Gospel Queen On The King's Highway
Pope John XXIII said such nice things to her. The National Baptist Convention was no less captivated, as were the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a host of black and white bishops and preachers and worshippers worldwide. The King and Queen of Denmark wanted more. So did the Empress of Japan, four U.S. presidents, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, broadcaster Studs Terkel, the City of New Orleans, Ed Sullivan and James Baldwin, among others. But for musicians, the best compliments come from other musicians and no one could praise Mahalia Jackson the way that the jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams did at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival. Williams heard Jackson sing there and said, "That goddamn woman makes cold chills run up and down my spine."
Jackson had one of the great big, gorgeous voices of the 20th century — maybe the biggest — inducing cold chills and hot springs of unexpected feeling. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she followed an interior compass that kept her locked exclusively onto gospel music. By her calculus, Jackson didn't budge much from her original sound. She always sang like a bigger-than-life, supremely talented zealot. Her voice and timing and intensity not only rattled black listeners like Williams, but — for the first time — inspired mainstream white listeners to appreciate religious and secular music with a black gospel feel.
Early Access
"She precedes Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin," says music historian Mark Burford in a recent interview. Burford specializes in 20th Century African-American music at Reed College. His 2019 book, Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field, re-examines years of scholarship and common assumptions about Jackson, whom he believes had a lot to do with why "gospelized voices have become the lingua franca of popular culture."
Gospel greats Cooke and Franklin expanded their appeal across the color divide when they transitioned to pop music in 1957 and
