Mahalia Jackson

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Throughout her celebrated career, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) used her rich, forceful voice and inspiring interpretations of spirituals to move audiences around the world to tears of joy. In the early days, as a soloist and member of church choirs, she recognized the power of song as a means of gloriously reaffirming the faith of her flock. And later, as a world figure, her natural gift brought people of different religious and political convictions together to revel in the beauty of the gospels and to appreciate the warm spirit that underscored the way she lived her life.

The woman who would become known as the "Gospel Queen" was born on October 26, 1911 into a poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Jacksons' Water Street home, a shack between the railroad tracks and the levee of the Mississippi River, was served by a pump that delivered water so dirty that cornmeal had to be used as a filtering agent. Jackson's father, like many blacks in the segregated south, held several jobs; he was a long-shoreman, a barber, and a preacher at a small church. Her mother, a devout Baptist who died when Mahalia was five, took care of the six Jackson children and the house, using washed-up driftwood and planks from old barges to fuel the stove.

Sounds of New Orleans

As a child, Mahalia was taken in by the sounds of New Orleans. She listened to the rhythms of the woodpeckers, the rumblings of the trains, the whistles of the steamboats, the songs of sailors and street peddlers. When the annual festival of Mardi Gras arrived, the city erupted in music. In her bedroom at night, young Mahalia would quietly sing the songs of blues legend Bessie Smith.

But Jackson's close relatives disapproved of the blues, a music indigenous to southern black culture, saying it was decadent and claiming that the only acceptable songs for pious Christians were the gospels of the church. In gospel songs, they told her, music was the cherished vehicle of religious faith. As the writer Jesse Jackson (not related to the civil rights leader) said in his biography of Mahalia, Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord!, "It was like choosing between the devil and God. You couldn't have it both ways." Mahalia made up her mind. When Little Haley (the nickname by which she was known as a child) tried out for the Baptist choir, she silenced the crowd by singing "I'm so glad, I'm so glad, I'm so glad I've been in the grave an' rose again.… "She became known as "the little girl with the big voice."

At 16, with only an eighth grade education but a strong ambition to become a nurse, Jackson went to Chicago to live with her Aunt Hannah. In the northern city, to which thousands of southern blacks had migrated after the Civil War to escape segregation, she earned a living by washing white people's clothes for a dollar a day. After searching for the right church to join, a place whose music spoke to her, she ended up at the Greater Salem Baptist Church, to which her aunt belonged. At her audition for the choir, Jackson's thunderous voice rose above all the others. She was invited to be a soloist and started singing with a quintet that performed at funerals and church services throughout the city. In 1934, she received $25 for her first recording, "God's Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares."

Though she sang traditional hymns and spirituals almost exclusively, Jackson continued to be fascinated by the blues. During the Great Depression, she knew she could earn more money singing the songs that her relatives considered profane and blasphemous. But when her beloved grandfather was struck down by a stroke and fell into a coma, Jackson vowed that if he recovered she would never even enter a theater again, much less sing songs of which he would disapprove. He did recover, and Mahalia never broke that vow. She wrote in her autobiography, Movin' On Up: "I feel God heard me and wanted me to devote my life to his songs and that is why he suffered my prayers to be answered-so that nothing would distract me from being a gospel singer."

Later in her career, Jackson continued to turn down lucrative requests to sing in nightclubs-she was offered as much as $25,000 a performance in Las Vegas-even when the club owners promised not to serve whisky while she performed. She never dismissed the blues as anti-religious, like her relatives had done: it was simply a matter of the vow she had made, as well as a matter of inspiration. "There's no sense in my singing the blues, because I just don't feel it," she was quoted as saying in Harper's magazine in 1956. "In the old, heart-felt songs, whether it's the blues or gospel music, there's the distressed cry of a human being. But in the blues, it's all despair; when you're done singing, you're still lonely and sorrowful. In the gospel songs, there's mourning and sorrow, too, but there's always hope and consolation to lift you above it."

Singing Career Blossomed

In 1939, Jackson started touring with renowned composer Thomas A. Dorsey. Together they visited churches and "gospel tents" around the country, and Jackson's reputation as a singer and interpreter of spirituals blossomed. She returned to Chicago after five years on the road and opened a beauty salon and a flower shop, both of which drew customers from the gospel and church communities. She continued to make records that brought her fairly little monetary reward. In 1946, while she was practicing in a recording studio, a representative from Decca Records overheard her sing an old spiritual she had learned as a child. He advised her to record it, and a few weeks later she did. "Move On Up a Little Higher" became her signature song. The recording sold 100,000 copies overnight and soon passed the two million dollar mark. "It sold like wildfire," Alex Haley wrote in Reader's Digest. "Negro disk jockeys played it; Negro ministers praised it from their pulpits. When sales passed one million, the Negro press hailed Mahalia Jackson as 'the only Negro whom Negroes have made famous."'

Jackson began touring again, only this time she did it not as the hand-to-mouth singer who had toured with Dorsey years before. She bought a Cadillac big enough for her to sleep in when she was performing in areas with hotels that failed to provide accommodations for blacks. She also stored food in the car so that when she visited the segregated South she wouldn't have to sit in the backs of restaurants. Soon the emotional and resonant singing of the "Gospel Queen," as she had become known, began reaching the white community as well. She appeared regularly on Studs Terkel's radio show and was ultimately given her own radio and television programs.

On October 4, 1950, Jackson played to a packed house of blacks and whites at New York's Carnegie Hall. She recounted in her autobiography how she reacted to the jubilant audience. "I got carried away, too, and found myself singing on my knees for them. I had to straighten up and say, 'Now we'd best remember we're in Carnegie Hall and if we cut up too much, they might put us out."' In her book, she also described a conversation with a reporter who asked her why she thought white people had taken to her traditionally black, church songs. She answered, "Well, honey, maybe they tried drink and they tried psychoanalysis and now they're going to try to rejoice with me a bit." Jackson ultimately became equally popular overseas and performed for royalty and adoring fans throughout France, England, Denmark, and Germany. One of her most rewarding concerts took place in Israel, where she sang before an audience of Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Participated in Civil Rights Struggles

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jackson's attention turned to the growing civil rights movement in the United States. Although she had grown up on Water Street, where black and white families lived together peacefully, she was well aware of the injustice engendered by the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the South. At the request of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackson participated in the Montgomery bus boycott. This action had been prompted by Rosa Parks's refusal to move from a bus seat reserved for whites. During the famous March on Washington in 1963, seconds before Dr. King delivered his celebrated "I Have a Dream" speech, Jackson sang the old inspirational, "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned" to over 200,000 people.

Jackson died in Chicago on January 27, 1972, never having fulfilled her dream of building a nondenominational temple, where people could sing, celebrate life, and nurture the talents of children. Christian Century magazine reported that her funeral was attended by over six thousand fans. Singer Ella Fitzgerald described Jackson as "one of our greatest ambassadors of love … this wonderful woman who only comes once in a lifetime."

Jackson considered herself a simple woman: she enjoyed cooking for friends as much as marveling at landmarks around the world. But it was in her music that she found her spirit most eloquently expressed. She wrote in her autobiography: "Gospel music is nothing but singing of good tidings-spreading the good news. It will last as long as any music because it is sung straight from the human heart. Join with me sometime-whether you're white or colored-and you will feel it for yourself. Its future is brighter than a daisy."

Further Reading

Goreau, L., Just Mahalia, Baby, Pelican, 1975.

Jackson, Jesse, Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord!, G.K. Hall, 1974.

Jackson, Mahalia, and Wylie, Evan McLeod, Movin' On Up, Hawthorne Books, 1966.

Schwerin, Jules, Got to Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel, Oxford, 1992.

Christian Century, March 1, 1972.

Ebony, March 1972, April 1972.

Harper's, August 1956.

Reader's Digest, November 1961.

Saturday Review, September 27, 1958.

gospel singer

Personal Information

Born October 26, 1911, in New Orleans, LA; died of heart failure, January 27, 1972, in Chicago, IL; daughter of Johnny (a longshoreman, barber, and preacher) and Charity (a laundress and maid; maiden name, Clark) Jackson; married Isaac Hockenhull (an entrepreneur), 1936 (divorced); married Sigmund Galloway (divorced).

Career

Started singing in small Baptist churches in New Orleans and Chicago; worked as a laundress; made first recording, "God's Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares," 1934; toured churches and "gospel tents" with composer Thomas A. Dorsey, 1939-44; opened a beauty salon and flower shop, c. 1944; recorded breakthrough single "Move On Up a Little Higher" on Decca records, 1946; performed on her own radio and television programs; performed at Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1950; signed record contract with Columbia, 1954; performed throughout the U.S. and abroad. Participated in the civil rights movement, 1950-60s; performed "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned" as a preamble to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Washington, D.C., 1963. Coauthored autobiography, Movin' On Up, Hawthorne Books, 1966.

Life's Work

Throughout her celebrated career, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson used her rich, forceful voice and inspiring interpretations of spirituals to move audiences around the world to tears of joy. In the early days, as a soloist and member of church choirs, she recognized the power of song as a means of gloriously reaffirming the faith of her flock. And later, as a world figure, her natural gift brought people of different religious and political convictions together to revel in the beauty of the gospels and to appreciate the warm spirit that underscored the way she lived her life.

The woman who would become known as the "Gospel Queen" was born in 1911 to a poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Jacksons' Water Street home, a shotgun shack between the railroad tracks and the levee of the Mississippi River, was served by a pump that delivered water so dirty that cornmeal had to be used as a filtering agent. Jackson's father, like many blacks in the segregated south, held several jobs; he was a longshoreman, a barber, and a preacher at a small church. Her mother, a devout Baptist who died when Mahalia was five, took care of the six Jackson children and the house, using washed-up driftwood and planks from old barges to fuel the stove.

As a child, Mahalia was taken in by the sounds of New Orleans. She listened to the rhythms of the woodpeckers, the rumblings of the trains, the whistles of the steamboats, the songs of sailors and street peddlers. When the annual festival of Mardi Gras arrived, the city erupted in music. In her bedroom at night, young Mahalia would quietly sing the songs of blues legend Bessie Smith.

But Jackson's close relatives disapproved of the blues, a music indigenous to southern black culture, saying it was decadent and claiming that the only acceptable songs for pious Christians were the gospels of the church. In gospel songs, they told her, music was the cherished vehicle of religious faith. As the writer Jesse Jackson (not related to the civil rights leader) said in his biography of Mahalia, Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord!, "It was like choosing between the devil and God. You couldn't have it both ways." Mahalia made up her mind. When Little Haley (the nickname by which she was known as a child) tried out for the Baptist choir, she silenced the crowd by singing "I'm so glad, I'm so glad, I'm so glad I've been in the grave an' rose again...." She became known as "the little girl with the big voice."

At 16, with only an eighth grade education but a strong ambition to become a nurse, Jackson went to Chicago to live with her Aunt Hannah. In the northern city, to which thousands of southern blacks had migrated after the Civil War to escape segregation, she earned her keep by washing white people's clothes for a dollar a day. After searching for the right church to join, a place whose music spoke to her, she ended up at the Greater Salem Baptist Church, to which her aunt belonged. At her audition for the choir, Jackson's thunderous voice rose above all the others. She was invited to be a soloist and started singing additionally with a quintet that performed at funerals and church services throughout the city. In 1934 she received $25 for her first recording, "God's Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares."

Though she sang traditional hymns and spirituals almost exclusively, Jackson continued to be fascinated by the blues. During the Great Depression, she knew she could earn more money singing the songs that her relatives considered profane and blasphemous. But when her beloved grandfather was struck down by a stroke and fell into a coma, Jackson vowed that if he recovered she would never even enter a theater again, much less sing songs of which he would disapprove. He did recover, and Mahalia never broke that vow. She wrote in her autobiography, Movin' On Up: "I feel God heard me and wanted me to devote my life to his songs and that is why he suffered my prayers to be answered--so that nothing would distract me from being a gospel singer."

Later in her career, Jackson continued to turn down lucrative requests to sing in nightclubs--she was offered as much as $25,000 a performance in Las Vegas--even when the club owners promised not to serve whisky while she performed. She never dismissed the blues as antireligious, like her relatives had done: it was simply a matter of the vow she had made, as well as a matter of inspiration. "There's no sense in my singing the blues, because I just don't feel it," she was quoted as saying in Harper's magazine in 1956. "In the old, heart-felt songs, whether it's the blues or gospel music, there's the distressed cry of a human being. But in the blues, it's all despair; when you're done singing, you're still lonely and sorrowful. In the gospel songs, there's mourning and sorrow, too, but there's always hope and consolation to lift you above it."

In 1939 Jackson started touring with renowned composer Thomas A. Dorsey. Together they visited churches and "gospel tents" around the country, and Jackson's reputation as a singer and interpreter of spirituals blossomed. She returned to Chicago after five years on the road and opened a beauty salon and a flower shop, both of which drew customers from the gospel and church communities. She continued to make records that brought her fairly little monetary reward. In 1946, while she was practicing in a recording studio, a representative from Decca Records overheard her sing an old spiritual she had learned as a child. He advised her to record it, and a few weeks later she did. "Move On Up a Little Higher" became her signature song. The recording sold 100,000 copies overnight and soon passed the two-million mark. "[It] sold like wildfire," Alex Haley wrote in Reader's Digest. "Negro disk jockeys played it; Negro ministers praised it from their pulpits. When sales passed one million, the Negro press hailed Mahalia Jackson as 'the only Negro whom Negroes have made famous.'"

Jackson began touring again, only this time she did it not as the hand-to-mouth singer who had toured with Dorsey years before. She bought a Cadillac big enough for her to sleep in when she was performing in areas with hotels that failed to provide accommodations for blacks. She also stored food in the car so that when she visited the segregated south she wouldn't have to sit in the backs of restaurants. Soon the emotional and resonant singing of the "Gospel Queen," as she had become known, began reaching and appealing to the white community as well. She appeared regularly on famous Chicagoan Studs Terkel's radio show and was ultimately given her own radio and television programs.

On October 4, 1950, Jackson played to a packed house of blacks and whites at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She recounted in her autobiography how she reacted to the jubilant audience. "I got carried away, too, and found myself singing on my knees for them. I had to straighten up and say, 'Now we'd best remember we're in Carnegie Hall and if we cut up too much, they might put us out.'" In her book, she also described a conversation with a reporter who asked her why she thought white people had taken to her traditionally black, church songs. She answered, "Well, honey, maybe they tried drink and they tried psychoanalysis and now they're going to try to rejoice with me a bit." Jackson ultimately became equally popular overseas and performed for royalty and adoring fans throughout France, England, Denmark, and Germany. One of the most rewarding concerts for her took place in Israel, where she sang before an audience of Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jackson's attention turned to the growing civil rights movement in the United States. Although she had grown up on Water Street, where black and white families lived together peacefully, she was well aware of the injustice engendered by the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the South. At the request of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackson participated in the Montgomery bus boycott, the ground-breaking demonstration that had been prompted by Alabaman Rosa Parks's refusal to move from a bus seat reserved for whites. During the famous March on Washington in 1963, seconds before Dr. King delivered his celebrated "I Have a Dream" speech, Jackson sang the old inspirational, "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned" to over 200,000 people.

Jackson died in 1972, never having fulfilled her dream of building a nondenominational, nonsectarian temple in Chicago, where people could sing, celebrate life, and nurture the talents of children. Christian Century magazine reported that at the funeral, which was attended by over six thousand fans, singer Ella Fitzgerald described Jackson as "one of our greatest ambassadors of love ... this wonderful woman who only comes once in a lifetime."

Jackson considered herself a simple woman: she enjoyed cooking for friends as much as marveling at landmarks around the world. But it was in her music that she found her spirit most eloquently expressed. She wrote in her autobiography: "Gospel music is nothing but singing of good tidings--spreading the good news. It will last as long as any music because it is sung straight from the human heart. Join with me sometime--whether you're white or colored--and you will feel it for yourself. Its future is brighter than a daisy."

Works

Selective Discography

• Amazing Grace, CBS Records, 1977.
• Mahalia Jackson, Bella Musica, 1990.
• Gospels, Spirituals, and Hymns ("Gospel Spirit" series), Columbia/Legacy, 1991.
• Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen, Vogue, 1991.
• Best Loved Hymns of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Columbia.
• Bless This House, Columbia.
• Come On, Children, Let's Sing, Columbia.
• The Great Mahalia Jackson, Columbia.
• Great Songs of Love and Faith, Columbia.
• I Believe, Columbia.
• In the Upper Room, Vogue.
• Let's Pray Together, Columbia.
• Mahalia Sings, Columbia.
• Mahalia Jackson--The World's Greatest Gospel Singer and the Falls-Jones Ensemble, Columbia.
• Mahalia Jackson's Greatest Hits, Columbia.
• Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord, Columbia.
• Newport, 1958, Columbia.
• The Power and the Glory, Columbia.
• Silent Night, Columbia.
• Sweet Little Jesus Boy, Columbia.
• You'll Never Walk Alone, Columbia.

Further Reading

Books

• Goreau, L., Just Mahalia, Baby, Pelican, 1975.
• Jackson, Jesse, Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord!, G.K. Hall & Co., 1974.
• Jackson, Mahalia, and Wylie, Evan McLeod, Movin' On Up, Hawthorne Books, 1966.
• Schwerin, Jules, Got to Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel, Oxford, 1992.

Periodicals

• Christian Century, March 1, 1972.
• Ebony, March 1972, April 1972.
• Harper's, August 1956.
• Reader's Digest, November 1961.
• Saturday Review, September 27, 1958.

— Isaac Rosen

Jackson, Mahalia (məhăl'yə), 1911-72, American gospel singer, b. New Orleans. She sang in church choirs during her childhood. Moving (1927) to Chicago, she worked at various menial jobs and sang in churches and at revival meetings, attracting attention for her vigorous, joyful gospel style. As her reputation grew she made numerous recordings, and she gained national recognition with her Carnegie Hall debut in 1950. Jackson toured abroad and appeared on radio and at jazz festivals, refusing to sing the blues in favor of more hopeful devotional songs. At Newport, R.I., in 1958 she sang in Duke Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige. Deeply committed to the civil-rights movement, she was closely associated with the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Bibliography

See her autobiography (1966); studies by P. Oliver (1968) and J. Jackson (1974).

Quotes:

"It's easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing -- that's the Lord's test."

For The Record...

Born October 26, 1911, in New Orleans, LA; died of heart failure, January 27, 1972, in Chicago, IL; daughter of Johnny (a longshoreman, barber, and preacher) and Charity (a laundress and maid; maiden name, Clark) Jackson; married Isaac Hockenhull (an entrepreneur), 1936 (divorced); married Sigmund Galloway (divorced). Started singing in small Baptist churches in New Orleans and Chicago; worked as a laundress; made first recording, “God’s Gonna Separate the Wheat From the Tares,” 1934; toured churches and “gospel tents” with composer Thomas A. Dorsey, 1939-44; opened a beauty salon and flower shop, c. 1944; recorded breakthrough single “Move On Up a Little Higher,” on Decca records, 1946; performed on her own radio and television programs; performed at Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1950; signed record contract with Columbia, 1954; performed throughout the U.S. and abroad. Participated in the civil rights movement, 1950-60s; performed “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned” as a preamble to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Washington D.C., 1963. Co-authored autobiography, Movin’ On Up, Hawthorne Books, 1966.

Gospel singer

Throughout her celebrated career, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson used her rich, forceful voice and inspiring interpretations of spirituals to move audiences around the world to tears of joy. In the early days, as a soloist and member of church choirs, she recognized the power of song as a means of gloriously reaffirming the faith of her flock. And later, as a world figure, her natural gift brought people of different religious and political convictions together to revel in the beauty of the gospels and to appreciate the warm spirit that underscored the way she lived her life.

The woman who would become known as the "Gospel Queen" was born in 1911 to a poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Jacksons’ Water Street home, a shotgun shack between the railroad tracks and the levee of the Mississippi River, was served by a pump that delivered water so dirty that cornmeal had to be used as a filtering agent. Jackson’s father, like many blacks in the segregated south, held several jobs; he was a longshoreman, a barber, and a preacher at a small church. Her mother, a devout Baptist who died when Mahalia was five, took care of the six Jackson children and the house, using washed-up driftwood and planks of old barges to fuel the stove.

As a child, Mahalia was taken in by the sounds of New Orleans. She listened to the rhythms of the woodpeckers, the rumblings of the trains, the whistles of the steamboats, the songs of sailors and street peddlers. When the annual festival of Mardi Gras arrived, the city erupted in music. In her bedroom at night, the young Mahalia would quietly sing the songs of blues legend Bessie Smith.

"The Little Girl With the Big Voice"
But Jackson’s close relatives disapproved of the blues, a music indigenous to southern black culture, saying it was decadent and claiming the only acceptable music for pious Christians were the gospels of the church. In gospel songs, they told her, music was the cherished vehicle of religious faith. As the writer Jesse Jackson (not related to the civil rights leader) said in his biography of Mahalia, Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord!, "It was like choosing between the devil and God. You couldn’t have it both ways." Mahalia made up her mind. When Little Haley (the nickname by which she was known as a child) tried out for the Baptist choir, she silenced the crowd by singing "I’m so glad, I’m so glad, I’m so glad I’ve been in the grave an’ rose again.…" She became known as "the little girl with the big voice."

At 16, with only an eighth grade education but a strong

ambition to become a nurse, she went to Chicago to live with her Aunt Hannah. In the northern city, to which thousands of southern blacks had migrated after the Civil War to escape segregation, Jackson earned her keep by washing white people’s clothes for a dollar a day. After searching for the right church to join, a place whose music spoke to her, she ended up at the Greater Salem Baptist Church, to which her aunt belonged. At her audition for the choir, her thunderous voice rose above all the others. She was invited to be a soloist and started singing additionally with a quintet that performed at funerals and church services throughout the city. In 1934 she received $25 for her first recording, "God’s Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares."

Tempted by the Blues
Though she sang traditional hymns and spirituals almost exclusively, Jackson continued to be fascinated by the blues. During the Great Depression, she knew she could earn more money singing the songs that her relatives considered profane and blasphemous. But when her beloved grandfather was struck down by a stroke and fell into a coma, Jackson vowed that if he recovered she would never even enter a theater again, much less sing songs of which he would disapprove. He did recover, and Mahalia never broke that vow. She wrote in her autobiography, Movin’ On Up: "I feel God heard me and wanted me to devote my life to his songs and that is why he suffered my prayers to be answered—so that nothing would distract me from being a gospel singer."

Later in her career, Jackson continued to turn down lucrative requests to sing in nightclubs—she was offered as much as $25,000 a performance in Las Vegas—even when the club owners promised not to serve whisky while she performed. She never dismissed the blues as antireligious, like her relatives had done: it was simply a matter of the vow she had made, as well as a matter of inspiration. "There’s no sense in my singing the blues, because I just don’t feel it," she was quoted as saying in Harper’s magazine in 1956. "In the old, heart-felt songs, whether it’s the blues or gospel music, there’s the distressed cry of a human being. But in the blues, it’s all despair; when you’re done singing, you’re still lonely and sorrowful. In the gospel songs, there’s mourning and sorrow, too, but there’s always hope and consolation to lift you above it."

Reigned as "Gospel Queen"
In 1939 Jackson started touring with renowned composer Thomas A. Dorsey. Together they visited churches and "gospel tents" around the country, and Jackson’s reputation as a singer and interpreter of spirituals blossomed. She returned to Chicago after five years on the road and opened a beauty salon and a flower shop, both of which drew customers from the gospel and church communities. She continued to make records that brought her fairly little monetary reward. In 1946, while she was practicing in a recording studio, a representative from Decca Records overheard her sing an old spiritual she had learned as a child. He advised her to record it, and a few weeks later she did. "Move On Up a Little Higher" became her signature song. The recording sold 100,000 copies overnight and soon passed the two-million mark. "[It] sold like wildfire," Alex Haley wrote in Reader’s Digest. "Negro disk jockeys played it; Negro ministers praised it from their pulpits. When sales passed one million, the Negro press hailed Mahalia Jackson as ‘the only Negro whom Negroes have made famous.’"

Jackson began touring again, only this time she did it not as the hand-to-mouth singer who had toured with Dorsey years before. She bought a Cadillac big enough for her to sleep in when she was performing in areas with hotels that failed to provide accommodations for blacks. She also stored food in the car so that when she visited the segregated south she wouldn’t have to sit in the backs of restaurants. Soon the emotional and resonant singing of the "Gospel Queen," as she had become known, began reaching and appealing to the white community as well. She appeared regularly on famous Chicagoan Studs Terkel’s radio show and was ultimately given her own radio and television programs.

On October 4, 1950, Jackson played to a packed house of blacks and whites at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She recounted in her autobiography how she reacted to the jubilant audience. "I got carried away, too, and found myself singing on my knees for them. I had to straighten up and say, ‘Now we’d best remember we’re in Carnegie Hall and if we cut up too much, they might put us out.’" In her book, she also described a conversation with a reporter who asked her why she thought white people had taken to her traditionally black church songs. She answered, "Well, honey, maybe they tried drink and they tried psychoanalysis and now they’re going to try to rejoice with me a bit." Jackson ultimately became equally popular overseas and performed for royalty and adoring fans throughout France, England, Denmark, and Germany. One of the most rewarding concerts for her took place in Israel, where she sang before an audience of Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Involved in Civil Rights Movement
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jackson’s attention turned to the growing civil rights movement in the United States. Although she had grown up on Water Street, where black and white families lived together peacefully, she was well aware of the injustice engendered by the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the South. At the request of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jackson participated in the Montgomery bus boycott, the ground-breaking demonstration that had been prompted by Alabaman Rosa Parks’s refusal to move from a bus seat reserved for whites. During the Washington protest march in 1963, seconds before Dr. King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, Jackson sang the old inspirational, "I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned" to over 200,000 people.

Jackson died in 1972, never having fulfilled her dream of building a nondenominational, nonsectarian temple in Chicago, where people could sing, celebrate life, and nurture the talents of children. Christian Century magazine reported that at the funeral, which was attended by over six thousand fans, singer Ella Fitzgerald described Jackson as "one of our greatest ambassadors of love…this wonderful woman who only comes once in a lifetime."

Jackson considered herself a simple woman: she enjoyed cooking for friends as much as marveling at landmarks around the world. But it was in her music that she found her spirit most eloquently expressed. She wrote in her autobiography: "Gospel music is nothing but singing of good tidings—spreading the good news. It will last as long as any music because it is sung straight from the human heart. Join with me sometime—whether you’re white or colored—and you will feel it for yourself. Its future is brighter than a daisy."

Selected discography
Amazing Grace, CBS Records, 1977.
Mahalia Jackson, Bella Musica, 1990.
Gospels, Spirituals, and Hymns ("Gospel Spirit" series), Columbia/Legacy, 1991.
Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, Vogue, 1991.
Best Loved Hymns of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Columbia.
Bless This House, Columbia.
Come On, Children, Let’s Sing, Columbia.
The Great Mahalia Jackson, Columbia.
Great Songs of Love and Faith, Columbia.
I Believe, Columbia.
In the Upper Room, Vogue.
Let’s Pray Together, Columbia.
Mahalia Sings, Columbia.
Mahalia Jackson—The World’s Greatest Gospel Singer and the Falls-Jones Ensemble, Columbia.
Mahalia Jackson’s Greatest Hits, Columbia.
Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord, Columbia.
Newport, 1958, Columbia.
The Power and the Glory, Columbia.
Silent Night, Columbia.
Sweet Little Jesus Boy, Columbia.
You’ll Never Walk Alone, Columbia.

Sources
Books
Goreau, L, Just Mahalia, Baby, Pelican, 1975.
Jackson, Jesse, Make a Joyful Noise Unto The Lord!, G.K. Hall & Co., 1974.
Jackson, Mahalia, and Wylie, Evan McLeod, Movin’ On Up, Hawthorne Books, 1966.

Periodicals
Christian Century, March 1, 1972.
Ebony, March 1972, April 1972.
Harper’s, August 1956.
Reader’s Digest, November 1961.
Saturday Review, September 27, 1958.

• Genres: Gospel

Biography

General critical consensus holds Mahalia Jackson as the greatest gospel singer ever to live; a major crossover success whose popularity extended across racial divides, she was gospel's first superstar, and even decades after her death remains, for many listeners, a defining symbol of the music's transcendent power. With her singularly expressive contralto, Jackson continues to inspire the generations of vocalists who follow in her wake; among the first spiritual performers to introduce elements of blues into her music, she infused gospel with a sensuality and freedom it had never before experienced, and her artistry rewrote the rules forever. Born in one of the poorest sections of New Orleans on October 16, 1911, Jackson made her debut in the children's choir of the Plymouth Rock Baptist Church at the age of four, and within a few years was a prominent member of the Mt. Moriah Baptist's junior choir. Raised next door to a sanctified church, she was heavily influenced by their brand of gospel, with its reliance on drums and percussion over piano; another major inspiration was the blues of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.

By the time she reached her mid-teens, then, Jackson's unique vocal style was fully formed, combining the full-throated tones and propulsive rhythms of the sanctified church and the deep expressiveness of the blues with the note-bending phrasing of her Baptist upbringing. After quitting school during the eighth grade, Jackson relocated to Chicago in 1927, where she worked as a maid and laundress; within months of her arrival, she was singing leads with the choir at the Greater Salem Baptist Church, where she joined the three sons of her pastor in their group the Johnson Brothers. Although other small choir groups had cut records in the past, the Johnson Brothers might have been the first professional gospel unit ever; the first organized group to play the Chicago church circuit, they even produced a series of self-written musical dramas in which Jackson assumed the lead role. Her provocative performing style -- influenced by the Southern sanctified style of keeping time with the body and distinguished by jerks and steps for physical emphasis -- enraged many of the more conservative Northern preachers, but few could deny her fierce talent.

After the members of the Johnson Brothers went their separate ways during the mid-'30s, Jackson began her solo career accompanied by pianist Evelyn Gay, who herself later went on to major fame as one half of gospel's Gay Sisters. During the week, Jackson also went to beauty school, and soon opened her own salon. As her reputation as a singer grew throughout the Midwest, in 1937 she made her first recordings for Decca, becoming the first gospel artist signed to the label; curiously, none of the tracks she recorded during her May 21 session was by Thomas A. Dorsey, the legendary composer for whom she began working as a song demonstrator around that same time. (He even wrote "Peace in the Valley" with her in mind.) While her Decca single "God's Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares" sold only modestly, prompting a lengthy studio hiatus, Jackson's career continued on the upswing -- she soon began performing live in cities as far away as Buffalo, New Orleans, and Birmingham, becoming famous in churches throughout the country for not only her inimitable voice but also her flirtatious stage presence and spiritual intensity.

Jackson did not record again until 1946, signing with Apollo Records; although her relations with the label were often strained, the work she produced during her eight-year stay on their roster was frequently brilliant. While her first Apollo recordings, including "I Want to Rest" and "He Knows My Heart" fared poorly -- so much so, in fact, that the label almost dropped her -- producer Art Freeman insisted Jackson record W. Herbert Brewster's "Move on Up a Little Higher"; released in early 1948, the single became the best-selling gospel record of all time, selling in such great quantities that stores could not even meet the demand. Virtually overnight, Jackson became a superstar; beginning in 1950, she became a regular guest on journalist Studs Terkel's Chicago television series, and among White intellectuals and jazz critics, she acquired a major cult following based in large part on her eerie similarities to Bessie Smith. In 1952, her recording of "I Can Put My Trust in Jesus" even won a prize from the French Academy, resulting in a successful tour of Europe -- her rendition of "Silent Night" even became one of the all-time best-selling records in Norway's history.

Jackson's success soon reached such dramatic proportions that in 1954 she began hosting her own weekly radio series on CBS, the first program of its kind to broadcast the pure, sanctified gospel style over national airwaves. The show surrounded her with a supporting cast which included not only pianist Mildred Falls and organist Ralph Jones, but also a White quartet led by musical director Jack Halloran; although her performances with Halloran's group moved Jackson far away from traditional gospel towards an odd hybrid which crossed the line into barbershop quartet singing, they proved extremely popular with White audiences, and her transformation into a true crossover star was complete. Also in 1954 she signed to Columbia, scoring a Top 40 hit with the single "Rusty Old Halo," and two years later made her debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. However, with Jackson's success came the inevitable backlash -- purists decried her music's turn toward more pop-friendly production, and as her fame soared, so did her asking price, so much so that by the late '50s, virtually no Black churches could afford to pay her performance fee.

A triumphant appearance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival solidified Jackson's standing among critics, but her records continued moving her further away from her core audience -- when an LP with Percy Faith became a smash, Columbia insisted on more recordings with orchestras and choirs; she even cut a rendition of "Guardian Angels" backed by comic Harpo Marx. In 1959, she appeared in the film Imitation of Life, and two years later sang at John F. Kennedy's Presidential inauguration. During the '60s, Jackson was also a confidant and supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King, and at his funeral sang his last request, "Precious Lord"; throughout the decade she was a force in the civil rights movement, but after 1968, with King and the brothers Kennedy all assassinated, she retired from the political front. At much the same time, Jackson went through a messy and very public divorce, prompting a series of heart attacks and the rapid loss of over a hundred pounds; in her last years, however, she recaptured much of her former glory, concluding her career with a farewell concert in Germany in 1971. She died January 27, 1972. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

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