Mahalia Jackson (born Mahala Jackson; October 26, 1911-January 27, 1972) was an American gospel singer, widely considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century.
With a career spanning 40 years, Jackson was integral to the development and spread of gospel blues in black churches throughout the U.S. during a time when racial segregation was pervasive in American society, she met considerable and unexpected success in a recording career, selling an estimated 22 million records and performing in front of integrated and secular audiences in concert halls around the world.
The granddaughter of enslaved people, Jackson was born and raised in poverty in New Orleans. She found a home in her church, leading to a lifelong dedication and singular purpose to deliver God's word through song.
She moved to Chicago as an adolescent and joined the Johnson Singers, one of the earliest gospel groups. Jackson was heavily influenced by blues' singer Bessie Smith, adapting her style to traditional Protestant hymns and contemporary songs. After making an impression in Chicago churches, she was hired to sing at funerals, political rallies, and revivals. For 15 years, she functioned as what she termed a fish and bread singer, working odd jobs between performances to make a living.
Nationwide recognition came for Jackson in 1947 with the release of Move On Up a Little Higher, selling two million copies and hitting the number two spot on Billboard charts, both firsts for gospel music.
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Jackson's recordings captured the attention of jazz fans in the U.S. and France, and she became the first gospel recording artist to tour Europe. She regularly appeared on television and radio, and performed for many presidents and heads of state, including singing the national anthem at John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Ball in 1961.
Motivated by her experiences living and touring in the South and integrating a Chicago neighbourhood, she participated in the civil rights movement, singing for fundraisers and at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. She was a vocal and loyal supporter of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a personal friend of his family.
Mahalia Jackson was born to Charity Clark and Johnny Jackson, a stevedore and weekend barber. Clark and Jackson were unmarried, a common arrangement among black women in New Orleans at the time. He lived elsewhere, never joining Charity as a parent. Both sets of Mahalia's grandparents were born into slavery, her paternal grandparents on a rice plantation and her maternal grandparents on a cotton plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish about 160 km north of New Orleans.
Throughout her career, Jackson faced intense pressure to record secular music, but turned down high-paying opportunities to concentrate on gospel. Completely self-taught, Jackson had a keen sense of instinct for music, her delivery marked by extensive improvisation with melody and rhythm.
In a very cold December, Jackson arrived in Chicago. For a week she was miserably homesick, unable to move off the couch until Sunday when her aunts took her to Greater Salem Baptist Church, an environment she felt at home in immediately, later stating it was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me.
Jackson's arrival in Chicago occurred during the Great Migration, a massive movement of black Southerners to Northern cities. Between 1910 and 1970, hundreds of thousands of rural Southern blacks moved to Chicago, transforming a neighbourhood in the South Side into Bronzeville, a black city within a city which was mostly self-sufficient, prosperous, and teeming in the 1920s. This movement caused white flight, with whites moving to suburbs, leaving established white churches and synagogues with dwindling members. Their mortgages were taken over by black congregations in good position to settle in Bronzeville. Members of these churches were, in Jackson's term, society Negroes who were well-educated and eager to prove their successful assimilation into white American society. Musical services tended to be formal, presenting solemnly delivered hymns written by Isaac Watts and other European composers. Shouting and clapping were generally not allowed as they were viewed as undignified. Special programs and musicals tended to feature sophisticated choral arrangements to prove the quality of the choir.
In 1937, Jackson met Mayo "Ink" Williams, a music producer who arranged a session with Decca Records. She recorded four singles: God's Gonna Separate the Wheat From the Tares, You Sing On, My Singer, God Shall Wipe Away All Tears, and Keep Me Every Day.
A constant worker and a shrewd businesswoman, Jackson became the choir director at St. Luke Baptist Church. She bought a building as a landlord, then found the salon so successful she had to hire help to care for it when she travelled on weekends.
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Each engagement Jackson took was farther from Chicago in a non-stop string of performances.
In 1946, she appeared at the Golden Gate Ballroom in Harlem. In attendance was Art Freeman, a music scout for Apollo Records, a company catering to black artists and audiences, concentrating mostly on jazz and blues.
Her first release on Apollo, Wait 'til My Change Comes backed with I'm Going to Tell God All About it One of These Days did not sell well. Neither did her second, I Want to Rest with He Knows My Heart. Berman asked Jackson to record blues and she refused. Berman told Freeman to release Jackson from any more recordings, but Freeman asked for one more session to record the song Jackson sang as a warm-up at the Golden Gate Ballroom concert. Move On Up a Little Higher was recorded in two parts, one for each side of the 78 rpm record.
As Jackson's singing was often considered jazz or blues with religious lyrics, she fielded questions about the nature of gospel blues and how she developed her singing style.
In 1954, Jackson learned that Berman had been withholding royalties and had allowed her contract with Apollo to expire. Mitch Miller offered her a $50,000-a-year (equivalent to $480,000 in 2021) four-year contract, and Jackson became the first gospel artist to sign with Columbia Records, a much larger company with the ability to promote her nationally.
Columbia worked with a local radio affiliate in Chicago to create a half hour radio program, The Mahalia Jackson Show. She appeared on a local television program, also titled The Mahalia Jackson Show, which again got a positive reception but was cancelled for lack of sponsors. Despite white people beginning to attend her shows and sending fan letters, executives at CBS were concerned they would lose advertisers from Southern states who objected to a program with a black person as the primary focus.
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Jackson broke into films playing a missionary in St. Louis Blues (1958), and a funeral singer in Imitation of Life (1959).
While attending the National Baptist Convention in 1956, Jackson met Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, both ministers emerging as organizers protesting segregation.
As gospel music became more popular -primarily due to her influencesingers began appearing at non-religious venues as a way to spread a Christian message to non-believers.
Jackson toured Europe again in 1964, mobbed in several cities and proclaiming, I thought I was the Beatles!, in Utrecht. She appeared in the film The Best Man (1964).
Jackson's recovery took a full year, during which she was unable to tour or record, ultimately losing 23 kg. From this point on she was plagued with near-constant fatigue, bouts of tachycardia, and high blood pressure as her condition advanced.
She was once more heartbroken upon learning of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She attended the funeral in Atlanta where she gave one of her most memorable performances of Take My Hand, Precious Lord. With this, Jackson retired from political work and personal endorsements.
While touring Europe months later, Jackson became ill in Germany and flew home to Chicago where she was hospitalized. In January 1972, she received surgery to remove a bowel obstruction and died in recovery.
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man cannot live in health without them.
Mahalia Jackson
