Woke Me Up This Morning by Alan Young

Woke Me Up This Morning by Alan Young

Many studies of African-American gospel music spotlight history and style. This one, however, is focused mainly on grassroots makers and singers. Most of those included here are not stars. A few have received national recognition, but most are known only in their own home areas. Yet their collective stories presented in this book indicate that black gospel music is one of the most prevalent forms of contemporary American song. Its author Alan Young is a New Zealander who came to the South seeking authentic blues music. Instead, he found gospel to be the most pervasive, fundamental music in the contemporary African-American South. Blues, he concludes, has largely lost touch with its roots, while gospel continues to express authentic resources. Conducting interviews with singers and others in the gospel world of Tennessee and Mississippi, Young ascertains that gospel is firmly rooted in community life. Woke Me Up This Morning includes his candid, widely varied conversations with a capella groups, with radio personalities, with preachers, and with soloists whose performances reveal the diversity of gospel styles. Major figures interviewed include the Spirit of Memphis Quartet and the Reverend Willie Morganfield, author and singer of the million-selling ""What Is This?"" who turned his back on fame in order to pastor a church in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. All speak freely in oral-history style here, telling how they became involved in gospel music and religion, how it enriches their lives, how it is connected to secular music (especially blues), and how the spiritual and the practical are united in their performances. Their accounts reveal the essential grassroots force and spirit of gospel music and demonstrate that if blues springs from America's soul, then gospel arises from its heart.

Young, Alan: - Alan Young gained a PhD in History from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His research into the political role of the Comyns in Scotland in the thirteenth century has continued to fascinate him for forty years. He has written biographies of William Wallace and Robert Bruce and, from this wider perspective on 'patriot heroes' in Scottish history, has returned, in this book, to evaluate the Comyn family in the Scottish independence movement. He is a freelance writer and lecturer. George Cumming gained a BA and MA in French and Linguistics from Simon Fraser University, Docteur en Linguistique from the University of Paris, and a Law degree from University College London. He is a qualified barrister and is currently a lecturer in European Union Law at the London Diplomatic Academy.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780878059447
ISBN 10	087805944X
Title	Woke Me Up This Morning
Author	Alan Young
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University Press of Mississippi
Year published	1997-01-30
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable