Overview

The venerable Dixie Hummingbirds stand at the top of the black gospel music pantheon as artists who not only significantly shaped that genre but, in the process, also profoundly influenced emerging American pop music genres from Rhythm & Blues and Doo-Wop to Rock 'n' Roll, Soul, and Hip-Hop. Great God A'Mighty! The Dixie Hummingbirds shows how, in a career spanning more than nine decades, they pointed the way from pure a cappella harmony to guitar-driven soul to pop-stardom crossover, collaborating with artists like Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon along the way. Drawing on interviews with founding and quintessential members as well as many of the pop luminaries influenced by the Hummingbirds, author Jerry Zolten tells their story from rising up and out of the segregated South in the twenties and thirties to success on Philadelphia radio and the New York City stage in the forties to grueling tours in the fifties and over the long haul a brilliant recording career that carried well over into the 21st century. The story of the Dixie Hummingbirds is a tale of determined young men who navigated the troubled waters of racial division and the cutthroat business of music on the strength of raw talent, vision, character, and perseverance, and made an indelible name for themselves in American cultural history. This heavily edited 2nd edition features brand new photographs, expanded historical context, and a full new chapter on the Hummigbirds' trajectory up to the 21st century.

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9780190071493

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Reviews

Zolten fluently unfolds this story, with its sundry subplots and themes. His descriptions of music are evocative, and he neither minimizes nor exaggerates the gospel world's fierce moral and showbiz competitiveness. He shows how, like all the top-flight gospel quartets, the Birds drilled on staging and presentation as well as music.... He makes a case that The Dixie Hummingbirds were exemplars and conveyors of cultural and musical change.--New York Times Book Review This intriguing, fast-moving history is highly recommended for anyone interested in music, social history, gospel, or the American experience.--Library Journal In this excellent history, Zolten carefully and lovingly details the almost 75-year history of the Hummingbirds, from their start in the Depression to their induction into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2000. This is a fine exploration of an important style and era in the history of American popular music and culture.--Publishers Weekly A fabulously entertaining story of the Birds--and it's all here: the 1928 organization, 1938 addition of Ira Tucker, name changes in the early 1940s, Cafe Society in 1942, collaboration with Angelic Gospel Singers in 1950, Go Out of the Program in 1953, the Apollo Theatre in 1956, Newport Festivals in 1966 and 1972, Loves Me Like a Rock in 1973, and full-fledged concerts into the 1990s. This is an extraordinary and welcomed addition to African American gospel music history.--Horace Clarence Boyer, author of The Golden Age of Gospel

Author Information

Jerry Zolten, Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences and Integrative Arts at The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, is an educator, author, music and film producer, and screen and broadcast narrator. He writes extensively about American roots and vernacular music as both communication about culture and as an influence on contemporary pop music. Zolten's association with The Dixie Hummingbirds began during the late 1980s, initially as a producer of concert and festival appearances, then later as a chronicler of the group's history, culminating in the First Edition of Great God A'Mighty! The Dixie Hummingbirds: Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Music (2003). Zolten contributed liner notes for the Grammy-winning two-volume The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Volumes 1 & 2 from Jack White's Third Man Records. He is also a principle on-screen narrator in the film The Ballad of the Dreadnought, and co-producer and principle narrator of the documentary film How They Got Over: Gospel Quartets and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll.

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