Category: Citizen of the Month
Biographies of much-loved Sacred Harp singers, past and present.
My Dad, Mr. E. C. Bowen
Here is a little story about my dad, Mr. Ezra Clayton “E. C.” Bowen. My dad was born on May 25, 1905, in Woodland, Alabama. He went to a few Sacred Harp singings with his grandmother when he was young but he and his parents did not sing. As a young man, my dad served…
Raymond C. Hamrick’s Contributions to Sacred Harp Singing and Scholarship
Raymond Cooper Hamrick (1915–2014), of Macon, Georgia, was a well-loved singer, composer, and scholar whose intellectual curiosity, generosity of spirit, and kindness seemed boundless. Perhaps the greatest Sacred Harp composer of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Hamrick imparted to his music a distinctive voice that recalls the earliest American composers while embracing a…
Grandpa McWhorter: Singer and Civil Servant
The issuance early last year of the reproduction of the 1911 Original Sacred Harp (the James Book) caused me to reflect upon the extraordinary influence that historic old book and its predecessors had on common community life throughout the deep South a century ago. I knew from childhood that my grandfather, M. F. McWhorter (1858–1940)…
Sacred Harp’s “Yodeling Schoolgirl”: The Story of “Little Lorraine”
Without a doubt, the most recognizable face to Sacred Harp singers today is that of a little girl leading a song, one arm raised and holding in the other a large rectangular songbook. The sepia-toned photograph was chosen by Matt and Erica Hinton for the cover of their documentary Awake My Soul, the Story of…
