expressed her contribution to Dorsey's success as a gospel composer: "Wherever I'd go I carried the [sheet] music and sing the songs [and] sell them after the service was over. And that's the way Mr. Dorsey built his business."

Dorsey's new-found devotion to the church, during the years of economic depression, inspired numerous gospel blues compositions. As Dorsey explained in The Gospel Sound, his songs "lifted people out of the muck and mire of poverty and loneliness, of being broke, and gave them some kind of hope anyway." That same year, Dorsey and Sallie Martin founded the National Convention of Gospel Choir and Choruses. After performing at a concert in August of 1932, Dorsey learned that his wife, Nettie, had died while giving birth to their first child, Thomas Andrew, Jr. The next morning his new-born son also died. Seeking further solace in God, he vented his despair by composing his most famous gospel song, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord."

April of 1932 marked Dorsey's last known recorded performance of blues music. He then pursued a full-time career evangelizing through gospel music. By 1937 Dorsey's University Gospel Singers made their debut on Chicago's WLFL radio. At this time, Dorsey toured America, billing his performances as "An Evening with Dorsey." In 1940, under the auspices of the Gospel Choral Union of Chicago, he served as Dean of Evangelistic Musical Research and Ministry of Church Music. Between 1939 and 1944 he toured with Mahalia Jackson, who succeeded Sallie Martin as his main chorister.

In the 1960s Dorsey served as assistant pastor at Pilgrim Baptist and toured as a lecturer for various social and educational functions. In the early 1970s Tony Heilbut, who interviewed Dorsey for his study The Gospel Sound, noted that "At age seventy-five, Dorsey no longer writes or travels, but he continues to direct the convention." In dedication to his long career as a gospel composer, Dorsey's music was featured on the 1973 album Precious Lord, an effort that featured such guest singers as Sallie Martin--accompanied by Dorsey on piano--Marion Williams, the Dixie Hummingbirds, and R. H. Harris. In 1982 Dorsey appeared in the gospel music documentary Say Amen, Somebody. The film revealed his unabashed views concerning his earlier blues career. Shown in the film recovering from two broken hips and forced to use a walker, Dorsey displayed a tireless passion for his music and devotion to religion by singing along with a 1930 recording of "How Can You Have the Blues?" "God is still in business," he stated in the documentary, "and if you're God's child or anything to God he'll take care of you." After 60 years in the service of spreading the "good news of the gospel" through music, Dorsey died from Alzheimer's disease in Chicago on January 23, 1993.

Over the last six decades, Dorsey's compositions have found their way into the repertoires of the greatest gospel singers from Mahalia Jackson to the Five Blind Boys of Alabama to Sister Rosetta Tharpe. White artists such as Elvis Presley and Red Foley both scored gold records with Dorsey's "(There'll Be) Peace in the Valley." In Reflections on Afro-American Music, Dorsey conveyed the universal purpose of his music: "I don't write songs for Black men, or White men, or Red men, or Yellow men, or Brown men. I write songs for people, and I want all men to sing these gospel songs."

Awards

Honorary Doctor of Gospel Music degree from the Simmons Institute of South Carolina, 1946; American Music Conference National Music Award, 1976.

Works

Selective Discography

• Complete Works Vol. I 1928-1930, Document.
• Georgia Tom Dorsey: Come on Mama Do That Dance, Yazoo, 1992.
• Kansas City Kitty/Georgia Tom, Document.
• Precious Lord: Recordings of the Great Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey, Columbia, 1973.
• With Others Tampa Red: The Guitar Wizard, Columbia, 1994.
• Tampa Red, It's Tight Like That 1928-1942, Story of the Blues.
• Do That Guitar Rag: 1928-1935, Yazoo.
• Victoria Spivey, Recorded Legacy of the Blues, Spivey Records.

Writings

• Dorsey, Thomas, Inspirational Thoughts, self-published, 1934.
• Dorsey, Thomas, Songs With a Message: My Ups and Downs, self- published, 1938.
• Dorsey, Thomas, Dorsey's Book of Poems, 1941.

Further Reading

Sources

• Barlow, William, Looking Up at Down: The Emergence of Blues Culture, Temple University Press, 1989, p. 157.
• Harris, Michael W., The Rise of the Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Dorsey in the Urban Church, Oxford University Press, 1992.
• Heilbut, Anthony, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, revised and updated, Limelight editions, 1992, p. 8.
• Lincoln, Eric C. and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience, Duke University Press, 1990, p. 361.
• Rene' de Lerma, Dominique, Reflections on Afro-American Music, Kent State Press, 1973, pp. 189-195.

Other

• Additional information for this profile obtained from: Stephen Calt's liner notes to Georgia Dorsey: Come on Do That Dance, Yazoo, 1992; and the documentary film, Say Amen Somebody.

— John Cohassey

For more information on Thomas Andrew Dorsey, visit Britannica.com.

Dorsey, Thomas Andrew (dôr'sē) , 1899–1993, American gospel musician, b. Villa Rica, Ga. He began his career as a blues pianist and songwriter. Later he became a church choir director in Chicago and was a co-founder of the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses. Widely known as the “father of the gospel song,” he played an important role in the development of African-American gospel music. In his over 1,000 songs Dorsey combined elements of the blues with traditional African-American religious music. His works include the early “If You See My Savior” and his best-known song, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.”

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