Spirituals Quotes

In spirituals, the talk of heaven and deliverance was code for a better life. 'Crossing the River Jordan' was code, of course, for escaping to freedom.

I grew up singing in church. I've been doing that since I was 3 years old. Singing was a blessing for me to do.

The first music that came to my ear was gospel... I used to sing 'Amazing Grace' with a very strong southern accent and a vibrato already at five years old.

My father started me singing in church.

I was always drawn to gospel music and the roots of African-American music. It's the foundation of rock and roll.

Blues is one of the most important art forms. It's an amazing music, and we don't want to lose it.

I started singing when I was a little kid. I was about nine when we had a group with my four brothers. We sang spirituals. The old regular thing.

I don't remember ever not singing. My mother loved music, and she taught me songs, country music, spirituals. I would sing for people and pass the hat when I was 4.

I started out in gospel music. A lot of people don't know that I started out in gospel music, and I've never lost sight of it.

I grew up around a lot of church musicians.

For me, when I grew up playing music, I played music in church and people were shouting and having a big time, and church wasn't something where it was subdued. If you played something, you brought it to church with you.

The whole musical institution of the church involves a lot of different styles of communication at the same time. Things like call and response. Sometimes they use the music to pray and work things out. And there's so much repetition in gospel, it's like churning butter.

My people couldn't have survived slavery without having hope that it would get better. And there's some songs from the 19th and 18th century that say [sings], "By and by, by and by, I will lay down, this heavy load." And I mean, so many songs that spoke of hope and understand it better by and by. Amazing songs. So that the slaves, just knowing that he, she, did not have the right legally to walk within one inch away from where the slave owner dictated, and yet the same person, wrote and sang with fervor, "If the lord wants somebody, here am I, send me." It's amazing.

I always thought I was singing American folk music.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

I grew up going to a real small missionary baptist church. We would sing a lot of the old standards... the hymns and everything. Those songs are still my favorite and are pretty timeless.

I love early blues like Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf. I listened to the way these people sang, and it was just beautiful - straight from the soul. That, for me, was an inspiration.

I've been getting into different gospel artists; Aretha Franklin is someone I've been listening to a lot of.

Like all soul singers, I grew up singing in church but sometimes I would leave early and sit in the car listening to gospel band, The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hearing their lead singer Clarence made me connect the idea of church and show business and see how I could make a career singing music that stirred the soul.

I'm from the gospel world. I grew up playing in church.

I organized Sweet Honey In The Rock in 1973. The music was sanity and balance.

The falsetto stuff, it must be a reaction to the black gospel singers that I really enjoy listening to.

I've always loved gospel music. Being raised in Mississippi, it was kind of part of the atmosphere down there.

I love the sound of voices singing together, congregational singing, anything like gospel, or folk, or sea shanties.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.