THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL
INTERVIEW WITH: Donald Ross
DATE: August 5, 1989
PLACE:
INTERVIEWER:
Oral History Office, ITC
Esther MacMillan
M: [State District Judge Donald Ross]
The subject today is Sacred Harp Singing.
[There follows a brief recording of Sacred Harp singing
taped at the meeting in MacMahan on April 29, 1989.]
Sacred Harp music is a form of music that is of late
becoming very ... I wouldn't say popular but known, at
least, and people are showing a great interest in it. I had
the wonderful experience of going to MacMahan in April of
this year at the Primitive Baptist Church. They were having
a singing there and it was one of the most interesting
experiences I have ever had in my life. One of the
important things to me was "dinner on the ground" which we
will talk about later.
The thing is, that I want to get on this tape, in
depth, about this. There are so many conflicting things
told to me. When I ask questions, I get ..• now for
instance the name .•. Sacred Harp Singing. I asked somebody
over at MacMahan and he looked up heavenward and said
something about the angels. Well then, I've heard that it's
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M: a four string harp. What's the real answer to why it's
called Sacred Harp singing?
R: Because that is the name of the book from which we sing
The Sacred Harp Song Book. And it was just one of many
shaped-note tune books that were published back during the
first half of the last century.
There were a number of song books published during that
period of time that had the name harp to it. There was a
thespian harp; there was the harp of Columbia; there was the
sacred harp; and a number of others. Harp was a word that
was used synonomously with the voice. It also the
closest thing that we have to the use of that word today is
when we talk about harping on something.
M: Oh yeah. That's interesting.
R: It gives an emphasis or accent to something. And
that's the same use that it had when it was first used in
connection with shaped-note song books back in the first
half of the last century.
M: It's got nothing to do with harps of angels or four
stringed harp?
R: No. Nothing whatsoever.
M: I tried to think 'What's a four string harp?'
R: No, it has nothing to do with an instrument of any
kind.
M: This perhaps is not apropos right now, but when Mary
and I came in, we sat in the very back row and we reached
for a song book. There were no song books. You take them
all home, don't you?
ROSS
R: That's right. Each Sacred Harp singer has his own
book. But usually you can purchase a book at any Sacred
Harp sing ... they're usually for sale.
3
M: But they're not there for the public to use, there in
the pews, like most churches.
R: No.
M: While I'm on this subject •.. this is something that
interested me. This was the Primitive Baptist Church. In
Henderson, you are the Methodist Church over there.
R: We sing in the Community Center. There's not a church
big enough for our singing in Henderson so we sing in the
Community Center. We happen to belong to the Methodist
Church. That's correct.
M: Somewhere it said, some article, said Methodist church.
So it is not a particular denomination.
R: No, it never has belonged to any particular
denomination. It's entirely ecuminical. It's never
belonged to anyone denomination; it's interfaith.
M: Is it just Protestant? Mostly?
R: Yes, I would have to say so. We would not exclude
Catholics if they wanted to sing.
M: If they wanted to come.
R: Yes.
M: The thing that interested me was I didn't know ... here
we came along this lovely country road and all of a sudden
we're at the Primitive Baptist Church, MacMahan. I was so
inte rested; the church is a simple little wooden church, no
stained glass windows in that church, curtains at the 4
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M: windows. No altar, no organ, no piano, no adornments,
nothing. Just the pews. So apparently the Primitive
Baptists exclude any trimmings, anything, just plain church.
Is that right?
R: I can't speak for them.
I suspect that that's correct; that's true but I'd
rather not ••. I don't know for sure.
M: But anyway, you chose that particular church because it
was a good gathering point?
R: No. That particular church has a history of Sacred Harp
Singing. It's the home base for the Southwest Texas Sacred
Harp Singing Convention.
M: And you're the other one in Henderson .
R: The East Texas Sacred Harp Singing Convention.
M: We had planned to come to Henderson in the first place
and then found it was such a long drive from here, a friend
of mine was going to drive, and it meant we'd have to stay
overnight. And then we found out about MacMahan. That was
much simpler and it worked out just fine and I wouldn't have
missed that experience for anything on this earth.
R: That singing meets twice a year: once in the spring .•.
M: Oh, they do?
R: And once in the fall. The fall session alternates
between the Primitive Baptist Church here in San Antonio and
one in Austin. This year, the fifth weekend in October, it
will meet in Austin. Then next year it will be in San
Antonio.
ROSS
M: I wonder where the Primitive Baptist Church is?
R: At the corner of DeSoto and Walton Streets.
5
M: That's a new one on me. But then you learn something
every day, don't you?
R: Yes.
M: One of the things that I read ... your father-in-law
was quoted as saying, and this is interesting to me, 'you
don't sing to entertain the audience, you sing for
yourselves.' And he said that it is a spiritual experience.
Is that right?
R: That is correct. It's not a performance.
M: No.
R: To get full enjoyment, you have to join in the singing.
It's very close to congregational type singing that you have
in church. It's spiritually uplifting and Sacred Harp
Singers sing for praise and adoration to the Creator. And
to each other and for our own enjoyment. Of course, a lot
of people do like to come and listen. I won't say it is
exclusively a participant's activity but you do get the full
benefit and enjoyment by participating rather than just
listening.
M: One of the things that has tickled me was while we were
in MacMahan, a little tiny kid got up in the middle and led
the singing. I couldn't believe it. How old was that
little child? She wasn't more than six, was she?
R: Well, I don't remember.
MRS. R: Many of our children start leading by the age of
three or four.
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MRS. R: That's one way we carryon the tradition within our
families, is to teach our children.
M: Were you a teacher? Are your kids taught?
MRS. R: Our children are singing with us downstairs; they
are 16 and 18 and they have been leading since they were
three or four.
M: How could they do it at three?
MRS. R: You teach them at home. You work with your
children to teach them. We're on the fifth generation,
approximately, that I know of, in my family. I've been
taught since I was old enough to start participating.
M: Isn't that interesting! Let's get this settled: it
says
true
these various sources ... I want to know which is
The first thing I read about this was that it was
purely southern .•. there were so many uneducated people
that couldn't read music so they had the shaped-notes. Then
I hear - in something recently - it says it started with •..
it says here, Sacred Harp Singing came to this country with
the immigrants as it moved west over the mountains. When it
says immigrants, does it mean Germans and Czechs and coming
from other countries?
R: No. He doesn't mean that. The Sacred Harp songbook was
published in 1844 in Hamilton, Georgia. But the shaped-note
tradition, the shaped-note style of singing, originated in
upstate New York.
M: Oh, it did?
R: By two singing school teachers, itinerant singing
school teachers, who devised the shaped-note system as a
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R: method for teaching music to the masses, who were, by
and large, illiterate. Who were uneducated. And that
wasn't just the rural people •.. there were not very many
well educated people during that day at all, considering the
total population.
M: Time and opportunity were missing.
R: That's right. So they devised this system for teaching
music. Now they appropriated the English fa sol la system
and applied it, adapted it, to the shaped-notes. They
combined the two. And I think this is where the confusion
comes in the fa sol la did come from England ... we know
that during the Elizabethan period. And that was taken by
these two upstate New York music teachers and applied to
shaped-notes to t each music. So they came up with the
geometrical shapes for notes and gave them names, using old
English syllables: fa, sol, la, mi.
M: Those are old English?
R: Yes, those are old English syllables. And so that was
a very simple way to teach music. And it's still a valid
way to teach music. Although it's not used any more, it's
still a very valid and simple way to teach a person how to
read music.
That fell into disfavor somewhat in the Northeast as it
became more educated and more prone to adopting the European
musical methods. And as more and more musical instruments
were imported into this country, the Sacred Harp, or the
shaped-note tradition, moved south and died out in the
Northeast. And there it took, primarily among the rural
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R: people of the South. And the Sacred Harp was published
in the South and has stayed there and it has been the
southern singers who have maintained it all these years.
But now we see a reverse trend. It seems to be
declining in the South •.. in some areas extinct. But it's
gaining popularity, being rediscovered outside the South.
And we now have a very large group of Sacred Harp Singers in
Chicago as well as in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver,
Colorado, and one of the largest gatherings now is back in
New England, where it started.
M: Where it started. In every case, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Denver, is it still spiritual?
R: Yes. I have only seen video tapes of those gatherings,
I've never attended One. But they're using the same books
and singing the same songs.
M: They are. I don't know how I came by this but I went
through this particular piece of music. Somebody asked me
the question
Somebody asked me, "Is this all religious?" And I
said, "I don't know, I'll find out." Well, now here is one
we know: "All Hail the Power of Jesus Name."
R: Yes.
M: I'm an Episcopalean. Here's another one "Amazing
Grace," I know that one. When Mary and I were sitting in
the back and listening to the music and most of it was all
strange to us and they started singing something we knew and
we looked at each other and grinned ... "Hey, this is one we
know." "Amazing Grace" and "Wondrous Love" .,. those we
ROSS
M: know. So those must come out of somebody else's
hymnal. Protestant hymnal?
R: You'll find a lot of the Sacred Harp songs
in practically every hymnal; Protestant hymnal.
9
M: But you've got some of your very own , haven't you?
R: Oh yes. Yes. There are some that you'll only find in
the Sacred Harp.
M: That's what I mean.
R: Are out of that shaped-note period. In some
shaped-no te song book.
M: I want you to explain something to me.
the tape. The triangle is fa, ...
R: Yes.
I want this on
M: ... and the circle is sol, and the square is la, and
the diamond is mi.
R: Yes.
M: OK. I wanted that on the tape. Now this is supposed
to be just four notes and anybody can read this. And how,
if you don't know do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do? It has
to be that sound always?
R: No. The sacred harp scale will sound exactly the same,
tho we only use four syllables to sound the very same tone
so that instead of do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do, it's fa,
sol, la, fa, sol, la, mi, fa.
M: Oh, now the light is coming on! Ah. I thought it had
to be four notes and four sounds only.
R: No. That is a very common misconception about Sacred
Harp.
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M: I'm glad we got that cleared. That has been bothering
me to pieces. I tried to think how do these people know if
they can't read music? How do they know?
R: Yes. You have the full scale in Sacred Harp; the same
as in any other music.
M: Sing it again.
R: Fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, mi, fa. (singing)
M: Now the shaped notes we've got on. [ the tape Now
this convention meets only twice a year? What about the one
in Henderson? You're the biggest one.
R: In Texas. And, I might add, we are the second oldest
in continuous existence in the United States.
M: What's the oldest?
R: The oldest is probably the Chatahoochee Sacred Harp
Singing Convention. The East Texas Convention was organized
by the East Texas Sacred Harp Singing Society in 1855. That
was only eleven years after the Sacred Harp song book was
first published. So that what that means is that the
immigrants, or the migrants, rather, from the Southern
states who settled East Texas brought their Sacred Harp song
books with them. And that partiular organization disbanded
during the Civil War and we have no records ••• it's all
oral tradition that it was organized in 1855. I take that
back; there is one printed reference: Benjamin Franklin
White, who is one of the first co-authors of the first
Sacred Harp, also published a newspaper in Hamilton,
Georgia, called THE ORGAN. And a reference is made in that
newspaper to the East Texas Sacred Harp Singing Society
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R: as having begun in 1855. So we do have that
documentary. But then it disbanded during the Civil War and
reorganized in 1868.
M: Oh! Reorganized.
R: Yes. And has met annually since that date. And we
have records that go back to 1868.. I could go to those
records and tell you where that singing was held every year
from 1868 to 1989.
M: You've got those records?
R: Yes. And I could tell you the names of the singers and
the songs that they sang; that they led. As you noticed at
MacMahan, the secretary calls the name of the leaders and
the leaders get up and announce their songs ..• one or two
that each one sings. Well, a record is kept of that and
has since 1868. And so we can go to those records and could
tell you what song a particular person led of any given year
and what place they were.
M: Marvelous. Are they being taken care of?
R: They are preserved; the original records are at the
State Archives in Austin.
M: Let me see if I've got anything here that we've not
covered. I've underlined ..• Now you see, in this Woodville
clipping it says "four strings notes based on the four
strings of a harp." One error gets picked up way back there
and it carries forward.
R: I think misconceptions are self-perpetuating, too.
M: They sure are and sometimes they want them perpetuated
Now you and your father-in-law apparently are sort of
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M: the ring leaders, aren't you?
R: Well. My father-in-law, Curtis Owen, has been very
active in promoting Sacred Harp in Southwest Texas. Of
course he's been singing much longer than I. I've pretty
well confined my efforts to the East Texas area. But we
help each other out. Of course our families were brought
together by Sacred Harp. Diane and I met at the 99th
Session of the East Texas Sacred Harp Singing.
M: Did you really? How many kids have you got?
R: Two boys.
M: And they were started real young to sing.
can't get over these little children doing that.
that's amazing.
I still
I think
Everybody I met over at MacMahan was so nice and so
friendly. Do you think this has something to do .. , for
instance, your children with this family support and this
family cooperation ..• so you think it makes a difference.
It sounds to me that it might.
R: Well, I hope so. I tend to think that it does. Now
our teenage boys had some reluctance about coming to the
Texas Folklife Festival and participating because they have
their activities, of course, as teenagers, any teenagers
would have .. . but they have enjoyed and they haven't
complained since they've been here. And I think they are
having a big time.
MRS. R: I think it makes them feel very special to be
participating.
M: They should, with papa up there leading the singing.
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M: wasn't it interesting yesterday that this mob of people
..• so many people, "What's Sacred Harp?" Every now and
then Patrick puts on his tape of the Hungarian national
anthem and blasts it out and then I put the Sacred Harp
music on ... (laughter)
R: We appreciate your efforts.
M: The girl that took me over to MacMahan took those
photos. One of the things I did while I was there, I went
up and down all the rows of the cemetery because what we are
really about here is ethnicity and I wanted to see what kind
of folk had settled over in that part of Texas and it's
almost all Anglo. Which is terribly interesting. Some
places it's solid German. Around this place they were
mostly Anglo Saxon. I said to somebody where do all of you
live? There's not a sign of house around here. And they
said, nOh, we're around here." Where do people live around
MacMahan?
MRS. R: My family lives about half a mile from the church.
You can see to the back the tops of the houses where my
family settled.
M: I couldn't see a thing. I thought - are they all
secreted away?
MRS. R: Sacred Harp singers, once they get it in their
blood and enjoy the music will travel for miles. At our
East Texas Convention, we'll have 40 to 70 singers from
Alabama and Georgia. Last year we had 3 to 500 in
attendance , with 8 or 9 states and one foreign country
represented.
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M: What foreign country?
MRS. R: I can't remember. But we had one from Illinois,
several from Florida, a large number from Alabama and
Georgia, that traveled over to sing with us.
M: They do?
R: They come every year.
M: There's something else I want to know. When I went up
during the break, you were gone because Mr. Owen said, "Oh,
you need my son-in-law." and looked around .•. "He 's not
here yet." I said, "What does it mean when you say 'dinner
on the ground'?" And he said, "Just exactly that. They had
no benches, they had no tables. They put a bedspread or
quilt on the ground and that's where the food was." This
fascinates me. I'm a food person. I never had so much fun
in my life as I had lunch time at MacMaha~. That food!
That long table of vegetables, the meat. And then over here
all those desserts. I suppose the women in the congregation
would it have been just the Primitive Church people that
did that? Who provided the food?
R: The host community usually provides the food. So the
church ladies of that church provided that food.
M: What a feast that was .
MRS. R: We do that at most of our singings. And that's
partly still out of tradition because used to they would go
to ... it would be in the middle of the country and you
wouldn't have a place that you could go to get food. So as
a courtesy the people that lived around there would bring
food to feed their guests. And that's something that has
ROSS
MRS. R: continued on through today. Even though our
singing will be in the middle of Henderson and very
convenient to restaurants, we will still, as the host
community, provide food for our visitors. That's a
15
tradition we're trying to hang on to. It's getting a little
harder since we don't have as many people helping us. But
in most places they still that's part of the tradition
of Sacred Harp that we do help provide food for our guests
that come to sing with us.
M: Make them feel welcome. To me, this is just a slice of
America, this lovely part of the country that we love so
much. This family business, this caring, .•. There is so
much ugly going on these days, I just think it is so
important to keep these things going. And you wonder, in
this over-materialistic, sophisticated world how long you're
going to be able to keep it going.
MRS. R: They used to, back when I was younger, when we
would travel to different things, they always provided homes
for you to stay in. It was unheard of for a Sacred Harp
singer to stay in a motel ... of course, there weren't many
at that time, but we would always be provided a home to stay
in. And that's a tradition that we're no longer able to
keep up. There's lots of motels now. But there's a very
close knit feeling among many of the Sacred Harp singers who
attend regularly, all the singing, we become very much of an
extended family. We keep up with each other. Travel
distances to attend funerals.
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M: Now are there Sacred Harp singings at weddings and
funerals?
R: I'v never founD Sacred Harp at a wedding. This past
December there was a wedding in San Francisco of two Sacred
Harp singers and they sang Sacred all day on the wedding
day. I've never attended that but I have found Sacred Harp
at many funerals here.
M: Have you? In the church or ... ?
R: Yes. In the church and at graveside.
M: At graveside?
R: Yes.
M: You know this gets fascinatinger and fascinatinger!
R: There's a very interesting picture in the book, the
history of Rusk County, which is where we're from, of Sacred
Harp singers at a funeral. They're standing by the grave
side someone took a picture of them singing at this
funeral. It's very fascinating.
M: One thing we didn't mention that we should have on this
tape is the formation. Tell about the hollow square and who
faces who.
R: All right. This kind of goes back to something that we
did talk about earlier, the fact that it is not a
performance. You'll never have any quartets or duets or
soloists at a Sacred Harp Sing. Everyone participates. But
the singers sit facing each other in a hollow square. The
four voice parts, that is, the soprano, alto, tenor and bass
parts, sit facing each other. The sopranos sit opposite the
ROSS
M: altos; the tenors sit opposite the basses. And the
leader stands in the middle.
17
There's some confusion about that, too, because there's
a little bit of difference in terminology when we refer to
voice parts. Because in some Sacred Harp circles, the
soprano is referred to as the tenor and so you may find some
reference to the tenors sitting opposite to the altos.
Well, that means the sopranos sitting opposite the altos.
M: Why did they do that? Quite a difference between a
tenor and a soprano.
R: Well, I think it has to do between male and female
voices. That's another distinguishing characteristic of
Sacred Harp because both sexes can sing any of the four
parts. However, it's rare to find a male singing alto and a
female singing bass. It is very common for both sexes to
sing soprano and when it's a male sing ing soprano, he's
referred to as a tenor. And when a female sings tenor, she
is refe rred to as a trible .••
M: As a what?
R: Trible.
M: Trible?
R: That's the way it's pro nounced but it's actually
treble; treble singer.
M: Another thing ..• it says here: "Sacred Harp music is
distinguished by its considerable use of the minor key." Is
that true?
R: That is true .
M: And now that I listen to these t apes . • . some kind
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M: person sent me two more tapes. I did two ... I was so
grateful. I wrote to Mr. Owen. So I got those - I keep one
here (on this recorder) all the time because I talk about
this to everybody and they say what does it sound like and I
push a button and there it is.
Did you have a good crowd tOday?
R: Oh , very good and a lot of interest today. The best
session was this morning.
M: You sing in the morning?
R: I'm sorry. No. it wasn't, it was noon. It seemed like
morning; we slept late this morning.
M: Now do you sing again this evening?
R: Yes, we sing at 5:15 and at 8:15. That's our last
performance.
M: Is it? And then you're going home. Isn't this a
wonderful thing?
MRS. R: It is.
M: Honest to goodness this Folklife Festival! I ask
one question always: How do you feel about the Folklife
Festival? These ethnic interviews. And everyone of them
says that is such a wonderful thing to bring them in to the
main stream. These people who are lost a little bit
(conversation .•. noise on tape)
M: Curtis Owen of the Southwest Texas Convention says many
are old songs. Some are 3 and 400 years old. Is that
true?
R: Yes, that's true.
M: But they have had to come from Europe then.
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R: Yes. And many of those were secular tunes.
M: Oh, they were?
R: Yes, they were secular tunes to which a sacred verse
was applied. As Sacred Harp developed, the shaped-notes
singing style developed and they adopted a lot of the
secular ••. For example: You menti,oned Wondrous Love. ~Iell,
that was originally a secular tune, Captain Kidd.
M: You don't mean it.
R: That's right ... Some of them were dancing tunes;
drinking songs.
M: And they adapted them to •.. I suppose there wasn't
a great big battery of music to draw from ••.
R: That's correct. That's exactly right and that's why
...
M: You made do with what you had.
R: That's right.
M: Pioneer spirit .
... quoting Donald Ross [reading] ... spoke of the
itinerant singing masters ..• "today's singing schools are
extinct and the singing sessions they inspired are waning
..• but Donald Ross and the East Texas Sacred Harp Singing
Convention in Henderson are working to keep the tradition
alive." You really are, aren't you?
R: Well, doing what we can.
M: Have you ever been here before?
R: No.
M: I didn't think so. You said you had raised enough
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M: money to get over here for only two days .•. didn't you
tell me that?
R: About the only time that we could spare; wasn't so much
the money.
M: Oh, I see. Now Henderson will have its next convention
when?
R: Next week-end.
M: Now this is August and then you'll have another one six
months from now?
MRS. R: Ours is once a year.
R: East Texas is once a year. Southwest Texas is twice a
year.
M: You say they corne one time to San Antonio; one time to
Austin. What were they doing in ~jcMahan then?
R: That's the Spring Session of the Southwest Texas
Singing Convention. It is always at ~Mahan. Not
necessarily in April. Whatever weekend of the month that
has Sunday in the Spring.
M: When you are making arrangements to have a singing at
the Baptist church, do you have to deal with the preacher?
R: Not generally; no.
M: I wondered if he'd object to ...
R: The local people take care of that. That's never been
a problem.
MRS. R: Part of the tradition ••. the Primitive Baptist
church in the past depended pretty much on itinerant
preacher's schedule. In the earlier churches. So when a
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MRS. R: fifth weekend came around, there was never church
scheduled. In my earlier days there, the Southwest Texas
Singing Convention met every fifth weekend in a community
through out the South. It is through the decline of singers
and various community, the convention now only meets
twice a year ... on fifth weekends. But that's why
traditionally it's been fifth weekends because the Primitve
Baptists had been the pioneering host of the convention
throughout the Southwest. And it hasn't been as much in
East Texas but through the Southwest Convention, those are
the primary hosts of the Convention.
M: Thank you, thank you, for coming.
END OF TAPE I, SIDE I, ABOUT 40 MINUTES.