Albertina Walker

gospel singer

Personal Information

Born in 1929 in Chicago, IL.
Religion: Baptist.

Career

Gospel singer, 1939--. As a child was member of the Williams Singers; as a teen sang with Willie Webb and the Robert Anderson Singers; formed group the Caravans, which included at various times Bessie Griffin, James Cleveland, Inez Andrews, Cassietta George, Dorothy Norwood, Imogene Greene, and Shirley Caesar, 1952; group disbanded, 1967; solo artist, 1967--. Appeared in film Leap of Faith, 1992.

Life's Work

Albertina Walker has been a force in traditional gospel music for so long that she is affectionately known as the "Queen of Gospel." The deeply religious singer has spent most of her life praising God with her music, first as a founder and member of the Caravans and later as a stirring solo artist. A star in her own right, Walker also helped to promote the careers of such gospel legends as Inez Andrews, Shirley Caesar, and Dorothy Norwood. Those artists, and others who worked with Walker in the Caravans, have helped to popularize traditional gospel and its Christian message of salvation.

Contemporary gospel groups have incorporated pop music instruments and stylings into their songs, but traditionalists such as Walker rely on piano, tambourine, and the occasional guitar accompaniment-- in effect letting the vocal harmony carry the performance. Chicago Tribune arts critic Hoard Reich calls this an "undiluted form of gospel singing" an uncorrupted and "pristine" sound. For Walker, as for many gospel superstars, the message is as important as the delivery. "What's from the heart reaches the heart," Walker explained in the Los Angeles Times, "and if you've got a heart and you listen to what we're doin', you're gonna feel something--white, black, yellow, green, red, it don't make no difference, you're goin' to feel something."

Albertina Walker still sings with the choir at the church she attended as a child. She was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, one of nine children in a hard-working Baptist family. "I grew up going to church," Walker recalled in the Chicago Tribune. Her mother was a member of the West Point Baptist Church, and Albertina and her sister Rose Marie both sang in the choir there. When Walker was still a little girl, the church's choir director formed a small children's gospel group called the Williams Singers. With this group, and occasionally as a duo, the Walker sisters performed in churches throughout Chicago and the Midwest. Albertina loved the opportunity to sing. She remembers her childhood as very happy, untainted by the scourges of drug abuse or violence that afflict many youngsters today.

The West Point Baptist Church was the site of many rousing gospel concerts during Walker's youth. She was inspired by the performances of great gospel singers such as Sally and Roberta Martin, Mahalia Jackson, and Tommy E. Dorsey, who moved from the blues and jazz into gospel music. When Walker entered her teen years, she began to sing with Willie Webb and Robert Anderson, both musicians with professional groups. A number of their live performances at various Baptist and Pentecostal churches were broadcast on radio, giving Walker an entree into the show business side of gospel music.

Walker made her first recordings as a part of Robert Anderson's ensemble. When Anderson retired, the record producers tried to persuade Walker to make records as a solo artist. Walker simply did not want to sing alone. Instead she approached some of her colleagues in the Robert Anderson group about starting a new ensemble. They agreed, and a key element of their success was added when keyboardist James Cleveland agreed to work with them. "When the producers asked me what to call the group, I thought 'Caravans' would be nice, since we gospel singers were forever traveling on the road," Walker noted in the Chicago Tribune.

From the group's founding in 1952 until virtually the end of the 1960s, the Caravans dominated traditional gospel, performing all over America and Europe and in such celebrated theaters as New York's Apollo, Carnegie Hall, and Madison Square Garden. "The Caravans represented a high point in female ensemble singing," claimed Reich. "Here was a group in which every backup singer had the technique and the vocal equipment to stand as a soloist."

The earliest Caravans recordings--including What a Friend We Have in Jesus and Blessed Assurance--feature Walker as lead vocalist. The savvy artist soon stepped aside in favor of some of her Caravan recruits, including the likes of Bessie Griffin, Dorothy Norwood, Inez Andrews, and Imogene Greene. During a 1958 tour of the South, the group attracted a teenager named Shirley Caesar who was invited to join them, first as an opening act and later as the principal vocalist. "The Lord used the Caravans as a bridge to bring me to where I am today and I praise Him for that," Caesar explained in Black Gospel: An Illustrated History. "They were happy days."

The performers inevitably faced their share of trials and troubles, despite the jubilation of their performances. Walker told the Chicago Tribune that their meager pay often bought little more than "sardines and lunch meat and crackers and bread," as well as the gasoline for the next trip out of town. Hotels and restaurants discriminated against them, and in some places they visited even the restrooms were segregated. Nothing destroyed Walker's conviction to deliver God's message through music, however. "We wanted to sing," she said. "It didn't make any difference how we got where we were going, just so we got there."

In Black Gospel, Viv Broughton wrote: "The super-abundance of talent in the Caravans took them into the very front rank of gospel groups in the early sixties but it also generated an impossible pressure within the group itself. Eventually the constraints of the group proved too frustrating." One by one the various vocalists left in order to pursue solo careers, and in 1967 the Caravans disbanded. Walker, "the woman who launched more gospel careers out of one group than anyone else," to quote Broughton, began to perform as a soloist as well.

Time has not dimmed the luster of Walker's voice or cluttered the spirit of her message. She is often referred to these days as the "queen of gospel," and is rivalled for that title mainly by former members of her group. In 1993 she received a Grammy Award nomination for Albertina Walker Live, and that same year she performed a concert for Nelson Mandela during his visit to the United States. From her base in Chicago she has been active in politics, working with the Reverend Jesse Jackson and organizing the Operation PUSH People's Choir. She is also the founder of and one of the chief contributors to the Albertina Walker Scholarship Foundation, a source of funds for aspiring young gospel singers.

Every summer the city of Chicago hosts a gospel festival. These sometimes feature Caravan "reunions," at which Walker always shines. The singer was also featured in the 1992 film Leap of Faith as member of a spirited gospel choir. Walker, who continues to live in Chicago as her busy schedule allows, told the Chicago Tribune that her Christian faith has provided her with a full and happy life. "All the good things that have happened to me are because of my affiliation with the church," she concluded. "I'd like to encourage young people to stay with the Lord, because if they do, he will surely stay with them."

Awards

Grammy Award nomination, 1993, for Albertina Walker Live.

Works

Selective Discography

• Albertina Walker Live, 1993.

Further Reading

Books

• Broughton, Viv, Black Gospel: An Illustrated History, Blandford Press, 1985, p. 76-81; 114.

• Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1993, p. 6; June 10, 1994, p. 4.
• Jet, May 13, 1991, p. 12.
• Los Angeles Times, December 26, 1992, p. 1F.

— Anne Janette Johnson