Topic: Religious Folk Music Revival
The emergence of contemporary Christian music was facilitated by the development of an infrastructure that made recordings profitable. As mentioned in earlier posts, Kurt Kaiser [1] and Bob MacKenzie [2] improved the quality of recordings, both aesthetically and technically, so radio stations were willing to air them. The publishing houses of Word [3] and Benson worked to get paid royalties for their copyrights, and then instituted accounting procedures that ensured their writers actually got their money. [4]
Distribution remained a problem until Pat and Bernie Zondervan opened their first religious book store in a strip mall in 1960. [5] Songbooks no longer were crammed into the small section on the back wall of a general book store with Bibles and inspirational tomes. They had a section unto themselves.
Records no longer were dumped into a single bin near the discounted ones in record stores that were playing the current hit records over their in-house speakers. They were given an area devoted to them, separated by types.
The Zondervan brothers began as sellers, then publishers of religious books to Calvinists who had migrated to the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area from the Netherlands. [6] They had no particular proclivity for music. The Christian Reformed Church had separated from the Dutch Reformed Church when the latter began singing hymns, not just psalms.[7]
In 1941, Bernie went to a revival meeting held near Grand Rapids by Billy Graham. [8] The mother of Graham’s song leader had immigrated to New Jersey with her father from the Netherlands. [9] Al Smith had a collection of choruses that he asked Zondervan to distribute. [10] Two years later, Smith founded Singspiration. [11]
The market for religious music grew in the early 1950s. Zondervan’s changed the name of its newsletter from Book News to Book and Record News in 1952. [12] Its relationship with Smith expanded, when it began distributing recordings by Singspiration artists. [3]
Smith became less reliable in 1954, when he hinted he might move his business to Wheaton, Illinois. The Zondervans responded by forming their own music publishing company in 1955. [14]
Smith’s wife had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1947, [15] and one suspects the burden of her care was draining him both physically and financially. He had moved back to this native New Jersey in 1953, [16] where his parents still lived. [17] In 1955, he hired John Peterson as an editor. [18]
The financial health of Singspiration deteriorated, and in 1957 Peterson alerted the Zondervans. [19] The next year, they entered a partnership with Smith to incorporate Singspiration. [20] In 1960, Smith’s wife died, [21] and the following year, Smith sold his remaining interest in the company to the Zondervans and Peterson. [22]
About this time, Peterson hired Norman Johnson as his assistant. Peterson had been born in the Swedish community of Lindsborg, Kansas, [23] where members of the Evangelical Covenant Church lived. They had left their homeland because they were being persecuted for meeting privately to sing gospel songs with secular instruments. [24]
Peterson’s family had left Lindsborg [25] by the time Johnson was born in nearby Smolan, Kansas, in 1928. [26] When Johnson entered the Covenant church seminary in Chicago in 1949, [27] he sent Peterson a note of introduction. Peterson then was working for the Moody Bible Institute radio station. They remained friends. [28]
Peterson acknowledged the emergence of the Now Generation in 1970 when he hired Don Wyrtzen as his youth director. [29] Wyrtzen had written the popular "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" in 1966. [30]
That same year, 1970, Peterson and Johnson published a Folk Hymnal that was marketed to "the Now Generation." Half the material was copyrighted by Singspiration. It included a few songs from the Roman Catholic folk-mass composers, [31] and one each from Ralph Carmichael [32] and Kurt Kaiser. [33]
Its claim to "folk" lay in the use of "old historic folk melodies" like "I Know Where I’m Going." Unlike versions reported from tradition, including one recorded by Weavers, it was not a love song. [34] Instead, the chorus included the line: "the love for which He died Is all I need to guide me."
Four songs in the Folk Hymnal were from African-American traditions: the recently popularized "He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand" and "Go Tell It on the Mountain," the older "Jacob’s Ladder," and "Kumbaya." The last, however, was identified as Angolan.
One reason so few Black religious songs were used was Peterson applied a very strict definition of scriptural accuracy. When he reviewed Singspiration’s copyrights in the early 1960s, he discarded many songs because, while they may have had "nice tunes," the lyrics "didn’t measure up." [35]
"Kumbaya" was unchanged. It was placed between Charles A. Buffham’s "Feed My Lambs" and Peterson’s "Shepherd of Love." The index suggested it was appropriate as a prayer.
The Folk Hymnal’s most important innovation was not its rather conventional leavening of new religious songs with a few well-known contemporary ones, but its format. The spiral binding allowed it to lay flat on a piano music stand or a table beside a guitar player. Both piano and guitar chords were provided.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano, guitar chords
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
From Angola, Africa
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum is pronounced "koom"
Verses: kumbaya, cryin’, singin’, prayin’
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: verse-burden
Verse Repetition Pattern: repeat Chorus after each stanza
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: very slowly
Key Signature: two sharps
Guitar Chords: D G A A7
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: one syllable to one note except for final "Lord"
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: piano chords struck at the beginning of each measure and the beginning of each "kumbaya" phrase
Ending: none
Notes on Performance
The cover was black, cerise and tangerine. It featured a photograph of two young men wearing fisherman-knit sweaters and a woman with bangs. One man was holding a guitar.
On the inside cover, Peterson wrote "a basic keyboard harmonization—upon which free improvisation is recommended—has been provided in most cases. However, the ideal accompaniment is guitar. Of course the addition of string bass and percussion, at your discretion, is appropriate too."
Audience Perceptions
An advertisement in a later songbook, claimed a Folk Hymnal was a "phenomenal best-seller" and "a must for all churches and coffee houses." [36]
Notes on Performers
John Willard Peterson spent World War II in the Air Force. He used his GI Benefits to study at Moody Bible Institute long enough to take all their music classes. [37] Then he transferred to the American Music Conservatory, where he graduated in 1952. [38]
He recalled his mother played piano, her sister the guitar, and her sister’s husband the mandolin. "At family reunions there were sure to be several stringed instruments and an accordion and the singing was something to hear." [39] He added, he loved the Covenant church. "The music was thrilling — great congregational singing, accompanied by a pump organ and piano, at which my sister Marie presided." [40]
His oldest brother Rudy became a choir director in Seattle, [41] while the intermediate boys had radio programs as the Norse Trio. Ken and Bill played guitars, and Bob the steel guitar. After Bob moved to Colorado, Peterson took his place. [42]
Despite the emphasis he placed on lyrics, Peterson found, with time, "the text may be fuzzy or lost to memory, the tune will still be fresh in my mind. The harmonies will fall into place and the orchestration will be as crystal clear as it was when I heard it this afternoon in rehearsal." [43]
Norman Eldon Johnson created the piano arrangement. He had graduated from Bethany College in Lindsborg in 1949, [44] then enrolled in the North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. [45] While working as a youth pastor and minister of music in California, he earned a masters in church music from the University of California. [46] In Grand Rapids, Johnson served as music minister in the Evangelical Covenant Church. [47]
His sister remembered Johnson "was always known for his music. Whether playing the organ for chapel in Old Main, or his amazing ability at the piano, he was known for incredible chords and the ability to enhance the soloist or congregation in their performance." [48]
Availability
Book: "Kum Ba Yah (Come by Here)." Folk Hymnal. Edited by Norman Johnson and John W. Peterson. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Singspiration, 1970. 9.
End Notes
1. Kurt Kaiser was the subject of the post for 15 December 2017.
2. Bob MacKenzie was the subject of the post for 26 July 2020.
3. Word was the subject of the posts for 5 July 2020 and 12 July 2020.
4. John T. Benson. A History 1898-1915 of the Pentecostal Mission, Inc. Nashville: Trevecca Press, 1977. 209. "Among the good things coming out of the Company are the royalties paid to Christian writers, composers, arrangers, and artists. Accurately, the Company with its computerized bookkeeping honestly distributes royalties per year amounting to one and one-quarter million dollars. This makes it possible for those receiving royalties to continue their religious work."
5. James E. Ruark. The House of Zondervan. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006. 109–110. Willis Cook was responsible for the expansion. I bought collections containing camp songs in them in the early 1970s. It may have been the one in East Lansing, which was one of the first after the one in suburban Grand Rapids.
6. Ruark.
7. Wikipedia. "Christian Reformed Church in North America."
8. Ruark. 50. Graham was then a student at Wheaton College. Smith was his roommate.
9. VickiO. "Gerrigje ‘Carrie’ Junte Smith." Find a Grave website. 5 October 2010. Smith’s mother.
VickiO. "Aalt ‘Albert’ Junte." Find a Grave website. 21 March 2009. Smith’s mother’s father. He was a member of the Holland Reformed Church, according to the obituary reprinted by VickiO from The [Patterson, New Jersey] Sunday Chronicle. 11 July 1920. 12.
10. Ruark. 50. The collection was titled Singspiration.
11. Dr. Alfred B. Smith. Obituary. [Binghamton, New York] Press and Sun-Bulletin. 12 August 2001. One of Smith’s sons lived in Binghamton.
12. Ruark. 100.
13. Ruark. 101.
14. Ruark. 67.
15. "Mr. Singspiration." Living Hymns website.
16. Living Hymns website.
17. Carrie J. Smith. Obituary. The [Scranton, Pennsylvania] Times-Tribune. 12 March 1983. 9. Reprinted by VickiO. It said she was a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Montrose, Pennsylvania, where Al had moved.
18. John W. Peterson. The Miracle Goes On. With Richard Engquist. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1976. 162.
19. Peterson, autobiography. 180–181.
20. Ruark. 89.
21. Living Hymns website.
22. Peterson, autobiography. 182.
23. Peterson, autobiography. 33.
24. Wikipedia. "Evangelical Covenant Church." It was organized in Chicago in 1885 after Lindsborg was settled.
25. Peterson, autobiography. 37.
26. sister7a. "Norman E. Johnson." Find a Grave website. 4 June 2007. "Smolan was named after the Swedish province of Småland, the native home of a large share of the early settlers." [49]
27. The date deduced from the year he graduated from Bethany College. That was provided by Ruth Peterson. "Norman E. Johnson." Lindsborg150th website. 19 June 2019.
28. Peterson, autobiography. 184.
29. Ruark. 147.
30. Jack Wyrtzen and Don Wyrtzen. "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow." Copyrighted by Singspiration in 1966. It was included in Word’s Sing In, [50] Benson’s Now Sing Now, [51] and Hope Publishing’s A Time to Sing and A New Now. [52]
31. It included Ray Repp’s "Allelu!" and James Thiem’s "Sons of God." Both were published be F. E. L. Publications in 1966. Repp is mentioned in the post for 16 August 2020.
32. Ralph Carmichael. "The Savior Is Waiting." Waco: Sacred Songs, 1958. He was mentioned in the post for 15 December 2017.
33. Kurt Kaiser. "That’s for Me." Waco: Sacred Songs, 1969. He was the subject of the post for 15 December 2017. Peterson admitted that he began to feel threatened by these songwriters, but overcame his jealously through admitting his envy was a sin. [53]
34. The Weavers. The Weavers At Carnegie Hall. Vanguard VRS-9010. 1957. [Discogs entry] Their version was 16 measures long. [54] One published by A New Now was 30 measures. It replaced "I know who I’ll marry" with "I know why there’s music" and added a section that began "where are you going?" Peterson’s version was 45 measures. The origins of the song are obscure. [55]
35. Peterson, autobiography. 195.
36. John W. Peterson. Singing Youth. Grand Rapids: Singspiration Music, 1966; 1973 edition. Inside back cover.
37. Peterson, autobiography. 148.
38. Peterson, autobiography. 154.
39. Peterson, autobiography. 34.
40. Peterson, autobiography. 40.
41. Peterson, autobiography. 76.
43. Peterson, autobiography. 11.
44. Ruth Peterson. Bethany College was founded by Lutherans from Sweden. [56]
45. Emily R. Brink and Bert Polman. Psalter Hymnal Handbook. Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1989. 470.
46. "Lois (Solie) Johnson." Heritage Life Story website. She was Johnson’s wife.
47. Brink. 470.
48. Ruth Peterson.
49. Wikipedia. "Smolan, Kansas." Its source was John Rydjord. Kansas Place-Names. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972.
50. Sing In, 11, was the subject of the post for 12 July 2020.
51. Now Sing Now, 2, was discussed in the post for 26 July 2020.
52. A Time to Sing, 8, and A New Now, 45, which is described in the post for 9 August 2020.
53. Peterson, autobiography. 141.
54. "I Know Where I’m Going." The Weavers Song Book. Edited by Ronnie Gilbert with musical arrangements by Robert De Cormier. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960. 16–17.
55. "Katie Cruel (The Leeboy’s Lassie; I Know Where I’m Going)." The Traditional Ballad Index. California State University-Fresno website.
56. Wikipedia. "Bethany College (Kansas)."
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