To Do This, You Must Know How: Music Pedagogy in the Black Gospel Quartet Tradition

Chapter Three. An Alabama Quartet Expert in Chicagoland

[ 217 ] An Alabama Quartet Expert in Chicagoland For many years Chicago was the capital of African American entertainment commerce. State Street’s legendary vaudeville theater and cabaret district was a haven for the first generation of jazz and blues musicians and composers. Progressive race music educators made their home in the city, and world-famous itinerant jubilee troupes were headquartered there. Choirs and glee clubs proliferated in churches, communities , and workplaces, reflecting black Chicago’s musical and cultural aspirations. An inspired cadre of university and conservatory-trained music instructors reached out to the city’s burgeoning black laboringclass community. Through their efforts the value of vocal music training , and its relevance to spiritual harmony singing, was established across class lines. The ascendance of grassroots music in Chicago was not a homegrown phenomenon but a by-product of recent southern emigration. The rise of a community-based gospel quartet singing movement in Chicago was keyed to the arrival of Norman R. McQueen, an emissary from Bessemer, Alabama’s hotbed of quartet training culture. Though not necessarily by design, McQueen’s initiatives built on an enthusiasm for choral music training that was initially stimulated by Chicago’s famous educators and choristers. ChapterThree An Alabama Quartet Expert in Chicagoland [ 218 ] The early development of gospel music in Chicago was fed by singing instruction, but molded and driven by commerce. McQueen made his way north in the mid-1920s and forged a long career in gospel music, facilitated by his access to the local media, specifically, his allies in newspaper and radio. Nevertheless, McQueen operated at the periphery of Chicago’s commercial music establishment. His experiences are part of the broader history of the transplantation of distinctively southern cultural traditions to Chicago during the Great Migration, and the way in which those traditions were assimilated and transformed. Jubilee Singing Stars, Choir Masters, and Chorus Directors Long before Norman McQueen began his work, Chicago was home to such celebrated professional jubilee singers as William A. Hann, William C. Buckner, and Charles P. Williams. These highly trained, resourceful jubilee singing entrepreneurs forged itinerant careers on the Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits, augmented by exploits overseas and, in the case of Charles P. Williams, annual excursions to the southern states. Basso William A. Hann was living in Chicago as early as 1910, when he placed an ad in the Chicago Defender announcing his services as an instructor of “Voice Culture.”1 He was active in the profession as early as 1905, when he served as musical director and manager of the Midland Jubilee Singers and Jubilee Male Quartette, traveling the Chautauqua circuits. An advertising brochure quoted a daily newspaper review: “The first part of the program was rather a surprise, as they appeared in ‘Picking Cotton’ costume, but they proved they could sing. . . . The Jubilee Male Quartette sang Sunday evening at the English M. E. Church to a packed house, giving us an entirely different program.”2 In 1911 William Hann inaugurated Hann’s Jubilee Singers. In 1914 they gave a “grand farewell concert” at Chicago’s Grace Presbyterian Church and made their way to California.3 Back in Chicago in November 1917, Hann unveiled the Four Harmony Kings, proclaimed by critics and public alike as “one of the best quartettes in the biz.”4 In 1919 James Reese Europe hired the Four Harmony Kings to show with his Hellfighters Band. Ivan Harold Browning was in the lineup, along with William Berry, Charles Drayton, and Hann. They made their first commercial recordings that year, as Lt. Jim Europe’s Four Harmony Kings.5 In September 1921 they joined the cast of Shuffle Along on Broadway. In 1925 the Four Harmony Kings split into two factions, and a battle ensued An Alabama Quartet Expert in Chicagoland [ 219 ] Brisbane Courier, August 22, 1927. (courtesy Gary LeGallant) An Alabama Quartet Expert in Chicagoland [ 220 ] over the rights to their golden title. In the end, Browning’s contingent held on to the original title, and soon left for London, beginning a long and prosperous sojourn overseas. Hann’s new quartet went off as the Emperors of Song.6 In the summer of 1927 Hann’s Emperors of Song sailed for Australia, where they were advertised as the Colored Emperors of Harmony. They returned to the United States one year later, and were said to be “kept busy working coast dates.”7 In 1926 they...