As featured in December 1998

Born in the Soil,
Forged by the Heart

Gospel singers preserve ol' time traditions

By Vincent F.A. Golphin

They were rascals who became stars. When the bright lights dimmed, they endured. They were reborn-all in Jesus' name. After more than 60 years, Luther Brown still doesn't know his story's full worth. Only two things are certain. The tale's not finished and the journey is not his alone.

He was one of the original Brown Brothers, part of a family of sharecroppers with an extraordinary gift for song. Eventually, a few of the brothers formed a 1940's North Carolina gospel quartet that rode the then-newborn gospel music craze to an audience of millions. But, that's only the middle of the story.

Luther Brown never saw his voice as extraordinary. He was like most of his 14 brothers and sisters. They did the same thing as most blacks he knew growing up around Rockingham, North Carolina-they sang. African Americans in the cotton fields around the little town where states routes 74, 220, and 1 meet, learned song was a safe way to establish a presence and air hopes and feelings for a brighter future. Even in times of Jim Crow segregation, often clueless, white folks enjoyed the delicate harmonies and soulful moans and wails of black church music as a sign of contentment. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The spirituals, blues and gospel music remain one of blacks' few links with an African past. The use of flattened thirds and sevenths (blue notes), tight harmonies, call and response patterns and spirited innovations allowed 18th and 19th century African Americans to transform European hymns into flamboyant vocal presentations. Songs flowed from the churches of black slaves and freedmen to the fields and streets. They spawned a separate and unequaled tradition that nurtured captive souls.

For Brown, music was the way out of poverty and bitter work. The 72-year-old singer eased into a chair, holding onto a small stack of photos, a still-soul-stirring voice, charm, wit and memories. "When I was a kid, around 10 or 11, I thought all children could sing, especially black Americans," he began. "I didn't know any better. I had never been off the farm.

"I heard about Nat King Cole, but he was a grown man. The song he put out that made him famous, I will never forget how it made my mother and aunt sing, 'Straighten up and fly right, cool down papa don't you blow your top'." Brown crooned with surety, as if the song was a natural part of conversation.

"That is what gave us a push back in those days, especially for a kid who had talent," he said. "I thought every kid could sing. I hadn't been to town to find out any different."

The town was Rockingham-North Carolina, zip 28379. It is just up Route 74 from Wadesboro, seat of Rockingham County, about 88 statute miles from Raleigh, the capital. In the scheme of things, during the late 1930s when the Brown Brothers' career began, home was a patch along the dusty Central North Carolina back roads. Even today, the 16,934 square kilometer, mostly rural area holds only 3,971 families. At last count, the population totaled 9,399. Even though Brown's body left the hamlet about 30 miles north of the South Carolina line decades ago, it still claims his soul.

"I asked a friend of mine named Eli Union to help me arrange a song I had in mind," he continued. Brown broke into song, as on a warm summer night decades ago:

"A crowd of people went into the desert, to listen to what the good Lord said. Yes, the only thing they heard was my Master's good word. And they got hungry and had to be fed. They had only two little fishes and only five loaves of bread."

The singer was home. For a few moments, it was clear in his gaze. Beneath the song's words were memories of the Bible lessons learned from his mother, Annie Julia Washington Brown, the applause of congregations in white clapboard churches and classmates in colored-only country schools. In the solid tones was the sense of his father, Belta Brown. He sang too.

"I tried to get Eli to do the tenor part," he recalled. "He said, 'Man, I don't feel like singing.' I thought he was trying to be funny. Finally, he told me, 'Luther, I can't sing like you.' I said, 'You can't sing?' I thought everybody could sing."

Brown said he and his siblings embraced music so naturally, they even sang themselves to sleep. They embraced every opportunity. They made up songs to thrill schoolmates. Annie Julia Brown, a deeply religious woman, pushed them to perform in local churches. Song even fended off the boredom of work in the fields.

"When the war broke out in 1941, mothers were losing their sons, and we would go into the homes to soothe the people down in the country," he said. "Two or three nights a week we would sing for the old people who couldn't get to church that Sunday."

They sang jubilee songs-hymns with a strong beat that tell a biblical story. Spirituals were sung with an Old Testament theme. Hymns were sung in praise of God. Brown said those distinctions were understood by nearly every group and individual in those parts.

Harmonies were playthings. Melodies were pulled from the air. Subjects were drawn from the Bible or their surroundings. The Browns have perfect pitch. Clarence Ingram said that is at the root of their success.

"They will hear a song they like," he explained. "For example, if it sounds pretty decent to them, give them 15 or 20 minutes and they'll rearrange that song like they want it. When they get ready and say they're going to sing it, they know exactly where every one of them is going and they don't get out of tune."

Luther Brown said he learned the trick from a mockingbird. "I could imitate him," he said recalling summer Sunday strolls in the woods. "That bird came there every afternoon to sing for me. It was fun. I could get different sounds. I have that much over my sisters and brothers. They would say, 'Where did you get those sounds?'"

His brother James Brown also shares that ear for music. "The music is a gift that just comes natural," James stated. "We just have an ear for the right key. It's something you can just feel."

During World War II when the Brown boys were in their early teens, entertaining was a habit. A sharecropper's farm had no access to gyms or movies. Gangs were nonexistent. Pent up energies were turned to the creation of song. Each tune was released. For that, applause and food were rewards enough.

"That's the part I used to love, how they would feed us," Brown said. "Southern food is good. I wasn't but 15 years old, so I didn't have nothing else to do." Then they got paid.

"Some kind of way we stood out a little bit even then, because all of us (the Brown boys) could sing," he said. "The white people used to come from the city in their Pontiacs, Plymouths, Studebakers and Nashes. They used to come out to the field where we were picking cotton and would ask our dad to bring his children out of the field and let them sing. We were just dusty foot little boys."

Brown began to hum. "They liked this song," he said, and broke into a bluesy rendition:

"See them old farmers going to town. Um Hum. See them old farmers going to town. Um Hum. See them old farmers going to town, with a little bit of cotton by the hundred pound."

The thrilled listeners gave them coins. "We used to get about six dollars and a half," Brown said. At the time a nickel was considered a lot of money. Each of the boys got to keep a quarter. The rest went for "city food"-center-cut pork chops and steaks.

Time passed. The Brown Brothers moved on, too. The group did one night stands barnstorming churches throughout Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, where they won many singing competitions. Then they were picked up by a road manager, John Ingram, and were heard at 6:15 every Sunday morning on Charlotte's WAYS radio station.

The group, then known as "The Golden Wings Quartet," consisted of Henry (baritone), James (1st tenor) and Luther (2nd tenor) Brown and Hover Nicholson (bass) who also played guitar. "We called ourselves getting famous," Brown said, "working ourselves to death."

The singers loved to watch the crowds react as each song brought back a Bible story or pushed home a message. Within each verse was a truth that touched each person differently. Luther Brown said the big thrill was to make them holler. "Back in those days, if we didn't make somebody shout, we didn't do nothing," he said. "We had to find a way to do that. That's when the moaning and groaning came into gospel music."

Crowds gathered wherever they went. They even got offers to sing more popular blues and jazz tunes. "We southern boys could have made a lot of money, but my mother wanted us to sing spirituals," he said. "I couldn't bring myself to sing anything except that."

Decades before members of the contemporary a capella group Take Six were born, Luther and James Brown joined neighbors Walter Stanback and Clarence Ingram as the a capella Royal Harmony Singers. They toured throughout the Southeast and Northeast. James Brown said sometimes they did as many as 27 shows in the space of a few days. Then, they went big time.

The Dixie Hummingbirds out of Greenville, South Carolina, moved to Philadelphia and brought the young men along later to fill out engagements. "The old guys looked out for us," recalled brother James. "We were young and we sang every night. You get away from home and you have to watch yourself. We were nice guys and we stayed clean," he declared.

In an era when most blacks on radio were on the "Amos and Andy Show," the Royal Harmony Singers performed songs and a Coca Cola jingle weekly from 1947 to 1949 on CBS' "Arthur Godfrey and Friends," the nation's most popular program. Then Godfrey shifted into television. Walter and James went to the Korean War. The music stopped.

Luther Brown settled in Rochester, New York, in 1952. Walter and James mustered out of the Army and eventually migrated to the Western New York city, too. After awhile, Clarence Ingram joined them.

They married and took care of their families. "Singing is okay," James said. "But when you've got a family you can't sing and take care of your obligations unless you have hit songs. Then you can make a living."

In 1986, three of the brothers-Luther, Clarence and James Brown-reunited with their old partner Ingram as The Brown Brothers. They added Isaac Asbury, another Rockingham native. The new a capella gospel quintet debuted at Billy Graham's Rochester crusade. They still perform in schools and churches throughout the state.

The Brown Brothers still enjoy a sense of local celebrity but feel a sense of mission. They are keepers of the sounds of the southern soil. They are the last generation who learned of God in song under the bonds of Southern segregation. That makes them different from most contemporary gospel groups. Luther says the Brown Brothers sing to their God, straight from the heart. Perhaps all gospel singers do that. Yet, the Brown Brothers' style is a reminder of a place and time when God was all that black folks had.

Brown slowed to explain the story doesn't end. "We don't think we can sing, not yet," he said. Every concert is a training ground. "I'm always learning a different sound," he said. "I also feel good when I sing by myself." As he cruises down the highway for an occasional visit to North Carolina, Luther said, the radio stays off. He practices.

"I sing different songs that I like," he explained. That's when he returns to the playful habits of his youth, putting a moan, a groan or a special note in with the simplest tune. Once again, he is his mother's son, singing about Jesus. Brown said, "Sometimes I feel so good I have to stop the car because the spirit is with me."

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