Author Archives: Emma Rosen

James Bland: The Most Famous Composer You Never Knew

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A headline from The Pittsburgh Courier (a Black newspaper) in 1939. The article is a biography of James Bland and is a response to the possible adoption of “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” as Virginia’s state song. Full page available here

TW: Racist descriptions of Black people

If you’re American, I’m willing to bet you’ve heard of Stephen Foster. Even if you couldn’t write a dissertation on him, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve heard the name, or sung one of his famous songs, like “Oh Susanna”. But have you heard of James Bland? Like Foster, Bland made his fame as a minstrel composer and was major player in the industry in the late 19th and early 20th century, yet Bland is far less known today. The difference? James Bland was Black.

Bland was descended from a long line of free Black people (his father was educated at Oberlin College) and was born in 1854 in Flushing, New York. He was educated at Howard University. He was an extremely successful entertainer, having been part of many famous troupes, including as Sprague’s Original Georgia Minstrels and Callender’s Georgia Minstrels. And of course, he was also extremely successful as a composer. Though well known among those in the industry, Bland did not get the same recognition by the general public. He wrote over 700 songs, but only around 50 were published under his name. Some were even published under Foster’s, as Tom Fletcher, a contemporary of Bland, observed in his book 100 Years of the Negro Show Business:

“Both [Foster and Bland] flourished at the same time, during the early days of show business, but Foster’s friends and heirs kept his name before the public, a privilege Bland did not enjoy. The ideas of the two men on songs were very similar too, and very often a song written by Bland would be credited to Foster with whose name the general public was much more familiar.” (83)

Sheet music for “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” published in 1878

In fact, when “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” was proposed as the state song of Virginia in the late 1930s, many believed the song was written by Foster, and, according to the Pittsburgh Courier, when it was discovered to have been written by Bland, a Black composer, the proposition was almost discarded. It wasn’t, however, and Bland’s song was the state song of Virginia from 1940 to 1997, when it was removed due to its racist lyrics which sentimentalize slavery and the Old South.

A recording of “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” from 1916

 

James Bland in many ways encapsulates the tension inherent in bringing to light the accomplishments and successes of Black minstrel performers and composers in general. Many of Bland’s most famous works, like “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”, have lyrics that romanticize slavery. Black minstrels sometimes both literally and figuratively had to “black up”, or in other words, cater to the white imagination of what Blackness really was. But it’s important to note that Bland also composed antislavery songs like “De Slavery Chains Am Broke At Last”, and had his own voice and agency – he was not merely an imitation Stephen Foster. And also, minstrelsy was one of the earliest opportunities for Black entertainers, performers, and composers to start their careers, to make make money, and to make their voices heard. What’s more, minstrelsy is far from gone in American popular culture. Which begs the question:

So long as we remember Stephen Foster, shouldn’t we remember James Bland too?

 

Bibliography

Bland, James A. Carry me back to old Virginny. John F. Perry & Co., Boston, monographic, 1878. Notated Music. https://www.loc.gov/item/sm1878.x0004/.

Bland, James A, Orpheus Quartet, James A Bland, Josef Pasternack, Lambert Murphy, Harry Macdonough, William F Hooley, and Reinald Werrenrath. Carry me back to old Virginny. 1916. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-20049/.

Fletcher, Tom. 100 Years in the Negro Show Business. Da Capo Press. New York 1984.

Hullfish, William R. “James A. Bland: Pioneer Black Songwriter.” Black Music Research Journal 7 (1987): 1–33. https://doi.org/10.2307/779446.

 

 

 

 

The Contradiction of Black Minstrelsy

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What do you think of when you think of minstrelsy?

From our contemporary lens, it’s very easy to think of minstrelsy as a horrible, racist manifestation of white supremacy. Which, for the record, it surely was. But it wasn’t just that. For many Black Americans, black minstrelsy offered a form of employment in a depressed economy, a form of control over their representation, and a training ground for later prominent figures in other forms of Black music, like blues.

Black minstrelsy has never been universally admired, and a diversity of opinions have coexisted since its inception. As Southern writes, “The black minstrel has been much maligned by many, including members of his own race, for perpetuating the Jim Crow and Zip Coon stereotypes” (269), a statement which gets to the core struggle and contradiction of Black minstrelsy. White minstrelsy predated Black minstrelsy by several decades, and its success depended on these stereotypes. Many of the owners of Black troupes also owned white troupes. While black performers had some agency to represent themselves at least a little more authentically than white performers, Black minstrelsy still operated with many of the same expectations and for many of the same audiences. Which begs the question, what was it like for the Black performers?

W.C. Handy

The answer, of course, is complex. Rampant white supremacy and racial violence was a fact of life for Black minstrels – Handy, a member of Mahara’s Minstrels writes in his autobiography of the lynching of a band member (43) and many other acts of racially motivated violence and harassment. But Handy, who began his career in minstrelsy and later became a major player in blues, seems to recognize the importance of Black minstrelsy, writing “Historians of the American stage have slighted the old Negro minstrels” (34).

Chick Beaman, another performer from the latter days of minstrelsy, writing for the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, describes almost the exact opposite contradiction . “When you

begin trouping you’re dead – theatrically – and soon forgotten” he writes, “But I love it and it’s a great life. So let the band play.” This is pretty much the reverse of Handy’s experience – Beaman valued minstrelsy as a lifestyle rather than a stepping stone in his career.

So how should we view the legacy of Black minstrelsy? Being itself fundamentally a contradiction, it’s hard to say for sure. But we do know that it was an important social, economic, and musical enterprise with lasting affects today.

 

 

Bibliography

Beaman, Chick. 1921. CHICK BEAMAN: FAMOUS MINSTREL MAN PUTS ON HIS PHILOSOPHICAL SHOES. The Chicago Defender (National edition) (1921-1967), Aug 27, 1921. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/chick-beaman/docview/491909725/se-2?accountid=351 (accessed November 15, 2021).

Handy, W.C. The Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. London. Sidgwick and Jackson, 1957.

Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York, NY. WW Norton Company, 1971.

The Complicated Legacy of Music and Forced Assimilation – Stewart Indian School, Nevada

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Carson City. A sleepy small town in the Eagle Valley of Nevada. Surrounded by brown hills and the mighty Sierra Nevada to the West, the town seems even smaller. In Nevada it is common to spray paint the hills with the letter of the local high schools. In Carson City there is only one public high school, Carson High, and looking to the west you can see a giant C on the hill – we call this C hill. But if you look to the east, you’ll see another letter spray painted on the hill – S hill. But S hill is not the site of high school teenagers yearly pranks and shenanigans like C hill is. It’s a remembrance. A remembrance of the residential boarding school that operated in Carson City for over 90 years.

C Hill

Stewart Indian School, also known in its history as Carson Indian School or Carson Institute, was built as part of the assimilationist era policies of the late 19th century that forcibly removed Native children from their families to be trained at residential schools. The school opened in 1890, first taking students from the local Washoe, Paiute, and Western Shoshone tribes, but later expanding to take students from all across the Western United States.

This snapshot is from the Board of Indian Commissioners Bulletin No. 34 in 1917, and is representative of the white savior complex that was common at the time and associated with Stewart

There is a lot that can be said about residential schools and about Stewart in general, such as the way white people viewed and operated the school, the drastic differences in experience of students across the school’s 90 years of operation, and the historical trauma and reclaiming of the space by the Nevada Indian Commission today. I encourage you to learn more at their website. But for the purposes of this blog, I’m going to focus on one element of the school – the band.

Considering Stewart’s legacy of forced assimilation and the punishment of students’ cultural heritage (like language, music, and traditions), I expected to be writing a post about how the school’s band was just another tool of assimilation and erasure. But while it was undoubtedly part of that same structure of assimilation and cultural violence, my research led me to view the Stewart band’s legacy as more complex than just that.

Since documentation was much harder to find for the earlier years of operation, I’m focusing on the last 40 or so years of operation, from the 1940s to 1980. Looking through many school yearbooks from this era, I found that the band was always featured prominently. It had at least it’s own page and often many pictures, sometimes accompanied by a description of the band’s accomplishments. The band was public facing, competing at competitions, performing at the Nevada Day Parade, and giving public concerts. I managed to find an aural resource, a description from the son of former band director Earl Laird (director from 1930-1939) which described Laird as a beloved teacher, and an interview clip of an alumnus of the band from the 1940s who described playing in the Nevada Day Parade as “the biggest highlight”.

Based on my preliminary research in the yearbook archives and the audio recording, my impression is that the band was important to the students, at least in the later years of operation. So despite being part of an institution of forced assimilation and being inextricably linked to this horrible legacy, perhaps within the context of the school itself the band offered some sort of relief. More research is necessary to fully understand the Stewart band, but one thing is certain – it has a complex legacy.

 

Bibliography

Nevada and California Indians. Board of Indian Commissioners Bulletin No. 34, 1917. American Indian Histories and Cultures. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_MS_911_BX05_1/110
Tara Williams, and Susan M. Tracz. “Taking Back the Fire: Schooling Experiences of Central California Indian People Across Generations.” Journal of American Indian Education 55, no. 2 (2016): 75–98. https://doi.org/10.5749/jamerindieduc.55.2.0075.
“Stewart Indian School ‘Home of the Braves.’” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Feb. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGP2nxlgA6E&t=1255s.

“Stewart Indian School Trail Map.” Stewart Indian School, https://stewartindianschool.com/walking-trail/.

 

Minstrelsy and American Popular Culture

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Content Warning: Offensive language, racial slurs

There’s a common and very problematic sentiment in America that racism and racial oppression are things of the past, and this sentiment certainly applies to minstrelsy as well. While I like to think the majority of Americans would be able agree that minstrelsy was a deeply racist phenomena, a much smaller percentage has a grasp on just how influential it was and still in American popular culture. It’s easy to box it off, to say it was a bad episode of our history, to confine it to the past. But this is certainly not true. The research I did for this blog post made it abundantly clear just how recently minstrelsy was big, and just how absurd it is to claim it has no influence today.

The primary source I focused on was the sheet music for a minstrel song written in 1912, “At Uncle Tom’s Cabin Door”, music by Rubey Cowan and lyrics by Chas. Bayha. The lyrics of this song are extremely racist, romanticizing plantation life and claiming that enslaved people were happier before the Civil War. This recording is from 1913, and I’ve included the lyrics below. The picture shown in the video is the cover of the sheet music.

“In Eighteen Sixty, In Eighteen Sixty,
Those happy days before Emancipation,
‘way down in Dixie, ‘way down in Dixie,
merry darkies you would see.
They had their sorrows, that’s quite true,
But there were happy hours too,
Let’s go back once more,
Back before the war,
and we’ll see some jubilee.

CHORUS.
See them dancing around,
Watch them prance on the ground,
Uncle Tom is gay, troubles fade away,
Hear them after each encore,
Roar for more,
Banjo’s strumming a tune,
Topsy’s acting like a loon,
There’s some celebration on the old plantation
At Uncle Tom’s Cabin door.

Just hear them singing, Just hear them singing,
Those good ole darkey tunes they’re harmonizing,
Just see them swinging, just see them swinging
to the strains of “Old Black Joe.”
Here comes the Marsa from his ride,
There’s little Eva by his side,
Sime Legree’s away, bloodhounds are at play,
Those were happy, happy days.

Now, this overt racism is probably not at all surprising even if you know almost nothing about minstrelsy. But what caught my attention about this example is the composers, Cowan and Bayha. Neither of them are especially well known, but what they are known for is not minstrelsy. It’s other forms of popular culture.

We’ll start with Charles Bayha. He was a New Yorker best known for writing wartime songs during World War I, including I’d be proud to be the mother of a soldier. What little information I could find about him made no mention that he wrote minstrel songs, even though he evidently did. He died in 1957, as did Rubey Cowan, coincidentally. I bring this up because 1957 is still within living memory for some Americans.

Rubey Cowan was possibly a bit more well known, given that he had an obituary written in the New York Times. Cowan is described as a TV executive, composer, and music publisher – he worked at Hollywood. I think what is the most striking to me about this is that Cowan – and many others who worked in entertainment – had careers that spanned the time from when minstrelsy was big to when TV was big. It simply was not that long ago that big executives at Hollywood had begun their careers in the minstrelsy industry. From this research it’s not hard to imagine the strong tie between minstrelsy and many other forms of American popular culture.

Bibliography

Bayha, Charles Anthony, William J Halley, and Rubey Cowan. At Uncle Tom’s cabin door. 1913. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-262541/.

Cowan, Rubey and Charles Bayha. At Uncle Tom’s Cabin Door. York Music Co., New York. 1912. Mississippi State University Libraries, Digital Collections. https://cdm16631.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/SheetMusic/id/24824

“Rubey Cowan, 66, Dies”. New York Times. July 30, 1957, 23. https://nyti.ms/3jxAWQt

 

How Should Plantation Songs Be Preserved? An Early 20th Century Dialogue

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Romanticized notions about plantation life have a strong grip on the white American imagination – think Gone With The Wind, and a plethora of novels like it. This genre typically depicts enslaved people as happy and contented and focuses on the lives of the usually benevolent seeming enslavers. Overall the scene is idyllic, despite what the conditions for the enslaved people were actually like. This romanticized, exoticized view of enslaved people and their descendants is relevant to many publications from both before the Civil War and after, including one that I am going to focus on today: Plantation Songs for My Lady’s Banjo and Other Negro Lyrics & Monologues by Eli Shepperd with “Pictures from Life” by J. W. Otts, published in 1901.

First just look at the cover of this book. There’s a banjo, some upside down corn, and some sort of exotic looking squirrel. The inside is full of photographs of rural Black people and poetry/song lyrics that have no context. When I first found this source I was thinking “What on earth is this? There has to be more context.” And it turns out there is, and that the context is intimately related to the plantation romance genre. Eli Shepperd was the pen name of a well known white Alabaman author, Martha Strudwick Young. Young was wealthy and educated and specialized in writing dialect poetry and fiction – in other words, she used the language of Black people, wrote from their perspective without their consent, and made a successful career out of it (Kobzeff).

The house of JW Otts,  (Library of Congress)

I found the photographer, J.W. Otts, to be similarly wealthy and white, and this perspective definitely shows through in the photographs, which make out the lives of the Black people to be simple and happy. The picture at right is a good example of this bias. Interestingly, Young later went on to write several poems (again, from the perspective of Black people) about Black resistance to white photographers, which seems to indicate that she found the activities of photographers ethically questionable but never applied the same standards to her own work (Matthews).

Intrigued, I set about to find other perspectives that existed at the time regarding plantation songs, and began searching African American newspapers. One of the more interesting articles I found was titled “Coon Songs” and was written in 1914 for the Savannah Tribune, just a little over 10 years after the publication of Plantation Songs.

It wasn’t clear to me whether or not the author themself was Black, but the newspaper is definitely directed at a Black audience. The article actually had something in common with Young’s book – it makes a case for the preservation of plantation songs as a historical heritage. This is where the similarity ends. The author bemoans the fact that plantation songs are not being preserved by the new generation.

“The young colored people of our day cannot sing [plantation songs] and do not appreciate them. It seems to me a pity that the young colored people patronize the minstrel shows that merely burlesque sacred songs of the old days.”

The author suggests that young men form classes to learn the old plantation songs “from the old people who are passing off the stage”, concluding that “a spirit of genuine patriotism and race pride calls upon intelligent men to preserve these true songs”.

The major difference between this article and Young’s book is that the author of the article argues for the preservation of plantation songs by learning from old performers for the purpose of uplifting Black people, while Young’s book attempts to preserve Black heritage in book form, through a white lens, for urban white people’s imaginations. Both respond to what was evidently viewed as a problem in the post-Reconstruction South – the old plantation songs were disappearing. And both strive to offer a remedy. The difference is who the remedy is for.

Bibliography

“Coon Songs.” Savannah Tribune, vol. XXIX, no. 23, 21 Feb. 1914, p. [4]. Readex: African American Newspapers, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A11CCCBEC43F62EDE%40EANAAA-11D5E09364F22910%402420185-11D5E09378D940D0%403-11D5E093CB27DD90%40Coon%2BSongs. Accessed 9 Oct. 2021.

Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. The J.W. Otts House, Greensboro, Alabama. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2010641120/>.

Kobzeff, Joel. “Martha Strudwick Young.” Encyclopedia of Alabama, 15 Mar. 2021, http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-4269.

Matthews, Scott L. “Protesting the Privilege of Perception: Resistance to Documentary Work in Hale County, Alabama, 1900–2010.” Southern Cultures, vol. 22, no. 1, University of North Carolina Press, 2016, pp. 31–65, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26221778

Shepperd, Eli. Plantation songs for my lady’s banjo and other Negro lyrics & monologues by Eli Shepperd with pictures from life by J. W. Otts. R.H. Russell; New York, 1901. Afro Americana Imprints.  https://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/Evans/?p_product=EAIX&p_theme=eai&p_nbid=A57V58PNMTYzMzgwNzQ5Ni4yNjM4NTA6MToxNDoxOTkuOTEuMTgwLjE3NQ&p_action=doc&p_queryname=7&p_docref=v2:13D59FCC0F7F54B8@EAIX-147E02D0C7259700@11449-15E338602ACE6790@37

 

The Power of Images – Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

While this well known adage has probably originated in comparatively recent times, the sentiment has existed for centuries. It certainly seems to have been the guiding business strategy of Frank Leslie, founder of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, whose success was largely due to the novelty and appeal of illustrations in news reporting. The paper, founded by Leslie in 1855 and printed for another 42 years after his death in 1880, was extremely popular in its day and now regarded as an important source of primary source evidence. In this blog post, I will focus on the extent to which this newspaper is a reliable way to learn about the musical activities of enslaved peoples before the Civil War, using one particular image printed Leslie’s 1857 newspaper as a case study.

The image in question is titled “Winter Holydays in the Southern States. Plantation Frolic on Christmas eve” and can be seen below.

The illustration provides a wealth of detail about what holiday celebration might have looked like on a Southern plantation — central to the image is two black dancers and to the right a group of black musicians, one playing the fiddle and one playing the banjo (or similar instrument). The presence of white onlookers (presumably owners), shows that the celebration was not free of supervision.

The illustration provides strong evidence that enslaved people had and used musical instruments during their time off at celebrations, The musicality of enslaved people can be corroborated with other evidence, for example from colonial newspapers and runaway slave listings, which often make mention of enslaved people’s musical abilities on the violin, french horn, and other instruments (Southern). The setting of the musicians in this illustration also gives some evidence of the type of music being performed (most likely dance music). To this extent, the illustration is helpful in knowing some basic information about the musical activities on Southern plantations.

An excerpt from Southern’s book, Music of Black Americans, demonstrates the musical abilities of runaway slaves.

The illustration, however, also has some glaring omissions and hidden biases. One glaring omission is the location that the illustration claims to depict. The only indication provided is that it is on a Southern plantation, an indication that is very vague and generalized, making it easy to assume that that the celebrations of enslaved people were the same throughout the South — a fact that is, in all probability, false. This generalization shows a lack of respect for the musicians and also shows that this image is catered to the white imagination of his audience. Additionally, if a researcher was interested in more specific regional variation of musical practices, the illustration would be of no help at all. Of course, the newspaper’s aim wasn’t to respect the traditions of enslaved peoples or aid future researchers. The aim was to make money.

Keeping this purpose in mind is especially relevant for this particular publication. From 1855 to 1857, Leslie struggled to keep the newspaper in operation (Pearson). Publications from this time needed to sell. The paper was published in New York, so the audience was probably largely white Northerners, and the image likely caters to this subgroup, attempting to satisfy their curiosity about what life on Southern plantations was like. This could very well affect the way the scene is depicted.

Consequently, the illustrations in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper are useful primary sources, but only if taken in context. The white audience and need to sell are key biases that must be recognized when working with this type of material, and while perhaps each picture is worth a thousand words, another thousand words may be necessary to analyze reliability of the source.

 

Bibliography

Pearson, Andrea G. “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and Harper’s Weekly: Innovation and imitation in nineteenth-century American pictorial reporting.” The Journal of Popular Culture 23.4 (1990): 81-111.

Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. Third Edition. New York, NY. WW Norton Company, 1997.

“Winter Holydays in the Southern States. Plantation Frolic on Christmas eve” Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, v. V, no. 108, p. 64. New York, 1857. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018646020/

“Bad Singing Is Forbidden” – American Church Music in the 19th Century

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We all know the feeling of standing out, and it’s no different in a group of singers: maybe you don’t quite know the words, sing a little off pitch, or a little too slow. Perhaps you’re afraid your singing might seem “unharmonius, complicated, strange” and perhaps, if you were a Methodist living in Cincinnati in 1837, you’d wake up one day to see those exact words printed in the newspaper under the ominous direction “Bad singing is forbidden.”

So then, where does this sentiment come from? And what exactly is “bad singing”?

Liturgical and congregational singing has a long history in Europe that was transported and developed in colonial churches. Psalm singing, or psalmody, was especially important to early worship functions — the practice of lining out, for example, was imported from England and involves a minister or leader singing or “lining out” each line before congregation sings it back  (“Lining Out”). In the 1720s, a reform movement that promoted “correct” singing, singing schools, and instruments to help people stay on pitch began to gain traction, and slowly the traditional practices of congregational singing began to be replaced with new ones, called by the reformers “regular singing” (Southern).

Of course, not all churches agreed with the reformists. Methodists generally promoted and underscored the act of congregational singing as a devotion to God for all and frowned upon the performance of any difficult works by soloists or choirs, as these were seen as exclusive and inaccessible (Tucker). They were also vehemently opposed to the addition of instruments like the organ well into the 19th century (Temperley).

 

The Winston Place Methodist Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, constructed 1884

Many of these discourses about congregational singing were reflected in the Cincinnati newspaper article mentioned earlier, “Congregational Singing: Of the Spirit and Truth of Singing” published in the Western Christian Advocate in 1837. The article is very strongly worded, and very opposed to the introduction of “foreign elements” to congregational singing.

“Satan is ever watching to insinuate superstition and other foreign elements into the pure and simple worship of God.”

The “foreign elements”, later described as “rituals of heathenism”, are supposed to come from (and blamed on) several groups throughout the article — Jews, Pagans, Roman Catholics, some American Protestants, and British Methodists — and refer primarily to difficult, complicated, pieces sung by soloists and choirs or played by instrumentalists. To combat this, the article offers a list of rules and regulations for singing.

“These [regulations] are so Scriptural, so full of good taste, and so well calculated to do good, and to promote the very best congregational singing”

Included in these regulations is the requirement that singing must be done with understanding of what is sung, everyone must sing, and only the Methodist tune books should be used. Interestingly, it also instructs that singing must not be too slow, for this would be too formal. Slow singing is more characteristic of the old way of singing (Southern), which this author generally tends to support rather than the reformed way, so it’s an interesting contradiction to note that there is an instruction to avoid slow singing in this text. Perhaps this is an example of a musical concession that has already been made to the reformers at this point in the history of Methodism.

And to prevent any “heathen” elements being adopted, the article concludes with a list of “what here is forbidden”, a list which seems to precisely forbid anything related to the reform movement — singing schools, instruments, choirs, and complicated music are expressly singled out. And, just to drive the point home, it concludes:

“Bad singing is forbidden: it is bad when unharmonius, complicated, strange, or confined to a few”

And here we come full circle. And so, what is “bad singing”? In the case of this 1837 newspaper, it is not just a general complaint about the quality of singing, but rather a targeted critique of an important religious discourse of the time.

The author of this article would probably be pleased that everyone appears to be singing, but horrified that this modern day United Methodist Church hymn is complete with a church choir and organ.

Bibliography

“CONGREGATIONAL SINGING.: “OF THE SPIRIT AND TRUTH OF SINGING.” Western Christian Advocate (1834-1883), vol. 4, no. 33, Dec 08, 1837, pp. 130. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/congregational-singing/docview/126433359/se-2?accountid=351.

“Lining out.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press. Date of access 27 Sep. 2021,<https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000016709>

Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. Third Edition. New York, NY. WW Norton Company, 1997. 

Temperley, Nicholas. “Methodist church music.” Grove Music Online. . Oxford University Press. Date of access 27 Sep. 2021, <https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000047533>

Tucker, Karen B. Westerfield. “Methodism.” Grove Music Online. 16. Oxford University Press. Date of access 27 Sep. 2021, <https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002250214>