Mahalia+Jackson



Mahalia Jackson was born October 16,1911 in one the poorest sections of New Orleans. She was brought up in a strict religious household. Her family attended a small church next door called Mt. Moriah Baptist Church were at the young age of four she joined the junior choir. By her early teens Mahalia had developed a unique vocal style of singing gospel music. After dropping out of school during the eighth grade Mahalia moved to Chicago were she worked as a maid and laundress; within months of her arrival she joined the choir of Greater Salem Baptist Church. She later formed a group with three sons of her pastor in their group the Johnson brothers. They became the first group to ever to play the Chicago church circuit they even produced a series of self-written musical dramas in which Mahalia was the lead role.

During the mid 30's the Johnson Gospel Singers decided to go there separate ways. Mahalia began her solo career were her career really started to take off. She soon met a man named Thomas A. Dorsey who began her fourteen-year association of touring singing his songs in church programs and conventions like [|"The Closer I Walk With Thee."]

In 1936 Mahalia married Isaac Hockenhull who was 10 years her senior. Mahalia refused to sing secular music which she could have become very wealthy off of but she refused saying that she was raised in a church so that’s what kind of music she was going to sing. She later divorced Isaac in 1941 because of his pressure to sing such music. At the age 26 Mahalia first record was recorded on May 21, 1937 under Decca Coral label.



By the 1940's and 50's she became the first gospel singer to perform at the New Yorks Carnegie Hall, and started touring Europe in 1952, and critics named her "the worls greatest gospel singer." She began a radio serreis on CBS and signed to Columbia Records in 1954. Her kdebut album [|The World's Greatest Gospel Singer]recorded in 1955 followede by Bless This House in 1956. Mahalia Jackson had many notable accomplishments during this period including performances and movie apperances like singing "Trouble Over The World" in the hit movie The Imatation Of Life, She wasd the first African American at the Newport Jazz Festival, In 1961 she sang at U.S President John F. Kennedy inaugration. At the March on Washington in 1963 she sang in front of 250,000 people [|"Ive Been Buked and I've been Scorned]" in which he Dr. Martin Luther King made his famous I Have A Dream speech. Mahlia Jackson later died in Chicago on January 27, 1972 at the the age of 60of heart faliure.