Saturday, Feb 25, 2023
precious Lord
Olin Johannessen
Jennifer McPherson, our Director of Music and Liturgy, has long hoped for an opportunity to pair the inimitable vocal talent of our own Sharon Jones with the St. John’s Parish Choir. As we began our process of planning anthems for the Rite II services for winter and spring, we were faced with the question of what to program for MLK Sunday on January 15 as well as Sundays in February, Black History Month, and thought that perhaps we may have found a window in which such a collaboration opportunity might feel right for all of us. When we learned that Sharon was unavailable to sing at St. John’s on January 15, we decided to take a meeting with her and pick out a few dates in February. The timing of this meeting was perfect, because together, we and Sharon had some really fruitful and exciting ideas. Sharon would choose a piece to sing solo on February 12 (“I Believe,” made famous by Regina Belle and others), and we chose “Precious Lord,” the famous gospel hymn composed by Thomas A. Dorsey, to be sung in collaboration with the Parish Choir on February 26 (this Sunday! tomorrow!). We got to talk about her experience growing up at St. John’s, to hear about the ways in which she and her large family felt supported by St. John’s through the years; the ways that they were made to feel welcome, to be embraced by this community of faith. It was a pretty special meeting.
I first arrived at the idea to arrange “Precious Lord” when doing some research about The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I asked Google what his favorite hymn was, and my search returned a brief article and accompanying audio segment from WGBH Boston discussing “Precious Lord,” and Dr. King’s love of the famous singer Mahalia Jackson’s interpretation of Thomas A. Dorsey’s heart-wrenching hymn; in fact it was the last thing he said on April 4, 1968, the day he was assassinated, prior to his passing: the wish to hear Mahalia Jackson sing it. Dorsey, a jazz pianist and composer, has long been credited as the “Father of Gospel Music,” and is widely regarded as one of the musical pioneers credited with developing the modern gospel choir format, including by his use of jazz harmonies in religious music. The impetus for the composition of “Precious Lord” came to Dorsey while he was out on a gig and received word from the hospital that his wife, Nettie, had gone into labor and subsequently passed away tragically, along with their unborn child due to complications in childbirth. Dorsey discusses his process of composing the piece in that same audio segment from Callie Crossley at WGBH.
A few weeks after Jennifer and I met with Sharon and decided on “Precious Lord,” I was listening to a favorite podcast of mine from NPR, “World Cafe Words and Music Podcast,” which features performances and interviews with important musicians across a wide variety of genres. Recently, they had been airing a series called “Sense of Place,” where they produced a number of episodes all centered around the music and musicians of a particular place — this time, Chicago, Illinois. In this episode, co-hosts Stephen Kallao and Miguel Perez sat down with Stanley Stovall, music director, The Rev. Darryl Person, and trustee Patricia Butts, of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood’s Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, widely considered to be “the birthplace of gospel music.” The very church where Thomas A. Dorsey once served as music director.
In this 13-minute long episode, titled “Step inside ‘the birthplace of gospel music,’” we get to hear from a few of the current stewards of this beautiful historical church about its acoustic design, making it ideal for live music; its importance in the world of gospel music history, and the need to help preserve its life through important necessary updates to the space. I felt inspired to connect our amazing St. John’s congregation with the story behind this piece, “Precious Lord,” and its author, Thomas A. Dorsey, and to offer to our congregation the opportunity to give back to the community where modern gospel music established a proper home, to give something back that would help others in ways we cannot possibly imagine.
On Thursday afternoon had the pleasure of spending time on the phone with Stanley Stovall who is not only the church’s music director, but also their treasurer. He gave me time to tell the story of how I came to know about Ebenezer through that NPR podcast, to learn about Ebenezer’s place in the history of gospel music, our upcoming collaboration with Sharon Jones and the Parish Choir, and about my desire to help share the news of their ongoing capital campaign with our congregation, and my hope that we would help Ebenezer to raise some money. He even agreed to take a look at my arrangement of “Precious Lord!”
If you’ve never learned about Thomas A. Dorsey, or looked into the history behind one of his most famous compositions, I invite and encourage you to take time with all this; to listen to the WGBH segment; to listen to the World Cafe segment; to read about Thomas A. Dorsey’s life; to listen to Mahalia Jackson’s beautiful rendition; to think about the recent events of this past week in downtown Portsmouth, and consider how we can help show our love for others, both here at home, and elsewhere. We don’t live in a very racially-diverse place. Some among us may have had very limited exposure to this type of gospel music. But we can do a little “armchair traveling,” and go outside our little seaside community, and connect. I hope you will consider joining me in making a donation to the Friends of Ebenezer Capital Campaign by visiting this link, and clicking through on the “Give Now” button (see note below).
With love,
Olin
Olin Johannessen, Director of Digital Content &Associate for Music and Youth Ministries
603-436-8283
olin@stjohnsnh.org
www.stjohnsnh.org
(NOTE: when you click through to offer your donation to the Friends of Ebenezer Capital Campaign, you will be given the choice between logging into the Givelify interface either through your Facebook account, or by creating a secure account with your email, and creating a password)
