- [Narrator] Coming up with a broken promise ringing in their ears, thousands of black musicians fled the south.

- It is still a Jim Crow reality.

- [Robert] You couldn't even walk on the same side of the street as a white person.

- [Narrator] They joined the greatest migration in US history.

- Thomas Dorsey, a blues musician.

- [Johari] Mahalia Jackson, Sallie Martin.

- [Robert] And they came looking for jobs, looking for respect.

- [Narrator] For them, Chicago was a city of renewed faith and bold aspirations.

- They made the music.

You had honkey-tonk music, your church music, that blues when you were feeling bad.

- [Narrator] With a sanctified mix of blues and jazz, they formed an explosive new genre called gospel.

♪ Say oh Jesus ♪ - [Robert] Chicago, the Mecca, the hub of gospel activity.

- [Narrator] The Birth of Gospel next on Chicago Stories.

(soft upbeat music) (birds cawing) The sun was out in Bronzeville despite the cold.

Most south side residents were going about their business on January 6th, 2006 when Pilgrim Baptist Church caught fire.

- [Cynthia] I was on my way to the church and the custodian called.

He says the church is on fire.

I said stop playing with me.

I remember the devastation and the horror.

- [Narrator] It was a famed architectural landmark, but it meant much more to Chicago's black community.

- Generations and generations of people.

The whole community came out in tears.

- This is a great loss, this is a terrible loss.

- Great loss to this community, a great loss to this city, and a great loss to the people who have been through those doors.

- [Preacher] Let everybody in the house say amen.

- [Congregation] Amen!

- [Preacher] Let the church say amen.

- [Congregation] Amen!

♪ Let the church say amen ♪ - [Narrator] Pilgrim Church was synonymous with gospel music, part of a musical legacy that dated back to the Great Migration when African Americans fled the south.

This is where Thomas Andrew Dorsey, known as the father of gospel music, led the choir for 50 years.

- [Reverend DeShazier] We would not have the kind of black music that we had, not even just black gospel music, just black music period.

- [Antionette] Aretha Franklin, James Cleveland, Albertina Walker, the caravans, Shirley Caesar.

Anybody that was anybody that's on the gospel circuit stopped at Pilgrim because they all appreciated the music of Thomas Dorsey.

♪ Everybody now ♪ - [Narrator] As Pilgrim burned, the congregation knew they would endure.

The church might have gone up in flames, but the faith of black people had never been bound by traditional walls.

Instead it had been held strong through music.

- [Antionette] This destruction of Pilgrim Baptist Church put a ripple here, but it still stands as a memory.

Gospel music relates hope 24/7, it's hope.

(people singing) - [Narrator] Long before gospel emerged in Chicago, its roots took hold in fields and plantations across the deep south.

- [Johari] Black music has always been a means by which the early enslaved Africans came to understand themselves as a people, that while they come from various areas on the continent, that they have in common this cultural technology of the ring shout.

(ring shout vocalizations) - [Narrator] The ring shout, an African tradition that included elements of sacred dance and prayer to their own gods.

(ring shout vocalizations) - [Kathryn] They would take a gourd, a big pot, turn it upside down to muffle the sound, and then they would scream and holler their African chants in rhythms 'til they go into a frenzy and get the spirit and then they would be all right.

For a little while, they had some release.

- [Johari] They don't speak the same languages, but they have that ritual in common.

- [Robert] Oftentimes the slave's owners would not allow this worship.

You know, they were afraid of it.

What are they trying to communicate?

So there was a real push to Christianize the enslaved Africans.

- [Narrator] Slaves were allowed to attend the same church as slave owners, where they learned the hymns of the Church of England.

But they took the traditional European hymn and incorporated the ring shout.

The result was an entirely new song, the black spiritual.

- When the Africans were creating their music, there was no instruments.

They actually were forbidden to read and write, and so the leader would lead out the song.

♪ I ♪ ♪ Love the Lord ♪ ♪ Hear my cry ♪ ♪ Now ♪ (gospel music) ♪ Lord ♪ The congregation would listen and sing along, and no song has to be perfect, everybody's singing along.

Africans own culture included call and response, improvisations, rhythm, emotion, and those are very important to keep their culture and their spirit together.

(gospel music) - [Narrator] While the traditional church, with its message of deliverance was soothing, blacks saw the hypocrisy coming from the pulpit.

- [Reverend Moss] We were creating a new theology, whereas the enslaver was trying to put forth a doctrine, be docile, but yet people of African descent said we're going to speak the truth of the stories that we have heard in the Bible.

An example is "Before I be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave."

♪ Oh freedom ♪ Now the enslavers said be obedient, but the song says "Before I be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave, oh Freedom!"

♪ Before I be a slave, ♪ ♪ I'll be buried in my grave ♪ ♪ And go home to my Lord ♪ ♪ And be free ♪ - [Kathryn] There was the white church that they went to, and there was the invisible church that they snuck away to at night in what they called hush arbors, surrounded by trees away from the plantation owners.

♪ Oh Lord have mercy ♪ ♪ I'm gonna pray ♪ - [Johari] What becomes spirituals emerges out of the invisible institution.

They also have the brilliance to encode the music with instructions in terms of how to flee.

- [Reverend Moss] You have a prime example, "Down by the Riverside" to signal that if you want to get away from the dogs, please go down by the riverside.

Why?

Because God will trouble the water.

These biblical stories mixed together, spoken as a double entendre, in order to share freedom and liberation for people of African descent.

♪ I'm gonna meet my friend and God ♪ ♪ Down by the riverside ♪ We never took hold of the idea of being docile and listening to the enslaver.

We always had a secret language that came through our music.

♪ Show me anywhere Lord ♪ ♪ and I'll go be down ♪ - [Narrator] After the Civil War, many African-Americans chose to form their own churches.

While spirituals remained the thread of black community, emancipation allowed new unfiltered forms of expression.

- [Kathryn] You would have places where you could go and relax, and have a harmonica, a fiddle.

They made the music, they made it to suit the occasion for which it was being used.

♪ Lord there's rats in my kitchen ♪ ♪ Eating up my home, my bread ♪ ♪ And I come home, eating all in my bed ♪ ♪ Lord you want rat and someday I'm gonna find your trail ♪ (blues music) - [Johari] The blues emerges in the context of the Mississippi Delta by a sharecropping population of working class black folk who used the music as a way of talking back to sharecropping as another regime of slavery.

- Africans also brought a culture of there is no such thing as secular music.

All of it is sacred, and so we're going to play for you what a traditional blues chord progression would be.

(blues music plays) Now we're going to add some text to it.

♪ I am on the battlefield for my Lord ♪ ♪ I am on the battlefield for my Lord ♪ - [Narrator] But Southern blacks had little means to enjoy their liberty.

Most were no better off economically than they were before the war.

Underpaid, subjected to Jim Crow, and often barred from voting.

By 1916, any hope for equality had faded.

- [Robert] You couldn't even walk on the same side of the street as a white person, and you were going to be living the same life of your ancestors, a life of deprivation unless you left.

It was untenable.

- [Narrator] In Chicago, where there was an established African-American community, the Chicago Defender and its editor Robert Abbott urged blacks to flee north.

- The Chicago Defender was one of the largest African-American newspapers in the United States.

Abbott was a migrant himself who had achieved enormous amounts of wealth and success.

- [Narrator] Abbott employed a network of train porters who earned additional money distributing papers throughout the south.

- This message is being carried by porters who are sort of polished and refined and in their uniforms, and it really was seminal in promoting this idea of Chicago as the promised land.

- My grandmother always would tell me that those Pullman porters who would come through Mississippi would toss the newspapers overboard and then they would gather them and then distribute them among each other.

The humorous part of the Chicago Defender would always be that it never, ever went into the garbage can.

If it got really tattered, they ended up using it as wallpaper.

(blues music) - [Narrator] Blacks mustered the courage to leave and tens of thousands in Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana boarded northbound trains.

(blues music) - It got to the point where so many African-American males were leaving that employers would stand at the train station and not let any blacks get on the train.

♪ You're gonna follow?

♪ ♪ Are you ready to go?

♪ Train would move on and about a half mile up the road, all the migrants would jump out of the woods and jump on the train, that was how badly they wanted to leave the south.

♪ I got on my traveling shoes ♪ (train clatters) - [Narrator] Among the multitude who arrived at Chicago's 12th Street station was a 17 year old musician from Georgia named Thomas Andrew Dorsey.

(train clatters) - [Kathryn] He came from a prominent family in Villa Rica.

His father was a Morehouse graduate.

He was also a preacher, a flamboyant preacher.

He would go around from church to church.

- [Narrator] His mother taught him to play traditional church hymns on the piano.

- [Kathryn] His mother was an organist, but her brother was a jazz clarinetist, so he was always around music.

His mother taught him about God and his uncle taught him about the blues.

- [Narrator] Dorsey's idyllic childhood was upended in 1908 when hard times forced the family to move to Atlanta.

- Here he is from the country moving to Atlanta.

I think he felt like he was out of place.

He called himself at one point like a sorry piece of humanity.

- [Narrator] At age 13, Thomas Dorsey dropped out of school and got a job selling sodas at the 81 Theater, a vaudeville house in Atlanta's Red Light District.

- You had a lot of honky-tonk, you had should I say flop houses?

Houses of ill repute, and that's where people came to do things in the dark that they didn't want seen in the light.

- [Narrator] In this quarter of town, he found stage acts like Ma Rainey and barrel house juke joints were boogie-woogie and honky-tonk tunes played till dawn.

- It had to have been like night and day for Thomas Dorsey to go from Villa Rica, Georgia, little church, into seeing people singing this kind of new blues mixed.

He wanted to play that music himself.

(train horn blares) - [Narrator] By age 16, Thomas Dorsey was yearning for the life he saw advertised in the Chicago Defender.

He left the south with one foot in the church and the other in the blues joint.

The music of each was ingrained in his DNA in a way that would redefine sacred music.

- [Robert] Whether it was in the church or in the clubs, he felt like he was a celebrity in waiting.

(cars rumble) - [Narrator] When Thomas Andrew Dorsey stepped onto the Chicago train platform in 1919, his dream was to become a professional musician.

He headed directly to Bronzeville, also known as the black belt, home to most of the city's black population.

- [Sherri] Bronzeville with it being the community that everyone was condensed in, it was not uncommon for the doctor to live next door to the Pullman Porter, the Pullman Porter to live next door to the shoe shine boy.

Everyone was in one pot together.

- [Johari] Jazz is really booming, right?

And so when he arrived in Chicago, he arrives as any new musician does in a town looking for work.

- [Narrator] The center of Bronzeville's music scene was the Stroll, where one band leader swore there was so much music in the air, you hold a horn up and it would play itself.

Jazz, like blues had been brought up from the south by migrants looking for fame.

- [Julius] You have a vibrant music scene so popular that whites from outside of the community would come because that was where the musical genius of the time was being performed.

- [Narrator] Fledgling musicians like Thomas Dorsey vied for work at the least popular cafes and dance halls.

Dorsey dubbed himself Georgia Tom.

He made ends meet by playing rent parties where tenants pass the hat to help pay the rent.

It was Dorsey's job to keep the party jumping.

- [Robert] He could play the blues, the jazz, and he was called the whispering pianist because he could play quietly so that he didn't disturb the neighbors.

- [Narrator] He found house parties full of southerners who loved the same bluesy rhythms he did.

- [Robert] Blues in the south had a very country feeling, but then you also had this stage blues that came out of the black vaudeville experience.

- [Narrator] But despite the draw of city nightlife, church was still vital to Southern migrants like Dorsey.

- [Sherri] African Methodist Episcopal churches had this huge network in which anyone who was looking for employment or housing, those migrants that came, they wouldn't know, they would be meeting up with a congregation that was going to welcome them.

- [Kathryn] When Thomas Dorsey came to Chicago, his father was a Baptist minister so he naturally joined Pilgrim Baptist Church.

- [Narrator] Pilgrim Baptist was one of six old landmark churches that held prominence in the black community.

Worship style at the landmarks mirrored Chicago's white churches.

- [Kathryn] They were called silk stocking churches because the ladies came in silk stockings, and in the winter they had furs.

- [Robert] There was no hand-clapping, no shouting, no Hallelujahs.

The pastors were really trying to foster a middle-class respectability among their members.

- [Narrator] The music was anthems and hymns performed by highly trained choirs, and the congregation was not encouraged to join in.

Most newcomers found this practice bewildering.

♪ Now I am found ♪ ♪ Was blind but now I see ♪ - [Bryan] Amazing Grace is one of the most popular hymns, but what makes this song unique for Africans is their interpretation of it.

♪ Say grace ♪ Remember Africans can with their emotionalism and the call response is not just the congregation responding musically, but also to the emotion.

♪ Oh I was blind ♪ ♪ And now, right now ♪ ♪ I can see ♪ - [Robert] In the south, the preaching was informal.

People sang together, people responded together, (congregation clamoring) so you can you imagine a migrant walking into the church and expecting to hear communal singing, people hearing a great, good old soul stirring sermon, and they saw nothing like that.

(formal church music) - [Narrator] And while old landmark churches supported their new neighbors from the south, most congregants looked down known their country ways.

- [Robert] You heard it even in the Chicago Defender.

You don't know how to dress, you don't know how to speak, and people took umbrage to that.

- People in the margins need a space where they can be fully free, where they can be themselves, and the black church offers an opportunity at its best for people to be free.

- [Narrator] Not feeling at home in the old churches, migrants sought to create their own.

They gathered in homes and revival tents and set up storefront churches along State Street.

They brought their own songs with lyrics about the hardships of slavery and Jim Crow and rhythms inspired by the African ring shout.

- [Kathryn] You had the singers, you had the church members.

Everybody could clap, everybody could sing.

- When it came to music and worship, it was explosive, it was loud, it was spontaneous.

- [Kathryn] When you got into a Pentecostal church, you hear beating, they're going to stop with their feet.

The mothers are gonna come an hour before church.

They're gonna start praying and singing, so by the time you get there, the spirit is already in the church.

That was missing in the large silk-stocking churches.

- Hallelujah, thank you Jesus.

- [Narrator] Thomas Dorsey who'd come north with dreams of becoming a professional musician was struggling to climb the ranks.

- [Kathryn] He was working in steel mills, but he was not getting the success as quickly as he wanted to.

His dream was to come to Chicago and become kind of like a superstar.

- [Narrator] Beaten by disappointment, Dorsey attended a Baptist convention at one of the old landmark churches.

While there, he watched someone perform the traditional hymn "I Know a Great Savior.

I Do, Don't You?"

♪ I know ♪ ♪ I know a great savior ♪ ♪ I do, I do ♪ ♪ Don't you?

♪ ♪ I live ♪ ♪ I will live by his favor ♪ ♪ I do ♪ ♪ Don't you?

♪ The crowd's response was so exuberant, it rekindled Dorsey's own faith.

♪ I just know he's caring, I know that ♪ - [Robert] Dorsey had this epiphany like this is the same kind of response I saw at the theater in Atlanta.

I think that there was always this nagging in Dorsey's mind, this little voice saying you should be working for God.

- [Narrator] He quit working the clubs and became a pianist at a small Baptist church, but the conversion was short-lived.

The salary wasn't enough to pay his bills, and Dorsey went back to playing the blues clubs.

- He is from rural Georgia and you know, his family is a very religious devout family, but the blues are unavoidable, and so he does not break from the blues.

I don't think he really could, because it has a specific kind of purpose in the lives of black people.

- [Narrator] Chicago wasn't the only city whose music was being transformed by the Great Migration.

The blues was now emanating from bars and street corners across urban America.

Paramount Records in Milwaukee decided to jump on the trend.

They launched a series of race records marketed for the black community.

- [Robert] They were looking for the niche.

They had no idea where to find African-American musicians.

- [Narrator] Paramount opened a studio on the Stroll where there was plenty of talent including Thomas Dorsey, who they hired as a studio musician and arranger.

- He was playing piano, and then he could also train the singers how to make a record because they might be good musicians, but they didn't quite know how to make a record.

- [Narrator] The job marked a change of fortune for Thomas Dorsey.

He met his sweetheart Nettie Harper who was also a Georgia native, and in the summer of 1925, they married.

He also landed gigs playing with popular musicians, like the "Whispering Syncopators."

- He was able to play in the nightclubs, major nightclubs, not just rent parties, and that's how he met the person who made him famous, The Blues Queen.

- [Narrator] Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was a blues singer who quit the vaudeville circuit in the south to follow the wave of musicians to Chicago.

♪ I was drinking all night babe ♪ ♪ And the night before ♪ Her style of barrelhouse blues and tent show theatrics were a hit with both the black and white audiences on the Stroll.

- [Robert] You got the Grand Theater at 31st and State, they set up this great big papier mache Victrola.

Somebody comes in, they crank up the Victrola, and then she pops out of the Victrola.

Dorsey just had the love that, that theatricality, and how the audience responded.

(blues music) - [Narrator] Dorsey landed a job playing piano on one of Ma Rainey's first studio recordings.

Afterwards, she hired him to form a band they dubbed the Jazz Wildcats.

He joined them on tour as director.

- Ma Rainey was becoming one of the biggest blues artists of her time, and Dorsey starts writing songs for her and for other artists.

- [Narrator] His wife Nettie came along as Ma Rainey's wardrobe assistant, but like Thomas Dorsey, Nettie had been raised in the church and she could sense in her husband a discontent.

- [Kathryn] Nettie being in love with him and living with him saw that he was having a serious conflict between wanting to be in the church only, but needing to make the money from the secular field.

- [Narrator] With her influence, Dorsey tried his hand at writing evangelical hymns while still touring with Ma Rainey.

- He is a young man and he thinks that I'm going to appeal to a new generation of churchgoers with this music.

- [Narrator] But the mainstream churches showed no interest in songs written by a barrelhouse blues musician.

- [Robert] Pastors did not like this music.

They associated this with the clubs.

This was not Bach and Beethoven, and you're not bringing that jazz baby music in my church.

He believed in his music, but it didn't seem like anyone else did.

- [Narrator] Instead, it was Dorsey's blues career that was gathering steam.

On the Stroll, he met a slide guitarist named Tampa Red.

Together, they came up with a raunchy tune called "It's Tight Like That."

- The Chicago Defender called it scandalous.

You might enjoy listening to it.

♪ Listen here folks, I wanna sing a little song ♪ ♪ Don't get mad, we don't mean no harm ♪ ♪ Y'know it's tight like that ♪ ♪ Beedle-Um-Bum, oh it's tight like that ♪ ♪ Beedle-Um-Bum ♪ ♪ Oh ya hear me talkin' to ya ♪ ♪ I mean it's tight like that ♪ - [Narrator] The lyrics, while seemingly innocuous, were run a wink and nod to far blue affair than previous commercial recordings.

- [Robert] It's what they call hokum music.

It had a hook chorus, it had this sort of hint of sexuality and that very Southern way of saying things without saying them, and it blossomed an industry of hokum music.

Suddenly Dorsey's a huge success.

- "It's tight Like That" is probably the song that made him rich.

♪ It's tight like that ♪ ♪ Beedle-Um-Bum, Bum-Bum ♪ - [Narrator] While success was exciting, it felt wrong to Thomas Dorsey who felt God's will pulling him towards the church.

- One time with Ma Rainey, he went to a concert to play, and he sat at the piano and his fingers would not move.

There's nothing wrong with them, but they were just paralyzed.

- [Narrator] The unsteadiness continued until he was unable to practice, write, or perform.

He grew thinner, even as doctors found nothing physically wrong.

- [Robert] Dorsey probably struggled with depression.

He's trying to get his sacred music over and it's not going over well.

He's being called everything but a child of God.

It sent him into what he called a nervous breakdown.

- [Narrator] Dorsey was broke and even contemplating suicide.

His wife urged him to seek solace in the church.

- Nettie would try to get him to understand that he needed to leave the secular music alone and just go to the church.

Until he followed God's will for his life, nothing was going to work for him.

- [Narrator] One morning, a friend who lived in the apartment below took ill and died later that night.

The sudden death shook him once again.

As Thomas Dorsey emptied his thoughts into the piano, a new connection between blues and worship took shape.

♪ I was standing by the bedside of a neighbor ♪ ♪ Who was just about to cross the swelling tide ♪ ♪ And I asked him if he would do me a favor ♪ ♪ Kindly take this message to the other side ♪ ♪ If you see my savior tell him that you saw me ♪ - [Robert] He just got the idea that if you see my savior, tell him that you saw me, that I'm on my way.

- [Reverend Moss] He knew all the blues, licks and chords, and he takes that music, he takes those chords and those sounds, which are very African, and then he places on top of it lyrics that speak of the gospel.

♪ But please do try to see my savior first of all ♪ - You know, he was a man who is on the road with Ma Rainey.

You know, one of his names is Barrelhouse Tom.

Well, barrel house is a speakeasy, right?

So the way that he plays the instrument, he doesn't abandon that, and so those roots of the blues continued.

♪ Tell him I am coming home someday ♪ ♪ Coming home someday ♪ - Dorsey is the father who opens the door for a new music that's connected to the south, and is speaking about the new experience of people who were living in the north.

- [Narrator] Dorsey pens dozens more blues infused religious songs.

He called it gospel blues.

He tried to bring the old landmark churches around to his way of thinking.

- [Reverend Moss] When he brings this music we know as gospel, there are ministers who have a fit.

They are upset that the music sounds so much like what's happening on Saturday night, and I would make a joke and say, well, how do you know what sounds like on Saturday night?

- [Narrator] Dorsey came up with an aggressive new plan for selling his songs.

Dorsey and a select group of singers would travel from church to church demonstrating his gospel blues.

Once hooked, they would sell the pastor's sheet music at a dime a song.

While auditioning these demonstrators, he met a Southern Baptist named Sallie Martin.

- [Kathryn] Sallie Martin was a singer who really had the Pentecostal bent.

She was an evangelist and her style of singing was not to Dorsey's liking, but he liked her delivery.

♪ I'll tell of the savior ♪ ♪ I'll tell of his saving ♪ ♪ I'll tell him wherever ♪ ♪ I go ♪ ♪ I counted ♪ - Sallie Martin was able to say his song, preach his song, sing his song, and sell his song so the bottom line was she made it work.

♪ Wherever ♪ ♪ I go ♪ - [Narrator] Martin was among a cadre of female singers who Dorsey would rely on for the rest of his life.

- Thomas Dorsey had a group that I nicknamed the Dorsey disciples, and these were women who would demonstrate his songs.

- [Narrator] Sallie Martin was soon joined by Magnolia Butts, Willie May Ford, and Roberta Martin.

- [Johari] These women are incredible organizers and they are no less entrepreneurial.

- [Narrator] Joined by Theodore Fry, they co-founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses.

- [Robert] It's starting to become an industry, and it was Dorsey's songs, hence all gospel songs at one point got called Dorsey's whether or not he wrote them or not.

♪ He poured grace in ♪ ♪ My heart ♪ ♪ And he gave me a brand new start ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ That's ♪ ♪ What he does ♪ ♪ For me ♪ - We like those songs, not the blues that he was doing.

- A lot of songs that he wrote and they had a meaning, and that's what draws people, the meaning of the songs, because just to sing, it's not necessarily gonna bring anybody in.

It's the lyrics that if you listen at them, you know, that will bring you through.

- [Narrator] It was while looking to add singers to his roster of talent in 1928, that Dorsey auditioned another migrant from the south.

She'd be the one to spread gospel across the globe.

17 year old Mahalia Jackson was born in New Orleans, reared by the church and the Crescent City's jubilant sound.

- Mahalia Jackson was able to take everything she heard in New Orleans, the jazz, the blues, the Baptist hymns, and she made her own gumbo, her musical gumbo, and brought it to Chicago.

- [Narrator] As a singer, Jackson tested Dorsey's patience.

She rarely sang his songs the same way twice, but her voice resonated emotion.

♪ The Lord will come ♪ ♪ And ♪ ♪ Show the way ♪ - [Johari] Mr. Dorsey had a sound in his ear that he wanted to hear in the songs, and when he met Mahalia Jackson, he heard that sound.

♪ Still I ♪ ♪ Know I ♪ The sound he heard was the blues, but he also wanted it to be in the frame of a kind of spirituality.

Mr. Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson stood on the corners.

She sang the songs and he tried to sell them.

- [Narrator] They found an audience at storefront churches where Southern migrants wanted raw emotion with their worship.

Leadership at the old landmarks watched the storefronts grow in both membership and wealth.

- Even if the pastors didn't necessarily like gospel music, they recognized there were more migrants coming to Chicago, there were plenty of churches to attend.

- [Narrator] The sea change finally came to an old landmark in 1931 with the arrival of a new pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Reverend J.H.L.

Smith was a migrant from Birmingham, Alabama.

- [Robert] You finally have a migrant as a pastor of one of these mainline Protestant churches in Chicago.

He wanted some element of the south land to be part of the church.

- [Narrator] He reached out to Thomas Dorsey to organize a gospel chorus at Ebenezer with Theodore Fry.

- [Robert] Well, it was a great experiment.

Dorsey and Fry got the choir ready, they got robes for them, and they get up to the beginning of 1932 and debut at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

It could have gone either way.

They could have been very silent, polite, or they could loved it and they loved it.

♪ Do you know about Jesus?

♪ ♪ He's all right ♪ ♪ Do you know about my savior?

♪ ♪ Oh and he's all right ♪ ♪ He's all right ♪ - [Narrator] In the pews was Reverend Dr. Junius C. Austin of one of the oldest landmark churches, Pilgrim Baptist.

- [Cynthia] Dr. Austin was the greatest orator that you could hear.

He believed in preaching the word, but he also knew finances and entrepreneurship was important for a church.

- [Narrator] When he took over Pilgrim's ministry, the church was $100,000 in debt.

- [Robert] Reverend Austin saw in the future and realized I can pay off the debt.

They always say music brings you in, preaching keeps you there.

- [Narrator] Austin ask Dorsey to build a gospel choir at Pilgrim and take a position as choir director.

- [Robert] So you have Ebenezer on one Sunday has the gospel chorus debut.

Few Sundays later Pilgrim Baptist Church has a chorus, and then in the Chicago Defender, every week in 1932, you start to see churches announce we're starting a gospel chorus.

(upbeat gospel music) ♪ I'm going home, I'm going to church ♪ - [Johari] There is this connection when a gospel choir performs singing harmony and singing rhythm together that makes the listener want to get involved.

♪ Put on my shoes ♪ ♪ Go around here and tell the news ♪ It's a part of a much longer tradition of black people and spirituality which for us is embodied and participatory.

It's not the neck up.

And that's the reflection of humanity.

That's a reflection of us.

(upbeat gospel music) - [Narrator] After years of personal struggle, Thomas Dorsey's vision for gospel blues had finally come to pass, but later that summer, Dorsey's life was again thrown into crisis.

He was on the road when he learned that Nettie, who was pregnant with their first child, had suddenly fallen ill and died.

- [Robert] She had passed away, but his child Thomas was born.

He gets to hold his baby in his arms, and he's thinking to himself how awful and devastating the loss of his wife is, but yet at least he's got the baby.

- [Narrator] Early the next morning, the child died too.

Despondent and filled with grief, Dorsey turned to the piano for comfort.

As he played, he began to sing.

Lord, take my hand.

Dorsey debuted the song at Pilgrim Church.

♪ Precious Lord ♪ ♪ I love your name ♪ ♪ When I ♪ ♪ Look back ♪ ♪ From whence I came ♪ - [Robert] It's really Thomas Dorsey's personal testimony.

That song tore that church up.

People were up, they were hollering, they were yelling, they were in the aisles.

This was their song too.

♪ Sometimes stumbling ♪ ♪ Sometimes falling ♪ - [Johari] We all feel that.

We all feel that because we all've experienced loss.

♪ Come on ♪ (gospel music) And that's what makes his song Precious Lord a kind of black national Anthem of mourning is he tapped into that universal power of loss, ♪ Thank you Jesus ♪ and working class migrants would have needed someone to do that, they would've needed a poet, and Mr. Dorsey becomes that person.

♪ Precious Lord ♪ - [Narrator] In Chicago, nearly every church now had a choir singing gospel, and a new medium was about to spread gospel's reach even further.

In 1934, the First Church of Deliverance aired its first service live on the radio.

It opened with a 200 voice choir.

♪ Jesus is the light ♪ ♪ The light of the world ♪ ♪ Jesus is the light ♪ ♪ The light of the world ♪ ♪ Jesus is the light ♪ ♪ Light of the world ♪ (gospel music) The church's midnight broadcast became part of Bronzeville nightlife.

- [Robert] You could not even get through Wabash Avenue.

People would go from the club, leave their drink on the table, go to the midnight service, come back, and continue drinking.

It is said that Billy Holiday showed up with a dog in her purse.

- [Narrator] A spot on the midnight broadcast was the summit of success.

- It was a great big deal.

It was so big that my pastor didn't want me to be in the group.

(laughing) But he didn't have any say so at that particular time.

I was old enough to know what I want to do.

- [Robert] The First Church of Deliverance probably did as much to disseminate the sound of gospel music as Thomas Dorsey.

- [Narrator] As churches across America started their own gospel choirs, Mahalia Jackson became one of the first singers to take gospel out of the church and into the commercial realm.

♪ One of these mornings ♪ ♪ Soon in the morning ♪ - [Robert] She just had this way of really making people feel something.

She could twist a little blue note.

♪ Soon as my feet strike Zion ♪ And people would fall out.

♪ Be always ♪ ♪ Howdy ♪ ♪ Howdy ♪ ♪ No ♪ ♪ And ♪ ♪ Never goodbye ♪ - [Narrator] And Jackson never abandoned the plight of the African-American working class.

- [Johari] She understood herself as a part of black working class women, not separate from it.

She knew that white people loved her when she was on the stage, but she knew how they treated black people generally.

When these gospel musicians are traveling, it is still a Jim Crow reality.

There would be times where they wouldn't be able to stop for hours and even days.

- [Narrator] Jackson was already internationally famous in 1956 when she was invited to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

- [Robert] She met Dr. King.

He liked her and asked her if she would come and sing for the walking people, and she said she would, but he said, how much would you charge?

She said, I don't charge the walking people.

An instant friendship between her and Martin Luther King.

He would often call her, when he was really, really low in his life and he would say Mahalia sing to me, and she would do that.

- [Narrator] After Montgomery, Dr. King asked Mahalia Jackson to join him at the 1963 March on Washington to introduce his historic "I Have a Dream" speech to the crowd.

It would cement gospel music's place as the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement.

- Before king gives this speech, Mahalia sings "I've Been Buked" at King's request, ♪ I've ♪ ♪ Been buked ♪ ♪ And I've ♪ ♪ Been scorned ♪ and it is such an interesting choice.

It's a folk spiritual.

It has no rhythm.

It is basic.

She performs it like a dirge.

♪ But one thing ♪ ♪ I don't rule ♪ - [Johari] To see that many people at a march quiet when she's singing.

♪ Stand by me ♪ She is firmly at this time, you know, the queen of gospel, but she's sings "I've Been Buked" and it helps us to understand something about gospel with respect to political protests.

They would always be reminded that this too is spiritual work.

♪ Lord as you leave your child ♪ ♪ I cannot make it home no ♪ (cheering and clapping) - [Reverend Moss] Songs have power so there's a call that happens in the midst of the church.

There's strength that happens when you have 400 people of African descent singing collectively, regardless if you were part of the church or not.

Free black spiritual space always leads to liberation possibilities.

♪ I'm gonna pray right now ♪ - [Narrator] In 2006, Pilgrim Baptist Church was undergoing an extensive rehab when the fire broke out.

After the smoke cleared, little remained of the 115 year old landmark, except for its walls and front shingle.

- [Cynthia] What I always will remember, that sign that says Pilgrim Baptist Church never burned.

It's still there today.

- [Narrator] The church and its congregants moved to a building across the street, and for years now, organizers have been working to restore the original church as a tribute to its roots.

- [Cynthia] We want to rebuild it as the Gospel Museum.

It's so meaningful to people, even in Chicago and all over the world.

- [Narrator] Thomas Dorsey had remained the choir director of Pilgrim Church for 40 years.

He is gone, but his music still echoes in new harmonies.

- In so many ways gospel music is black music and we can't extract those two.

Lament, the blues, best partying, best worship, all that stuff is black music.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Julian DeShazier is both an Emmy award winning rap musician and the pastor of a south side church.

- [Reverend DeShazier] I'm a hip hop artist and that's because I learned rap before I learned any other language, but I always consider myself a gospel artist because my faith is a part of this music.

- [Narrator] He draws inspiration from the story of Thomas Andrew Dorsey, whose gospel blues was once called devil's music.

- When I heard the stories of Dorsey being kicked out of churches, it was like my heart was set on fire because I had already been kicked out of churches several times for rapping.

♪ As long as I'm right here on this Earth, ♪ ♪ Then Imma tell y'all that I'm blessed ♪ I appreciate that he didn't stop, that he kept figuring out ways to bring in these rhythms, to bring in these chords, to bring in the black experience inside the church.

He did something that we already knew in our bodies is true.

(upbeat gospel music) - [Narrator] Since its inception, gospel music embodied both despair and hope.

Its rhythm and lyrics were intended to speak to both Saturday night and Sunday morning.

- [Sherri] The remnants of Africa and picking cotton and leaving the south, those field hollers, those shouts, those handclaps, those foot stomping, all of that makes up what we know as gospel today, and the remnants came with everyone when they left the south.

(upbeat gospel music) - [Johari] Gospel is saying, you can't just jump to jubilation without confrontation, (upbeat gospel music) and so we've always got to ask what is this gospel that we would have without the blues?

(upbeat gospel music) music)