Side 1 of “Lord Jesus” is punctuated with voiceless shouts and exclamations from the crowd, pushing, urging Bledsoe onward as the quartet centers its harmony on an eerie E dominant 7th drone (or pedal point) chord. At about the one-minute mark, he slips into a remarkable glissando. At about the 1:30 mark, Bledsoe erupts into a sharp, spooky bark of laughter. As the background shrieks and wails continue, the other members of the Spirit of Memphis somehow resolve into a single chanted, harmonized word—“Jesus”—even as Bledsoe continues to shout, testify, and beseech the Holy Spirit. The vamp continues on Side 2, raging on with more of the same until the fade.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t passionate about gospel music. Since I got into academia, that’s all I’ve researched and written about. Nearly twenty years ago, concerned about the accelerating disappearance of vinyl from gospel’s “golden age,” I co-founded the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program at Baylor University. Among the more than 50,000 digitized holdings of the BGMPP, there is simply nothing else like “Lord Jesus.” During the 45’s 6:24 total run time, ethnomusicologist Kip Lornell says that Steele employs “melismatic, falsetto, and sforzando vocal techniques” and that the song “literally pulsates with a fervor that would have been impossible to replicate in a studio.” Historian Horace Boyer adds, “The delight at this exchange is apparent from the shouts, encouragements, and screams of the audience…providing an indication of the kind of ecstasy apparent at live performances of beloved gospel groups.” This is clearly not entertainment. Composer Stephen Newby calls it “an engagement with the Holy Spirit, fueled by Bledsoe’s otherworldly prayers on the congregation’s behalf.”
Listening to that song on repeat has led me to make a series of sweeping generalizations:
Chicago, through Thomas Dorsey, by way of Charles Tindley and Lucie Campbell, gave modern gospel music its form, both in performance and—soon thereafter—on vinyl.
Detroit, through Mattie Moss Clark, gave gospel its choirs.
Philadelphia, through the Dixie Hummingbirds and the Clara Ward Singers, gave gospel its showmanship.
But it was Memphis, through the Church of God in Christ and East Trigg Ave. Baptist Church, that gave gospel music the ecstatic spirit—the Holy Ghost. Of course, in evangelical Protestant religious music, the supposition is that the Holy Spirit has always been present in sacred music. But it was the churches, denominations, and artists themselves of Memphis that were the catalyst for the Holy Ghost to dramatically manifest through twentieth-century gospel music, both in worship services and, occasionally, on a recording.