This week in Texas music history: Alan Lomax records the Soul Stirrers in Austin

On Feb. 12, 1936, the Soul Stirrers made their first recordings. The influential gospel group didn’t do so with a record company. Rather, it was 21-year-old folklorist Alan Lomax who first captured their music for the Library of Congress.

The Houston-based group was in Austin for the weekend, and Lomax took time off his studies at the University of Texas to set up the session. Lomax participated in thousands of such sessions in his career, and he described the four songs of these initial Soul Stirrers recordings as “the most incredible polyrhythmic music you’ve ever heard.”

Though Lomax was ostensibly recording them as an example of folk culture for posterity, he surely recognized their popular potential.

When singer R. H. Harris of Trinity, Texas, joined the group in 1937, their style gelled, and their own move to Chicago positioned the Soul Stirrers to influence the next generation of gospel performance and even doo-wop. Their commercial success grew in the 1940s, but it would be another addition to the group that took them to the next level.

When singer Harris left the Soul Stirrers in 1950, a 20-year old Sam Cooke took his place. Their biggest hit to date came the following year, “Jesus Gave Me Water,” and Cooke’s smooth, lilting style, in harmony with the Soul Stirrers, set the standard for ’50s gospel – so much so that the larger commercial gains and creative freedom of secular music beckoned Cooke.

In a move controversial with some of their gospel fans, Cooke left the Soul Stirrers in 1957 and “crossed over” into pop and R&B – the genius of “You Send Me,” “Bring It on Home to Me,” and, of course, “A Change Is Gonna Come” on the horizon.

And all of it traces back to an Austin weekend where a Houston gospel group crossed paths with a UT student and the Library of Congress.

Sources

Michael Corcoran. All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2017.

John Szwed. Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World. New York: Viking, 2010.

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