Mahalia: A Life in Gospel Music - Hardcover

Orgill, Roxane

4.56

9 ratings by Goodreads

9780763610111: Mahalia: A Life in Gospel Music

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0763610119 ISBN 13: 9780763610111

Publisher: Candlewick, 2001

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Mahalia Jackson’s rise from a young choir soloist in New Orleans to America’s most famous gospel singer is a stirring story of social and musical history.

Born poor in New Orleans in 1911, young Mahalia Jackson was told to
"let it out" when she sang the gospel at church each Sunday. Swaying and clapping her hands, she astonished everyone who heard her powerful voice. As her fame grew, her soulful voice helped introduce gospel music to the world and brought hope to thousands of civil rights workers who marched for equality in the 1960s. Through it all, Mahalia’s faith in God never wavered and her talent remained a shining light. Roxane Orgill’s compelling narrative, accompanied by more than fifty photographs, brings drama, depth, and immediacy to the life of the world’s most famous gospel singer.

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Review:

Born black and poor into a small house crammed with 13 people, Mahalia Jackson hardly seemed destined to "walk with kings and queens," as her beloved Aunt Bell predicted. Yet, with deep faith in God and a voice that could turn a sedate audience into a writhing, foot-stomping frenzy, Mahalia did indeed find spectacular and satisfying fame and glory. Credited as one of the voices that introduced gospel music to the world at large, Mahalia remained true to her faith even as she climbed the road to superstardom. From down-home churches to Carnegie Hall, from the 1963 equal rights march on Washington to the funeral of her good friend Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Mahalia sang her heart out.

Roxane Orgill's handsome biography, with many black-and-white photos, follows the remarkable career of this New Orleans washer-girl who became an internationally acclaimed singer and supporter of the civil rights movement. Like the thousands of rapt audience members over her lifetime, readers will be moved and inspired by this powerful woman and her unwavering convictions. (Ages 10 and older) --Emilie Coulter

From the Author:

I wanted to write about Mahalia Jackson because I loved her singing. I heard her sing "Move On Up a Little Higher" on a cassette, and I flipped. I loved the voice, and the spirit behind it. Here was hymn singing, which I'd always liked, with a beat. Gospel rocked.

Mahalia's singing freed me to write a different sort of biography. Instead of telling everything that Mahalia did, I selected events and experiences that seemed to make her what she was. I wanted to make the writing musical, and to write from "inside her head."

The book reads like a story, but is true; that is, the quotes are real, the events really happened, and even the feelings in the text are verifiable. Thus, instead of saying that Mahalia arrived with her aunt at Chicago's Twelfth Street Station in December, 1927, I wrote: "Whoo! The wind! Halie's coat felt about as thick as a potato sack. What was that stinky smell? The stockyards, Aunt Hannah said, where they kill pigs and turn them into pork chops. Phew!"

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