VOICES A Conversation on Courage & Consciousness CLASSIC The Story Behind a Beloved Baylor Song FEATURE A Passion Project Preserves Gospel Music CAMPUS Hear the Good News With Heavenly Voices &SPIRITSOUL spring 2022 | continue the legacy LIVING
SPIRIT (noun): those qualities regarded as forming the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period.
Kaye
03 Change is something that happens when individuals do their best, with great spirit, from the deepest parts of our souls. Editor-in-chief Jonathon Platt explains how we can all be positive forces of change when we embrace spirit and soul.
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The Baylor Black Gospel Preservation Program is hard at work digitizing and preserving years of classic gospel music that without intervention would have been lost forever. This project began as a labor of love by Bob Darden (’76), and guarantees that this wealth of music and culture will be preserved for generations to come.
Baylor Line Living is published by Baylor Line Foundation (for merly Baylor Alumni Association). Headquarters: 600 Austin Ave. #14, Waco, Texas 76701. Mailing address: PO Box 2089, Waco, Texas 76703. Copyright © 2022 by Baylor Line Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in Texas, USA. Postage paid at Waco, Texas and at additional mailing facilities. This publication and its trademarks are the property of Baylor Line Foundation and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the express written permission from the Publisher. Website: baylorlinefoundation.com. Subscribers: If the Post Service alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within 90 days. Submit these changes: baylorlinefoundation.com/update. Allow six weeks for change of address or new orders. The Publisher assumes no responsibility for care or return of or response to unsolicited materials. Baylor Line Magazine is available to subscribers, including Life Members and current members of Baylor Line Insider. Baylor Line Insider Exclusive is only available to current members of Baylor Line Insider. For more information: baylorlinefoundation.com/insider. The Publisher reserves the right to change publication schedule without notice. features
Nicole Robinson, Secretary
Barry Marie Brown
Sharon McDonald
Continue the legacy. Spring 2022 | Vol. 86 No. 2
Chad Wooten, Treasurer
contentsopening
Craig LynnLindseyRandyClaireMaleesaStacyTommyJJenniferSkyeDanielChaseAmyTomDougRobertJackieBrandonBrookeWesKatyDavidKarenShelbaRolandShehanCatieJohnJonathanBryanBobbyRobertCunninghamF.DardenFeatherFonvilleGrantHowardJacksonJeyarajahJohnsonSheltonJonesWaldenJonesLacyLinkLivesayMercerMillerBaughMooreMoralesMyersNesbittGrahamPagittPalmerPellegrinPerrymanReedRiceRossonSharpJohnsonSmithStAmantStevensDavisStoverTatum
Board Members
Tony Pederson, President
Callaway
Barnes
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Gordon Wilkerson, President Elect
Gary Burford
EDITOR’S NOTE Cover illustration by Gayle Kabaker 04 Chet Edwards served Texas faithfully in the U.S. House of Representatives for many years. He has continued his legacy of service in Waco and at Baylor in his years since leaving public office. Editor-in-chief Jonathon Platt sat down with Edwards to discuss lessons he’s learned from a life of legislating and living boldly for the right reasons.
1Spring 2022 BAYLOR LINE FOUNDATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2022-2023
Jan Huggins
Officers
Laura Hallmon, Past President
Craig Cherry
support@baylorline.com@BaylorLineFoundation
PASSION PROJECT
BEHIND THE COVER Cover illustration by Gayle Kabaker
ROBERT F. DARDEN JAMES MCINNIS CEO ALLEN HOLT DIRECTOR FUNDRAISINGOF COURTNEY FAULKNER DIRECTOR OF MEMBER RELATIONS
NOW RECORDED
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KELLIE JUANDIEGO THE LEGACY
THE GOOD NEWS 34 In this historical recounting of the origins of Baylor’s beloved “That Good Old Baylor Line,” we’ll rediscover how the lyrics to the song were finalized. This capsule from Baylor’s past also details the first occasion the song was recorded, and how the Golden Wave Band benefitted from this premiere recording.
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The story of the Heavenly Voices Gospel Choir, which has been a place for Black Baylor University Students to express their voices and their faith since its founding in 1988. From the group’s origins, to its evolution over the years, to the group’s resurrection after the trials of the pandemic, Heavenly Voices continues to sustain students with spiritual expression and Black community.
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This issue’s cover is a celebration of gospel music, both through Baylor’s Heavenly Voices choir and the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program. Created by artist Gayle Kabaker, who has illustrated seven New Yorker magazine covers, the subject resonated strongly for her. “I was thrilled to paint this cover art! I was in a gospel choir with my daughter, and it was the most fun I’ve ever had,” she said. “There is nothing that compares to being in the middle of the energy of singing this music live!” I hope this issue captures that energy and spirit for you as well.
voices
—Jonathon Platt, editor in chief
CFO
JONATHON PLATT EDITOR EMERITUS, BAYLOR LINE MAGAZINE
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CONTINUE
This little issue you hold is built on that simple idea. Change happens when we give our very best with a great spirit from our deepest soul.
In my undergraduate years, I became interested in the story of how Baylor desegrated the campus. It turned into a six year obsession, spanning two degrees, hundreds of interviews, and thousands of hours of research. Along the way, I met people who, and I know this can sometimes be a cliché but I deeply mean it — I met people who are changing the world through their voice.
Friends:
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Together the stories incased in these pages demonstrate just how truly awesome the Baylor Family is when everyone — and I mean everyone — is included.
In addition to this issue, we are also highlighting those in the Baylor Family who do this important work throughout our content properties. Online at baylorline. com, you can re-watch recent Hall of Fame Award Ceremonies, where we honor our best and brightest; you can read decades of archives from Baylor Line Magazin e; and, my personal favorite, you can join me in decoding the professional success and personal stories of the Baylor Family’s best on podcast episodes of Direct Together,Line.
When you think of change, it’s probably not something that happens thanks to a librarian toiling await in a closet with vinyl record, or because of a student joining in the tradition of a stories choir, or a man meeting the widow of a veteran. But that’s actually the very places where change starts, grows, and spreads.
I think all this work proves that with spirit and with soul, we can each change the world in phenomenal ways. I hope this issue inspires you to do just that with and in your own life. How will you embrace your own spirit and soul?
JonYours, J onathon P latt (’16, M a ’19) Editor-in-chief, Baylor Line Magazine
EDITOR’S NOTE
Wow. What you hold in your hands now is truly going to be a treat. This issue defies categorization, description, even my wildest hopes of what it could become.
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IN CONVERSATION
Chet inrepresentedEdwardsTexastheU.S.HouseofRepresentativesfortwentyyears.
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I hope you enjoy this interview. It was one of my favorites to do simply because of how giving, open, and fun Chet is to speak with. I felt like I was talking to the same person in preparation for the event and in the green room as I was talking to on stage. I hope that comes across and that you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
Chet Edwards discusses his time in politics and the lessons he learned from a lifetime of legislating, leading, and living boldly for the right reasons
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Editor’s note: This interview was conducted for our December 2021 Living Legacy event. Chet graciously agreed to be our first guest in the hot seat, though, he did note that he hopes he won’t be the last living legacy.
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If you’d like to hear the interview in full, jump over to baylorline.com/chet
Jonathon Platt: So, okay. Chet, I want to start back to the beginning of your political career, and I want to know what was the one word that would best describe how you felt when you found out you were going to Washington as a US Congressman? Chet Edwards: Humbled. To think that in our country, a middle-class kid with family that didn’t come from a political background or a lot of wealth would have that opportunity.I’lltakealittle legislative license here and use a second word: gratitude. Grateful to all the mentors. From my parents, to my third-grade teacher who had me give my first political speech, bless her heart. To my high school teacher who sent me to Washington for a week and brought politics and government alive to me and changed my life in that way. And Congressman Olin Teague who encouraged me... What did that victory and then the years of serving Central Texas in the United States Congress teach you about life? That it is short. And the good Lord wants us to enjoy every single day to its fullest. This is the day that Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. And that we all, in our DNA and/or our faith just want to leave this world knowing
I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Chet throughout my time as a student in the journalism department at Baylor and then continuing that relationship through Baylor Line Foundation. Over the years, Chet has been an inspiration to me in how sacrificial he strives to be for students and how personally he connects with everyone who approaches him.
I cannot be more grateful for Chet’s leadership in the Baylor Family, so, naturally, he was an obvious choice to begin our Living Legacy series with.
I’ve made a few small edits to this transcript for readability and clarity (and, for you dear reader, brevity — get a politician and a journalist in a room together and the janitor will be cleaning up before we’re done).
Baylor Line Living6 we maybe left it a little bit better. Now I’m looking at a lot of faces here who’ve made Baylor a better place. And it just so happened in my life that public service became a way that maybe I could try to make a difference in people’s lives. I would say, as I look back on it, the greatest single person I ever served with of the thousands of elected officials I served with in the Texas Senate and in Washington, the one I admire more than any other was Congressman John Lewis, who led the Civil Rights March in Selma, Alabama on March 7th in 1965 for the Voting Rights Act. He did that as a young man in his Andtwenties.whatI loved about John is not only was he going to forever be a part of American history, but there was not one ounce of hate in his body, his mind, or soul. Passionate about issues. Went to prison 40 times. Been nearly beat the death by billy clubs and Alabama State Troopers over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. I just relished getting to know John well over the years, and what an honor that was. In conversations with him, I did not find any hate. And so I think I learned more about life from John Lewis than from any other elected official I ever served with. And not only not hating, but I learned from John not to give up hope. [And even] when I get in those darkest moments, I think if John Lewis, a black child who was born in Troy, Alabama—nearly killed in his 20s for marching for fundamental rights for World War II black veterans to be able to vote—if John Lewis couldn’t give up on our country and didn’t give up on our country, if John Lewis could have hope for our future, then I’m not going to let today’s partisan harsh, ugly politics take my hope away from me in my belief that our country has made it through a civil war and two world wars and a Great Depression we’ll make it through again. So, I just really... There’s so many memories I cherish, but the one person I respect and admired and learned from more than any other was Congressman JohnAndLewis.Ithink one other thought that I sometimes Editor-in-Chief Jonathon Platt in conversation with Chet Edwards.
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7Spring 2022 share with my Baylor students when I have the honor of teaching, is that the secret John said, maybe not secret to some of you, but the secret to many Americans or the key to the success of the Civil Rights Movement of the fifties and sixties was that it was built on the foundation of Christian love. They knew their audience wasn’t black America. Black America was already with them. It was white Americans that really didn’t understand what racism and segregation were truly all about. And if that was their audience and if they returned hate with hate, they wouldn’t win over that audience. And so they really were dedicated to Christian love. So, I’d say to any young Baylor student these days that if you want to be an agent of social change and good in our society, go back and study the Civil Rights Movement of the fifties and sixties, study John Lewis’s life and learn about the role model of Christian love being the best model for social change. And how much does our country need that kind of role model today?
How do you think that Representative Lewis’s leadership and influence on you played out in your legislating? How do you think you changed the area that you represented because of that influence? I think civil rights is one of the reasons I was drawn into public service. I was inspired that people of good faith from all political backgrounds could come together to make our country a better place, a more perfect union. And John just reminded me of the importance of civil rights. And I think he made me more aware of its vital role in our society. And I just, honestly, I can’t even count the ways that John enriched my life. And some of you here met him. He came to Waco several times. In addition to the far more important things, I’m grateful to John because he came and campaigned for me three times in Waco, and I might not have gotten reelected if it had not been for John’s help. But he also helped me understand that a white person, no matter how hard he or she might try, you’re never going to fully understand what it’s like to feel that harsh sense of discrimination because of the color of one’s skin.
I love the word you used, enriched. That John Lewis enriched your lives. In preparing for this interview and reflecting on past interactions with you — being a student in a class where you lectured and hearing about your work across campus — I’ve realized how very accessible you were as public figure and still are today. Why do you find it important to be so accessible to people? Well, a number of professors teach it at Baylor. They’ve made it their calling to inspire young Chet Edwards poses with 4-H students (from left) April Johnson, Stacey Howard, Artisha Douglas and Chanel Mallard in 2007.
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Baylor Line Living8 people. And since I’ve been out of Congress, the greatest single privilege I’ve had is to be able to teach part-time at Baylor. My passion is if I can just convince one Baylor student not to become a cynic about our democracy, then maybe I’ve justified some of the space I’ve taken up in this world. Democracy is not a spectator sport as you all know. We the people have got to be involved in it. And if we allow the young generation to become cynics about our democracy, then our democracy won’t last. And so it’s just been a privilege for me to teach Baylor students and to try to try to convince them, whatever their political background is. I don’t have a monopoly on wisdom. I said to you earlier, I never could explain black holes in outer space or the idea of an infinite universe. If there’s not an end, explain that to me. Or if there is an end what’s after the end of the universe. If I can’t explain those things and I struggle a little bit with college calculus, I have no reason to think that I should have a monopoly on wisdom. In your time from when you were 30 years old, through your time in both the Texas and the US legislature, and even today, you’ve probably interacted with dozens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of human lives. Is there an interaction with one of your constituents that you remember most vividly?
The widow of John David Fry, Malia Fry. He was a young Marine Gunnery Sergeant born and raised in Lorena, just a few minutes south of where we are now. Was seven days from coming home from Iraq to his wife Malia and their three children all under the age of 10. Had diffused over 70 bombs that could have killed hundreds of American lives during his tour of duty in Iraq. And he didn’t have to do another thing. But a call came in seven days before he was coming home that there was a bomb— three bombs. There were three bombs planted in a key intersection at Al Anbar Province in Iraq. And it could have put a lot of American lives in jeopardy, and he raised his hand and volunteered to go out and diffuse those bombs. He said, “Let me do it. Don’t put some new person that. I’ve been doing this, let me do this.” So, he goes out, he diffuses the first bomb, then second bomb. Gets to the third bomb and had no way of knowing that it was booby trapped. And so when he defused it, the bomb exploded and killed him. In that moment, John David saved two other Marine’s lives. And when I found out about that story, we came back, passed a bill to rename the Lorena Post Office after John David Fry. And that was well intentioned, but I’ll never forget speaking, and his three children and his widow were about closer to us than we are right now. And I looked in the faces of those three children and just thought, surely our country can do more for Chet Edwards visits with students at Acton Middle School in Granbury in 2006.
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You’ve already talked about how important it is to be in the classrooms with Baylor students. I was one of those Baylor students. I’m curious, what have you noticed about the change in Baylor students? How have they changed and how do you think that they’re impacting the world differently?
9Spring 2022 these children than to name a post office after their dad. And so I spent the next several days thinking about what could we do? And finally thought, no matter what happened to Malia, let’s at least see that her children can go to college. She faces tough financial times, let’s see that they can go to college.
Thank a veteran. If you walk past them on the street, you want to take it the extra step, think about going out to the Waco VA Hospital and finding a way to let the veterans know that their service to country is not taken for granted and not forgotten.
So I go back to Washington, and ran, two days later, into speaker Nancy Pelosi in Statuary Hall. She and I had worked closely together on Veterans’ Issues. A lot of people don’t know she’s really been a champion of veterans, whatever you think of her politics. And I told her about the idea of providing a full GI college scholarship to every military child who’s lost a mother or father in service to our country. With the Speaker’s help, three weeks later, the John David Fry Bill was the John David Fry Law. I went home after President Obama signed the bill into law. We were raising our kids in McLean, Virginia, and I went home to Lea Ann that night and just said, “If a Mack truck runs over me tomorrow, I just want you to know every one of our tough 15 campaigns was worth it. If we had just not been able to do anything but that one thing.” So after the bill was signed, you would serve in Congress for two more years. You’d accomplished this pinnacle of your legislative career, how did that interaction with Ms. Fry and those achievements that you were able to make, how did those affect the rest of your legislative career? It’s affected the rest of my life. I’ll spend the rest of my life in any small way I can, as many of you have. Trying to make a difference for military kids for veterans. We live in a country now where 1% of Americans put on our nation’s uniform and fight our wars and make all the sacrifices while the rest of us might be getting tax cuts while they’re getting deployed three or four times to Iraq. And knowing the Fry family, seeing their sacrifice, as well as the sacrifice of others that I had the honor of representing at Fort Hood, just given me a profound sense of gratitude to these families, whether you support a particular war or not. I hope we will always honor the warriors who do what our country ask them to. How can someone who’s not a legislator, how can someone in daily life honor that 1%?
I think what hasn’t changed about Baylor students is they inspire me. They give me hope in this challenging world. They’re bright, they’re inquisitive. And I think I find more what hasn’t changed about Baylor students than what has. But I find a lot of Baylor students aren’t thinking about going into public service, government service because of the cynicism toward government and politicians and all things political. But far more than my generation, when I talk to Baylor students one on one, I find that even if they haven’t decided what their career is going to be, they want to make a difference in this world. And that’s why teaching at Baylor has been so such a joy. And one of the many reasons why I’m so grateful to all of you in this crowd for what you have done for Baylor and your leadership and speaking out for Baylor and challenging Baylor. Every time I walk on campus, I’m inspired.
You’ve been a guide and a mentor to Baylor students. You mentioned John Lewis earlier. Who are some of those people that influenced you both in growing up and then throughout your adulthood? And maybe even to this day still?
I’ll never forget Bernard Rapoport when he was given the Horatio Alger Award. One of 12 in the country given and awarded in DC. Each speaker had five minutes and 11 of the 12 mentioned a teacher by name who shaped their lives. And I was shocked and appalled, not
Baylor Line Living10 one of them mentioned a member of Congress by name who had influenced their life. But as I look back on my life, it makes me realize that the importance of what he said that night, that I don’t believe in a self-made man, that our parents make us, our teachers make us, our Sunday school teachers make us, our pastors make us, our neighbors make us. And I’m just so fortunate that people have mentored me and took enough of their time to believe in me and give me an opportunity to do things I never dreamed I’d be able to do.
I think I realized a long time ago, Lea Ann was the love of my life. We’ve been married 29 years now. And that’s asking for a lot to marry an Aggie Democrat in Central Texas. So she’s put up with a lot. But somewhere along the way, I learned that careers come and go. But somewhere along the way, I realized that a lot of people have been extremely successful in their careers, whether it’s in politics or business or education or healthcare—have been terrible failures in their family. But to love someone and to be loved is really the greatest accomplishment in life. And I’ve been blessed to love and be loved. To love my wife and be loved by my wife. Now, you talked about grounded. What she would do to me, if I came back from a muckity muck meeting at the White House and got home and kind of talked about this big important meeting I just came from. It didn’t matter which day of the week, it just so happened... That was the day I had to take the garbage out for her. So that’s how she kept me grounded. And at the end of most classes, I’ll say, “My one piece of advice in your life, is come up with your version of the trampoline rule.” And I look at their faces and they’re like, “Hey, Edwards, have you lost it? What? trampoline rule?” So I explain that when I was in Congress, in Washington, I could go to dinners, seven nights a week. Important people and nice meals. But I always asked myself, was going to that political dinner more important than going home to McLean, Virginia, to Lea Ann and jumping on the trampoline with JT and Garrison, my two sons who were just kids at the time. I think it’s the best single decision I made in my 20 years in Congress was to have a trampoline rule. My last question is what has been the most challenging part of your story and having experienced that, what advice would you give a Baylor freshman or a recent graduate just starting out in her career?
I want to know how you and your wife, Lea Ann, stay grounded — as a couple, as a family. What are those things that you do in your daily lives that keep you connected to each other, that keep you loving each other well, and keep you able to love others as well and as deeply as the two of you do?
There’s no way I can fully honor my parents and the people who mentored me. So many mentored me along the way, but I can try to at least honor them by maybe in a small way, mentoring others. And the kindest thing any student could ever say to a professor or mentor is, “You impacted my life, even in a small way.” That’s what teaching is all about.
I think the most challenging situation I faced was at the age of 25 coming within 186 votes of beating my former economics professor Phil Graham, and becoming the youngest member of the US Congress ever elected from the state of Texas. But I’ve shared with my Baylor students that I’ve learned a lot more in life from my failures than from my successes. I think I’d want to share with Baylor students, don’t be afraid of failure. I always like to ask at least one controversial question per interview. So here we go… You and I are going to go eat at the definitive, absolute best, no contest, Mexican food restaurant in Waco. Which one is that? Oh my gosh. We need it on the record. Well, La Fiesta for me, but it does make me think. One time I went to a troop return out at Fort Hood and during multiple troop deployments. And I went to... I’ll just never forget this young soldier. He was probably 22 years old and he was sitting next to his wife that he hadn’t seen for a year. And I said, “Soldier, next to your
11Spring 2022 wife, what did you miss more than anything during your deployment?” He said, “Taco Bell, sir.” So I guess I have to put Taco Bell second. Before we got started, you gave me five songs. They were:
• “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”
• “How Great Thou Art”
• “The Dance” by Garth Brooks
• “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong
What does this collection tell someone about you? That life is special. And the good Lord has given us just a short period of time on this earth. And we ought to make the most of every single day. And instead of worrying about the little things every day, realize what really counts and try to make a little difference in this world for others.
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• “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Judy Garland
The command of love thy neighbor as thyself. Wasn’t a command to having good feelings about our neighbor, it was a command action, to make a difference. So whether it’s through public service or teaching or the work you do at the Baylor Line Foundation, I’m always inspired when I meet people who commit their lives to trying to make it a difference for others. And, finally, what are you truly, deeply, and wholly grateful for right now, in this season? For the privilege for all of us to be in God’s world. To have the opportunity, to love someone and to be loved by someone. And that’s coming from someone who’s going to be a grandfather for the first time next week. And, look, I’ve had a lot of titles and when I was 30 in the Texas Senate, that was pretty fun to get your name in the paper and get some attention. It didn’t take very long to realize that’s not the source of happiness in this world. But other than the trampoline rule, if I had any advice I’d share with the Baylor students, that I had the honor to meet with is, if you can look back on your life and you can say, you loved and you loved and were loved, and you made a small difference in someone’s life, then you led a very meaningful life. And we all ought to realize every day is a blessing and make the most of every moment. Rep. Edwards kept his office door open to constituents. This 4-H group from Johnson County visited in 2008.
By Anne McCready Heinen
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Baylor Line Living12 THE GOOD NEWS Spirit has been meeting soul in supernatural ways since 1988 at Baylor through the Heavenly Voices choir of gospel-singing students
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Opposite: Members of Heavenly Voices at the Kappa Kool: Spooky Fest, a Halloween music festival with Kappa Alpha Psi. (From left to right) Christine Ajayi, Shelby Henson, Esther Louis, Melvin Kearney, Erin Babatunde, Jamie Lynch, and Forche Bridges. Above from left: Whether staging a karaoke night before finals, singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at a Baylor Men’s Basketball game, or performing at Gospel Explosion, a gospel music concert with the Baylor Black Student Union, Heavenly Voices Choir members enjoy hanging out together.
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Heavenly Voices has always been open to all Baylor students regardless of race, even while providing a place for Black students to connect with each other and to African American culture. In recent engagements, the choir also provides a living connection to the treasures held in Baylor’s
undergrad music major, McFrazier joined Heavenly Voices in 1989 as musical director, accompanied by accomplished student pianist Gloria Alexander David. “We were able to support the matriculation of minority students, especially Black students, with the synergy of coming together and using our faith and belief in goodness and sustaining power to navigate that environment,” he said. As the choir’s former director, McFrazier always remembered the dynamic and morale boosting potential of Gospel.
The university’s historically small Black student and faculty population — currently only five percent of Baylor’s 15,000 undergraduate students are Black — plus the school’s founding as a whites-only school and history of catering to a white-centric culture has given the choir a special role among its participants. In fact, many of the performers have found through the choir a deep, meaningful way to express their faith and at the same time, honor Black history and their personal roots as youth singing in Black churches.
“Gospel at its core is sharing the good news. And it is an amalgamation of a number of styles. It comes from the tradition of spirituals that were indigenous to Africans who worked in the fields and brought in sounds and rhythms of their homeland and other influences. Gospel music brought in blues and jazz to the spiritual tradition,” said McFrazier.
“I just got chills, remembering Heavenly Voices,” said Michael McFrazier (’91, MM ’93, MS ’95), professor, Vice President of Administration and Chief of Staff at Prairie View A&M University.AsaBaylor
ing out! Shout! Tell the world the good news! Lift every voice and sing! That’s been the goal of Baylor’s Heavenly Voices Gospel Choir from the group’s humble inception in 1988, and it will forever be — until Earth and Heaven ring.
Past and present members of the Heavenly Voices choir are definitely in tune with the spiritual power of gospel music. From Heavenly Voices founder Tonja Frazier Carpenter (‘91) to current Heavenly Voices president Forche Bridges (‘22), the common threads are the spiritual expression and Black community that the choir provides, in addition to camaraderie and good Heavenlytimes.Voices represents a continuance in the tradition of Black sacred song, said Dr. Horace Maxile, Jr., Baylor associate professor of music theory, himself a gospel music musician.“Styles will change from generation to generation and so will musical tastes, but there are performance practices and cultural emblems that transfer and maintain value — in fact, those practices and emblems are usually expounded upon to create new styles.
Heavenly Voices’s presence speaks to and embodies the dynamic nature of gospel music, as it continually evolves while simultaneously honoring the past,” said Dr. Maxile. The Heavenly Voices humble pilgrimage Above: Heavenly Voices members participate in the inaugural Voices & Vinyl concert in the Allbritton Foyer of Moody Memorial Library, Baylor University, December 3, 2015.
Black Gospel Music Preservation Program, the world’s largest repository of recordings and other materials that reflect the art and history of sacred Black gospel music. “It always thrills me when I hear one of the old songs from the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program performed by the Heavenly Voices,” said Bob Darden (’76, MA ‘78), Professor of Journalism, Public Relations, and New Media at Baylor University and founder of the groundbreaking program. “It’s clear to me that the students understand that one of gospel music’s greatest strengths is the connection between each song and each singer. It is an essential part of an almost apostolic line of shared experiences and emotions since the first gospel songs were performed.”
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“My family was the church choir for most of the churches we went to, especially if the church was small,” said Carpenter. From this foundation and love of spiritual singing, Carpenter tried out for the Baylor Religious Hour (BRH) Choir, the only choir open to non-music majors, and was turned down because she didn’t read music.
Today Carpenter is an international boardcertified lactation consultant and a postpartum certified doula who owns Postpartum Doula and Lactation Services of Waco. She also founded and leads Community Doulas of Waco, a non-profit that provides doula support for low-income families. As one of eight children in a Christian home, Carpenter grew up singing gospel music in churches every place that her family lived as they followed her father’s military career moves.
“I wanted to not get into trouble, and I wanted to do something on campus that I’m passionate about,” she recalled.
began when founder Tonja Frazier Carpenter came to Baylor as a freshman in spring 1988.
“I was told (by a music department professor) that Baylor had enough choirs. So I prayed and said, ‘God, what do I do? I feel like this is what I’m supposed to do,’” said Carpenter. The plucky freshman struck out with administrators, but God provided other people and avenues to help the choir move forward.
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While doing her work-study job in the faculty dining room, Carpenter approached Dr. Nancy Harrison, an African American Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the Baylor University School of Education. Dr. Harrison provided support and also enlisted her then husband, Dr. George Harrison, pastor of First Baptist Church-NBC in Waco and a veteran church musician, to become the first director of Heavenly Voices. The school did not consistently provide the group rehearsal space and student activity funding for many years, but Heavenly Voices was launched, attracting fifteen students.
“You didn’t read music in the African American church,” she explained. “We learn to play and sing by ear, and the choir director guides you,” with freedom to include vocals and movement that come from the heart and God, not books or notation. Not one to give up, Carpenter explored starting a gospel music choir at Baylor, home at the time to only two other choirs.
“At that time there weren’t extracurricular activities outside of athletics that were explicitly from Black culture. Sometimes you want to do things with people who look like you and who have some common shared experiences. It was a place where the space was all our own and we could all be ourselves as Black people,” said Carpenter.AfterMcFrazier began directing Heavenly Voices in 1989, the choir blossomed to as many as 60 members. The seeds Carpenter had sown began to bring forth fruit. As their reputation grew, so did requests for the choir’s presence at festivals, churches, and universities across the state. While they started with handme-down green and gold robes from a local church, Baylor later purchased new ones for the group, who joking called themselves “the If singers feel like they need a band, it’s because they’re not feeling the song and they need the music to try to help them. But someone who’s tied in with the feeling of the song doesn’t need a band. They can slay singing a capella.” “ —Pastor Ron English
Called on to sing regularly at Black churches in Waco, the choir found a home away from home at Pleasant Olive Missionary Baptist Church there. The church would host the choir every month for a singing engagement and afterwards feed the hungry college students, while moms and deacons in the church mentored and nurtured Heavenly Voices“Theymembers.adopted and checked on us,” said McFrazier, who was himself a first-generation college student. “It was a bridge for students of color to have a solid foundation from which to beAsuccessful.”humble group of students passionate about singing the gospel had become a close fellowship that enriched the community at Baylor and beyond.
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Over the ensuing years, the choir expanded and contracted with various directors and different degrees of instrumental accompaniment. English enjoyed being in the backup band for Heavenly Voices at one point, but he pointed out that having musicians isn’t a necessary component for gospel music. In fact, he said, some contemporary gospel performers rely too heavily on musicians and veer too far into pop music. “If singers feel like they need a band, it’s because they’re not feeling the song and they need the music to try to help them. But someone who’s tied in with the feeling of the song doesn’t need a band. They can slay singing a capella,” said English.
Today, Pastor Ron English (’94, MDiv ’99), Strategic Intervention Program Manager at Baylor, serves as Heavenly Voices’s campus advisor. He attended the university as an undergraduate and went on to Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. Having grown up singing in gospel choirs, English went to the first Heavenly Voices rehearsal. “I fell in love with being in the choir. You can’t buy the experience of the road trips and the singing together that we had. It just meant so much for my personal walk with Christ. And I believe that the choir has helped people through some really tough times,” English recalled. English wasn’t the only member to feel this way. Carpenter shared an example of this personal walk with Christ that she, too, has experienced with the choir. She once led the choir members in a fast, during which they prayed for a message from God about the choir’s“Onefuture.ofthe things that we heard is that we should worship God in our singing, and not just perform. From then on, we didn’t call our singing ‘performances.’ They were engagements where we worshiped God,” she explained.
Today’s Heavenly Voices is a small, dedicated choir of ten-to-fifteen participants, with Forche Bridges serving as president. Like Carpenter, when Bridges came to Baylor, she knew she wanted to try “a lot of different, new things that I hadn’t before, but I also still was looking for a community that I was familiar with.” She set her sights on Heavenly Voices right away, thanks to her love of singing gospel music, which was nurtured throughout her childhood. “They welcomed me with open arms, which You can’t buy the experience of the road trips and the singing together that we had. It just meant so much for my personal walk with Christ. And I believe that the choir has helped people through some really tough times.”
—Pastor Ron English
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17Spring 2022 Left and below: The Baylor Libraries opened the Black Gospel Archive & Listening Center on November 12, 2021. Heavenly Voices choir performed two songs inspired by recordings archived in the Black Gospel Archive & Listening Center at the event.
The recent history of the group, like most organizations across the country and the world, has been transformed and affected by the realities of the pandemic. During the early days of the pandemic, Heavenly Voices had to curtail meetings, rehearsals, and performances. In 2021, the annual Gospel Fest, which brings together gospel choirs from universities around the state, was held virtually. However, the choir’s performances have begun a slow but steady resurrection. Last November, when the new Black Gospel Music Restoration Project listening room was opened, the dedication ceremony was an in-person event and Heavenly Voices performed. This year has brought more in-person opportunities for the choir, and Baylor’s marketing department recently featured the group in a kickoff video
Below: At the 2019 Voices & Vinyl concert, the Heavenly Voices Gospel Choir performed at 2nd & Clay, a historic African Methodist Episcopal church that became an event venue when the aging congregation sold the site for new development.
I really loved,” said the film and digital media major who is also double minoring in creative writing and media management. Since its inception, Bridges pointed out, Heavenly Voices “emphasizes that it is a non-audition group. You pretty much just show up to practice and if you like it, then we can talk about you being a member.”
“The more gospel music spreads, the better it’s going to be for everyone because it’s beautiful,” Bridges added. “It’s been an art form performed by Black musicians, writers, and composers for so long. It’s a tradition that’s not going to leave our communities.” For Bridges herself, gospel music is an important expression of her spirituality: “There are definitely times when it’s just overpowering. It strengthens my relationship with God, which is something that’s very important to me. It also influences how I interact with people around me. If I’m feeling overwhelmed with gratitude or whatever’s triggering my emotions from the music, even if I can’t verbalize what I’m feeling in that moment, people are still able to hug you, or they might say a prayer over you, or vice versa. The people who are performing with you are able to sense what you’re feeling and be there forForyou.”Heavenly Voices founder Tonya Frazier Carpenter, that sentiment is echoed. “Music is the language of the heart, no matter what culture you come from. In the African American culture, we touch God through our music. And in gospel music, we sing what we feel. I know Heavenly Voices is a place for students who want to express their musical gifts to the Lord,” she said. “It’s a place where they can find a home.”
Above: Posters from recent Voices & Vinyl concerts, performed by Heavenly Voices Gospel Choir and sponsored by Baylor University Libraries.
19Spring 2022 for Black History Month. “We’ve definitely gotten back to having more performance requests and are actually having to turn people down because our schedules are crazy. We recently sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at two basketball games, and we’ve been invited to sing at Welcome Week events,” saidHeavenlyBridges.Voices hosted gospel choirs from other Texas schools at Baylor’s Gospel Fest in April, with the support of the Baylor Activities Council. This was on the heels of Heavenly Voices participating in gospel fests at Texas State University, University of North Texas, Texas Christian University, and other schools in the state, restoring a sense of normalcy to the choir’s engagement with the community.
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Ensconced in headphones, Bob Darden (’76), a professor in the department of journalism, public relations, and new media at Baylor University, is lost in one of the 36,000 classic black gospel songs he has worked to preserve through the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program.
By Marianne Dougherty Baylor University’s Black Gospel Music Preservation Program has digitized more than 36,000 copies of classic black gospel songs, preserving them for future generations.
2005 book People Get Ready: A New History of Black Gospel Music is a celebratory, carefully researched chronology of Black sacred music from its origins in Africa through early African American spirituals, from minstrel music to the jubilee, and from traditional to contemporary gospel. Frustrated that he couldn’t listen to a lot of the music he was writing about, he wrote an OpEd for The New York Times in February 2005, titled “Gospel’s Got the Blues.” Contemporary gospel, he wrote, was thriving. At the Grammy Awards, Mavis Staples and the Blind Boys of Alabama had just performed a medley with a young Kanye West that included his gospeltinged hip-hop song, “Jesus Walks.” What troubled Darden was that while albums by Mahalia Jackson were easy to find on CD, thousands of tracks by less-known greats were unavailable. Much of it had been relegated to landfills or lost through neglect, attrition, or racism. Darden challenged music historians to get involved and preserve what
P reviously on track to be lost forever, Baylor is pouring resources into a project that will ensure decades of the sacred music of Black Americans will outlive everyone reading this story.
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Below: Posters announcing the line ups of big gospel shows from the 1970s—some advised to “come early.”
Opposite (top): The new Black Gospel Archive & Listening Center features a private sound-proof listening room, which allows a listener to hear selections from the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program collection through highquality speakers without headphones. (bottom): High-quality specialty equipment is used for the digitization process, which is performed by Baylor’s Digitization, Digital Collections, and Digital Preservation Services, working out of the Ray I. Riley Digitization Center in Moody Memorial Library.
The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (recently renamed The Black Gospel Music Preservation Program) began as a labor of love for Robert Darden (’76), a former gospel music editor for Billboard magazine and now a professor in the department of journalism, public relations, and new media at Baylor University. An unabashed fan of gospel music since he was a child, Darden was an undergrad at Baylor in 1972, when he saw his first gospel concert. “It was Andraé Crouch and the Disciples,” he recalled. Decades later, Darden has come full circle and is writing Crouch’s definitive biography.Theauthor of three highly acclaimed books about gospel music, Darden was featured in an episode of historian and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s PBS series, The Black Church. “It is one of the highlights of my life,” he said, and yes, Dr. Gates is just as “charming, sweet and funny as you hope he Darden’sis.”
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His mandate was the golden age of gospel music, which occurred between 1945 and 1975.
The job of digitizing the music as it comes in falls to Darryl Stuhr, Director for Digitization, Digital Collections, and Digital Preservation Services at Baylor University Libraries, and his staff at the Riley Digitization Center. In 1999, he had been part of a brand-new group — a combination of library talent and information technology professionals who focused on web development, putting library resources online, digitizing materials that were in the special libraries and archives, and putting them in a system that became known as the “Electronic Library” where they could easily be accessed.
“It would be more than a cultural disaster to forever lose this music,” he wrote. “It would be a sin.”
With Orr on board, Darden knew just who to call for advice. In his old Billboard days, he had befriended Bob Marovich, a serious collector of gospel music. After hearing about the project, Marovich agreed to provide fifty pieces of vinyl from his personal collection every month, mostly 45s at first, then LPs, and, soon, 78s. Meanwhile, once word got around about what Baylor was doing, the vinyl started pouring in from donors all over the country.
Opposite: Album covers of gospel artists, including (clockwise from top left) The Chosen, Dee Dee Sharp, Rosetta Tharpe, and New Hope Baptist Church of Waco, Texas.
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Once Orr was onboard, the challenge became finding as much of this sacred music as possible and digitizing it. Royce’s grant, in the neighborhood of about $360,000, was enough to get them started.
“We needed to pay a digitization engineer and someone who could take all the material off the album and jacket, label it, and put it in a form other scholars can use,” Darden said. “It’s a detailed craft.”
The Op-Ed caught the attention of New York businessman Charles M. Royce. “You figure out how to do it, and I’ll pay for it,” he told Darden. Pattie Orr, then Dean of Libraries, offered her support from day one. Orr had been a Macintosh computer specialist who oversaw customer support in I.T. when she was at Wellesley College so she knew what was required to preserve this sacred music for future generations.
Once the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program gained traction, it began generating a lot of publicity, and in December of 2007, Darden was interviewed on NPR by Terry Gross, the host and executive producer of Fresh Air Then the money ran out.
“The stuff from before the 1920s is out of copyright so it’s being reproduced, and anything after 1980 is starting to show up on CD, but music from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s has been nearly impossible to find,” Darden said.
“This project was a perfect fit for Baylor, a historically Christian university,” she said, “and we loved both the music and the message. Another university may not have taken on such a strongly Christian project.”
“The next angel to step up,” said Darden, “was Ella Wall PrichardPrichard.”(’63)isagraduate of Baylor’s journalism department, former editor of the Baylor Lariat, former member of the Baylor Board of Regents,
Below: A collection of rare 45 RPM gospel records. Over the past ten years, the Baylor digital archives staff has tirelessly cleaned and digitized these records, preserving songs from “the golden age of gospel,” from the 1940s through 1970s, for the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program.
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Once word got around about what Baylor was doing, the vinyl started pouring in from donors all over the country.” “
There’s nothing but love in God’s water
Nothing but love in God’s water
‘Tis the old ship of Zion ‘Tis the old ship of Zion ‘Tis the old ship of Zion Step on board if you want to see Jesus Step on board if you want to see Jesus Step on board and follow me
Nothing but love in God’s water Step on board if you want to see Jesus Step on board if you want to see Jesus Just step on board and follow me “THE OLD SHIP OF ZION,” HYMN BY M. J. CARTWRIGHT (1889) CALLAWAYW.CURTISBYPHOTO
Above and right: Students study outside the entrance to the new Black Gospel Archive & Listening Center, which welcomes Baylor students and music researchers alike to engage with gospel music.
Recently, Ella made a few changes to her will, which had included a bequest of a million dollars to the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program her husband supported so enthusiastically.“There’salot of longevity in my family, so I could live to be a hundred,” she said. “By then everyone involved in the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program could be gone.”
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So, she talked to her attorney to see if it was possible to do something now, such as funding a chair at Baylor for the study of Black worship. It was, though the cost was quite a bit more than she’d set aside. Her family foundation made up the difference, and an anonymous donor matched the entire amount. Now, Baylor is collecting old tapes with sermons by the great Black pastors and digitizing them.
“He fell in love with it as a kid,” Ella said, “and when I read the Op-Ed Bob [Darden] wrote for The New York Times, I told my husband that I thought this project was something he’d be interested in.” As it turned out, she was right. In 2008, while the couple was at Baylor on a college tour with their grandson, Lev paid an impromptu visit to Darden, hoping to hear some of the music Darden’s project had been acquiring. The experience was enough to convince Lev to support the project with a generous contribution that year. By then his health was failing, and when he died in 2009, his children, who are on the board of their small family foundation, decided to create an endowment to honor their father’s memory. Their generosity and support didn’t stop there.
The Chicago church founded by gospel singer and pastor Charles G. Hayes is home to a choir with an impressive discography. They’ve stayed true to the rockin’ and stompin’ tradition of gospel choirs from the 1940s. “By and By” by The Soul Stirrers Originally from Texas, they moved to Chicago where Sam Cook sang with them for a time. “Total Praise” by Richard Smallwood One of the most successful gospel singers in America, he says that he dreams his songs, which are usually based on some difficulty he’s experiencing in his own life. This one has become the official funeral anthem of the African American church. I’ve seen grown men cry when they hear it. “Peace Be Still” by James Cleveland and the Angelic Choir A major figure in gospel music, he’s responsible for creating the modern gospel sound and collaborated with Aretha Franklin on her studio album Amazing Grace, which is considered the greatest gospel album of all time.
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Author and scholar Bob Marovich has an impressive collection of gospel music, much of which he shared with the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program. Here are five of his favorite recordings: “Everytime I Feel the Spirit” by the Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer Choir
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Darden’s Op-Ed, which inspired Charles Royce to provide the seed money, and then Lev’s decision to accompany Ella to Baylor where he listened to this sacred music and decided that it was worth preserving — Ella is convinced that the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program was “providence rather than coincidence” and that Baylor was the right place for it to happen.
“The university is working on becoming a major repository for the archives of Black preachers and Black churches,” said Prichard. “Who knows where this will lead, but it’s broad enough to allow for expansion beyond what can be measured at the moment.”
“Precious Lord Take My Hand” by Mahalia Jackson Thomas A. Dorsey, often called the father of gospel music, wrote this song in 1932, when his wife and day-old child died. It was one of Dr. King’s favorite songs, and she sang it at his funeral.
“This music, the foundation for all popular Black music, is our original American music.” Darden agreed with her. “This music is a narrative we can’t replace any other way,” he said. “At a time when African Americans had only a handful of newspapers, they had music, which has become an irreplaceable transcript of history.”Since American enslaved people were forbidden to read or write, many of the spirituals from the pre-Civil War era are what Henry Louis Gates, Jr. calls “doublevoiced myths.” Listen closely to spirituals like “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “Wade in the Water,” Darden said. He points out that they contain coded messages that provided secret information to enslaved workers. On the surface, “Steal Away to Jesus” means to follow the teachings of Christ, but it’s also a call to action, urging then-enslaved people to steal away, say, to a place where they could learn to read or to a meeting about a planned uprising. In 1831, Nat Turner used this song to organize his followers in Southampton, Virginia. What Darden has discovered since working with scholars on this project is that a disproportionate number of gospel artists recording in the 1960s were devoted to the Civil Rights movement. So, they might be singing about Jesus on the A-side of those 45s, but on the flip side, hiding in plain
Pondering the confluence of events that allowed this project to take flight —
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Opposite, clockwise from top left: Besides music, promotional photos and other materials from such gospel groups as the Truthettes, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Andraé Crouch and the Disciples, and The Jackson Southernaires are also kept at the Black Gospel Archive.
Above: A promotional photo of the Dixie Hummingbirds from the 1970s. Since 1928, the group has influenced many artists, including James Brown and Paul Simon, and has won several Grammy Awards. The group’s current members still perform today.
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31Spring 2022 This music is the foundation for all Black popular music, which is our original American music.” “ —Ella Wall Prichard
“We told them that we had the largest collection of Black gospel music we knew of and that we’d be happy to provide any materials they needed. They were delighted,” Darden said.
“Most lacquer 78s don’t survive that long: Every time you play them, the needle scrapes lacquer away. When you find one, it’s great and really cool, but it is very rare,” said Stephen Bolech, AV Digitization Studio Manager, who will personally oversee digitization of these special discs.
Pattie Orr retired in 2017, and in 2020 Jeffry Archer became Dean of Libraries. His wife, Abigail Lawson, who is African American, is also a gospel singer, and the couple attends services at a church in Waco where gospel music is an essential part of the worship experience. So, it’s not surprising that his vision was always to enlarge the project as a whole. This past November, with funds from The Moody Foundation and the Dean’s Excellence Fund, the Black Gospel Archive & Listening Center at Moody Memorial Library became a reality. Described as a state-of-the-art home for Black gospel research, it features a soundproof listening booth with a turntable and high-end speakers, a keyboard for playing along with recordings, computer access to the digital archives, and an open library space where colorful posters, album covers, and black-andwhite photographs from gospel’s golden age are prominently displayed. One of those photographs was taken at a tribute to Franklin Delano Roosevelt outside his home in Hyde Park, New York, on May 11, 1941, where a baritone soloist from Waco named Jules Bledsoe and a backing choir performed “Ode to America,” a song he wrote. Two years
When the National Museum of African American History and Culture was still in the planning stages, Darden and Baylor’s Associate Vice President Tim Logan flew to Washington, D.C., to make their pitch.
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Above: The oldest recording in the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program collection features the song “Most Done Traveling” performed by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, on Columbia Records, released in 1919.
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Before the official opening in 2016, Darden and Pattie Orr were invited to visit the museum where the sacred music they rescued from obscurity is housed along with jazz and blues on the fifth floor. One of the tracks you can listen to is “Old Ship of Zion” sung by The Mighty Wonders from Bob Marovich’s collection. “I think of it as the mascot of the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program,” he said. “When Bob Darden and one of his engineers heard it for the first time, they were so moved that they cried.”
Above: Record-cleaning machines are used to clean mold, mildew, dust, and dirt out of old discs before the archiving process can begin. Each disc undergoes a five-to-ten-minute cleaning with a special solution; then the machine dries the discs. Currently, the digital archive team is getting ready to digitize Chicago-based collector Bob Marovich’s rare 78 gospel music collection—considered rare in part because 78 recordings are very fragile. Made of shellac or lacquer-covered aluminum (even more rare), the shellac or lacquer grows brittle over time and can crumble or break easily. The collection must be carefully packed and handled with care, including undergoing supervised ground transport from Chicago to Waco and back.
Archer, who is committed to the retention and graduation rates of under-represented students, hopes that by creating a space where students of color see representations of themselves, this will provide a connection to Baylor that didn’t exist before. He also envisions a “Spotify for Black gospel music” with tracks from the collection.
If Robert Darden had to create a playlist of must-hear gospel recordings, it might look like this: Mahalia Jackson’s “Movin’ On Up” is the first gospel recording to sell a million copies.
The Blind Boys of Alabama do a great version of Prince’s song “The Cross.” Marion Williams is one of Darden’s favorite gospel singers, and he loves her rendition of the old spiritual “And He Never Said a Mumbling Word.”
“We’ve got 30,000 tracks right now that are available for streaming,” he said. “Come to Baylor, and you can hear them in our listening booth.”
Andraé Crouch and the Disciples do a version of “The Blood (Will Never Lose Its Power),” a song Crouch wrote when he was just fourteen.
33Spring 2022 later, Bledsoe was dead of a cerebral hemorrhage, his music largely forgotten. Horace J. Maxile, Jr., Associate Professor of Music Theory and a nationally respected expert on Black composers, plans to change all that. Shortly after joining the faculty at Baylor, he visited the Jules Bledsoe archive in Baylor’s famed Texas Collection, where he discovered boxes of music, letters, and original compositions, including the libretto for an opera. Maxile is still working his way through the Bledsoe archives with the hopes of bringing this forgotten chapter of history to life.
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The Dixie Hummingbirds’ “Let’s Go to the Program” shows the joyful side of gospel. The lead singer actually imitates the voices of all the major male and female gospel stars of the day. Kirk Franklin’s “The Reason Why We Sing” is his take on “His Eye is on the Sparrow” with a rap in it.
Sadly, Crouch died in 2018, but a few of his backup singers and soloists will perform, and there will be a lively discussion about his arrangements, which are still the gold standard in the industry.
Black sacred music, which has lived at the intersection of all pieces of Black life — theology, worship, history, legacy, and society — for generations on generations is firmly rooted in the hymnals of the early 19th century intended for use in Black worship, but the definition has expanded to include praise and worship songs, and blues to hip-hop. While Darden would like to take some of the credit for the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program, he believes, as Prichard does, that divine providence had more to do with it than anything. “God believes that this music and these messages have transformed nations and lives and hearts, and it’s important that people ten to one hundred years from now get to hear it,” Darden said.
“This will be my last symposium before I retire, and it will feature Andraé Crouch and the Disciples,” he said. Another full-circle moment for Darden, who likes to say that if there was a Mount Rushmore of Gospel, Andraé Crouch would be carved in stone right beside Mahalia Jackson.
If Ella Wall Prichard is the angel Robert Darden believes her to be, she has certainly earned her wings. In 1996, she and her husband created an endowment to fund the Pruit Memorial Symposium to bring the perspective of Christian intellectual tradition to contemporary issues of common concern. Since 2013, in conjunction with the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program, the annual symposium has focused on the tradition of Black sacred music. The three-day event includes presentations, panel discussions, and stirring performances by major gospel artists. Plans are already underway for the 2023 symposium, which Darden envisions as the capstone of his long career.
Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to like in BL Classics. In this installment, enjoy a trip back in time to read about the origins of Baylor’s beloved “That Good Old Baylor Line,” the way the lyrics were finalized, and how the song was first recorded.
N ow it looks as if both those problems have been met. Proceeds from the record sale are destined for a band uniform fund. There are 150 members of the band. Each uniform costs about $55. A lot of people helped make the recording a reality. For several years it has been discussed but copyright troubles and other problems delayed it. The Ex-Students Association agreed to handle the sales. Holders of the copyright on “The Good Old Summertime” agreed to a royalty payment from each record sold until 1957 when their copyright expires. Donald I. Moore, band director, directed the recording. Working with him were Miss Martha Barkema, director of the Bards, and Alfred Reed, graduate assistant in the School of Music and temporary conductor of the Baylor Symphony, who arranged the score. He has a
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aylor folks are going to be excited when they hear a new recording of “That Good Old Baylor Line” and, on the reverse side, the two Fight Songs, recorded in May by the Golden Wave Band and the Bards. For several years, Baylor students and alumni have been agitating for two things: (1) a really good recording of their school songs and (2) new uniforms for the Golden Wave Band. Some alumni have even gone so far as to say they were ashamed of their band in the drab uniforms they’ve been wearing for several years.
CLASSIC Originally published: July-August, 1954
SONGSBAYLOR’SNOWRECORDED
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chorus of 24 to 28 men singers, chosen from the student body by auditions. Miss Barkema organized the chorus, along with a women’s Rhapsody in White chorus, when she joined the School of Music faculty in the fall of 1937. They have made tours to Mexico and Atlanta, Ga., with one scheduled for Washington, D. C., next year. Baylor’s first Fight Song was written by Bandleader Fred Waring when he had a nation-wide radio program saluting a different college each week.
35Spring 2022 background of NBC radio shows andThearrangements.Bardsarea
Originally published: July-August,
A few years later, two students— Frank Boggs, B.A. ‘48, and Dick Baker. B.A. ‘50, got together one afternoon and decided to write a new Fight Song that would be easier to sing. This they proceeded to do within the hour. “That Good Old Baylor Line” is the song that started out not as a school song but as a parody on the tinkling waltz, “The Good Old Summertime,” so popular around 1908. Through the years, it became so ingrained that the students instinctively changed its whole tempo, rhythm, and harmony into an alma mater song. Despite its meaningless words and a long-standing offer of $100 by the late President Samuel Palmer Brooks to anyone who would write a school song, “’That Good Old Baylor Line” continued to be the song the students sang spontaneously and the only one that raised their blood pressure. Many songs were submitted and urged upon the students over the years but they withered and died. The western or yippee-ki-yo school predominated with a scattering of 1954
This is known as the turpentine version and it lasted until the fall of 1931 when Enid Eastland Markham, the young bride of Music School Professor Robert Markham, got her dander up and did something about it. Her account of it goes like this: “In the fall of 1931 there was to be a big alumni meeting in Waco Hall before the Homecoming football game. Waco Hall had just been completed and it was the first time most of the alumni had seen it. The night before the game there was a pep rally at old Carroll Field, one of the first in what later became the traditional Homecoming pep rallies. “At the pep rally, it dawned on me how perfectly silly the words to ‘That Good Old Baylor Line’ really were. I’d sung it all the time that I was a student and hadn’t thought anything about it. But there were all these imposing and prosperouslooking alumni rared back singing to a dignified alma mater hymn tune about ‘done up in turpentine,’ and I thought what a shame it was that Baylor didn’t have a better song than that for the alumni to sing.”
Baylor Line Living36 gospel-hymn types but the students weren’t having any. They continued to “Thatsing: good old Baylor line, that good old Baylor line Oh. Where will TCU (or the current opponent) be When our stars begin to shine. They’ll wish they were at home again done up in turpentine The day our backs come down the field That good old Baylor Line.”
Originally published: July-August, 1954
After the rally was over, the Markhams went to their apartment on South Eighth Street, called Memorial Apartments. She sat down and while her husband made sandwiches for their supper she dashed off some new words to replace the ones she thought needed cleaning up. “It didn’t take but about 15 or 20 minutes,” she recalls. “I was just doing a hurryup job for the alumni meeting the next morning. Goodness! If I’d known that it would turn out to be the school song, I probably would have worked on it for three weeks and then it wouldn’t have been as successful.” She says she really didn’t change much of it. Rewriting four lines and part of another, changed the whole meaning from a vindictive song about a football line to the long line of Baylor students of the past and of the future, she explains. When she finished writing, she ran across the hall where Dean Sims Allen and Mrs. Allen lived in an adjoining apartment and showed them her new version. Dean Allen
37Spring 2022 grabbed the paper and took it to his office where he was having theirnewchapelweresaysalumnitoMarkhamLariat.ofitthatreportermeeting.donemimeographingsomeforthealumniALariatgotacopynightandranonpageonethemorningWhenMrs.wentchapelforthemeeting,shethatstudentswalkingtosingingthewordsfromcopiesoftheLariat.Mrs.Markhamdidn’tget the $100 as “That Good Old Baylor Line” wasn’t considered a new song. Doctor Brooks had died the preceding spring. Her words were copyrighted recently by a young Baylor law graduate and as the crowning blow, her name was misspelled “Enid Easterland Markham” and it can’t beJarrellcorrected.F.McCracken, B.A. ‘50, M.A. ‘53, owner of Word Records in Waco, is pressing 5,000 Baylor records in two sizes-78 and 45 rpm. He has offered to mail outof-town orders for the Ex-Students Association at cost. Price of the record is $1.00 if bought directly from the Baylor Book Stores. Mail order are an additional 25 cents. Originally published: July-August, 1954
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