Psalm 116

I love the Lord, he heard my cries

with
HARINGTON
SMALLWOOD

I. Text: Origins

English pastor and writer Isaac Watts (1674–1748) had an important vision for how to improve the condition of psalmody in English churches. He believed the Hebrew Psalms were best suited for corporate worship when they could be updated to include intertestamental theology, expressed through the lens of the Christian gospel, thus his collection was called Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719 | Fig. 1). Many of these creative re-interpretations remain in circulation 300 years later, including My shepherd will supply my need (Psalm 23), Jesus shall reign where’er the sun (Psalm 72), Our God, our help in ages past (Psalm 90), and Joy to the world; the Lord is come (Psalm 98). Whereas these other texts have long traditions with historic church tunes, his rendition of Psalm 116, “I love the Lord, he heard my cries” has had its own special journey, preserved and then reinvigorated within the African American community.

The original text by Isaac Watts spanned twelve stanzas of four lines, divided into two parts of six stanzas each, the second part beginning “What shall I render to my God.” The first part was labeled “Recovery from sickness” and the second part was labeled “Vows made in trouble paid in the Church; or, Public thanks for private deliverance.” The second part is arguably a separate hymn, but it carries the same meter and it follows in continuation of Psalm 116.

Fig. 1. Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (London: J. Clark, 1719).
   

Watts’s collection reached 15 editions through 1748, but this text remained unchanged.

II. Text: Analysis

As a psalm paraphrase, the first four lines follow the Bible text roughly thought-for-thought. The second stanza carries the same sentiment as the first and serves as a restatement of verses 1–2. The third stanza corresponds to verse 3 of the psalm, and the fourth stanza to verses 4 and 5. Here the cry of the psalmist, in Watts’s version, contains statements not just of desperation but of trust in and affirmation of God’s power to rescue. The fifth stanza aligns closely with verses 6 and 7. The sixth stanza carries much of the sense of verse 8, but for verse 9 Watts opted to close out the set with a response of praise rather than the psalmist’s quieter commitment to walk in the Lord’s path. The sense of verse 10 is covered in previous stanzas, whereas verse 11, which calls all men liars, is not represented in either of the two hymns.

The second hymn begins with the question of verse 12, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?” (KJV). In the psalm, the response of verse 13 is “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord,” which for Watts would have been a prime opportunity to inject an important New Testament practice—Communion—but here he translates this to a house (or perhaps a church) visit. Stanza 2 is an elaboration of verse 14. In the third stanza, instead of describing the deaths of saints (verse 15), Watts made the concern to be more about their life-blood, which leaves open the possibility of that blood being either shed or unshed. Regarding verse 16 of the psalm, which is carried across his stanzas 4 and 5, Watts picked up on the hopeful tone of the psalmist (“thou hast loosed my bonds”) and conveyed it as an act of grace. The ideas of verse 17 are somewhat repeated from earlier parts of the psalm, so Watts skipped over it, leading to verses 18 and 19 as the basis of his stanza 6.

Overall, Watts chose not to inject this paraphrase of Psalm 116 with Christological ideas, opting for a (mostly) faithful rendition, predominantly thought-for-thought, with a few near-quotations of the KJV (1611). Watts’s language is simple, using words of one or two syllables, with a basic rhyme scheme of abab.

III. HARINGTON TUNE

By building his text on Common Meter (8.6.8.6), Watts made it suitable for a wide array of pre-existing church tunes. Accordingly, it was set to several different tunes, with very little consistency or consensus for the first several decades of its life. Starting with the 5th edition of his psalter (1725), Watts provided a small set of possible tunes, including 10 in Common Meter and 2 in Common Meter Double. In practice, most churches would have used whatever C.M. tunes were most familiar to them, drawing from the traditional tunes associated with the Sternhold & Hopkins psalters, or from the newer tunes published in A Supplement to the New Version of the Psalms by Tate & Brady (7 eds. 1700–1712), which included tunes such as ST. ANNE.

The first intentional printing of “I love the Lord, he heard my cries” with music was not until 1775, when it was published in A Fourth Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Magdalen Chapel (London: Henry Thorowgood, ca. 1775 | Fig. 2), set to HYMN LIV, a tune by Henry Harington (1727–1816). Harington’s tune had also been published around the same time as a secular part-song called “Retirement” (“Beneath the silent rural call”). The publication for Magdalen Chapel was its first appearance as a hymn tune. The tune is still used in English churches, usually called HARINGTON.

IV. LINED-OUT TUNE

A. Background

When Isaac Watts wrote his paraphrase, the prevailing method of congregational singing was a process called lining out a tune (or deaconing), meaning a deacon, precentor, or clerk would call out one phrase at a time, and the congregation would sing it back. The practice is very old, tracing back to the Reformation and the emergence of metrical Psalm singing. The trouble was, quite often the precentor was not a skilled singer or leader, and would lose track of the pitch, or lose track of the rhythm, or even lose track of the tune, or sometimes start in one tune and end up in another, or the people would drag out the singing, not stay together, or not stay in tune, so the practice of lining out the Psalm sometimes led to disastrous results. For several accounts of this practice, see especially Alice Morse Earle, chapter 15 of The Sabbath in Puritan New England (1891).

Watts was surrounded by this kind of singing, but he thought it was deplorable and wanted to help fix it. As a poet, he tried to write his hymns in such a way that each line could be understood if called out separately, except this was really a musical problem and he had very little power to bring about meaningful change. In his Psalms of David Imitated (1719), he offered the following guidance on how to improve the situation:

It were to be wished that all congregations and private families would sing as they do in foreign Protestant countries without reading line-by-line. Though the author has done what he could to make the sense complete in every line or two, yet many inconveniences will always attend this unhappy manner of singing, but where it cannot be altered, these two things may give some relief.

First, let as many as can do it bring psalm books with them, and look on the words while they sing so far as to make the sense complete.

Secondly, let the clerk read the whole psalm over aloud before he begins to parcel out the lines, that the people may have some notion of what they sing, and not be forced to drag on heavily through eight tedious syllables without any meaning, till the next line come to give the sense of them.

It were to be wished also that we might not dwell so long upon every single note, and produce the syllables to such a tiresome extent with a constant uniformity of time, which disgraces the music and puts the congregation quite out of breath in singing five or six stanzas. Whereas if the method of singing were but reformed to a greater speed of pronunciation, we might often enjoy the pleasure of a longer psalm with less expense of time and breath, and our psalmody would be more agreeable to that of the ancient churches, more intelligible to others, and more delightful to ourselves.

The hymns of Watts and the practice of lining out a Psalm carried over into the American colonies, and they were likewise taught to American slaves. An example of this conveyance of Watts to slaves was described in a letter from Samuel Davies (1723–1761) to John Wesley, July 1755:

They have generally very little help to read, and yet to my agreeable surprize, sundry of them, by dint of application, in their very few leisure hours, have made such a progress that they are able to read their Bible, or a plain author, very intelligibly. But few of their masters will be at the expense of furnishing them with books. I have supplied them to the utmost of my ability. They are exceedingly delighted with Watts’s songs. And I cannot but observe that the Negroes, above all of the human species I ever knew, have the nicest ear for music. They have a kind of ecstatic delight in psalmody. Nor are there any books they so soon learn, or take so much pleasure in, as those used in that heavenly part of Divine Worship.[1]

Shortly after the Civil War, one writer described what he felt was a typical evening service for a group of black worshipers in his area:

For some time, one can hear, though at a good distance, the vociferous exhortation or prayer of the presiding elder, or of the brother who has a gift that way, . . . and at regular intervals one hears the elder “deaconing” a hymn-book hymn, which is sung two lines at a time, and whose wailing cadences, borne on the night air, are indescribably melancholy.[2]

White churches gradually shifted away from lining out psalms and hymns. Among the last practitioners in the U.S. are the Old Regular and Primitive Baptists. In England, Charles Spurgeon was one of the last major advocates for lining out hymns.[3] Among blacks in the U.S., the practice has had greater retention as one of a few characteristic styles in the oral tradition, together with spirituals, and starting in the early 20th century, a wide array of blues-based gospel songs. In the black tradition, the lined-out hymns were not just an imitation of what they had learned from their oppressors, they took on new qualities as their singers took ownership of the style. The hymns do not follow a strict repeat-after-me, call-and-response formula, rather, the leader will offer a phrase as a prompt, then the group will respond in a loosely constructed, individually embellished melodic and cadential formula, where no two people are singing exactly the same thing, but the music ebbs and flows in a communal direction (a form of heterophony).

In churches where this is practiced, the congregation will have a very limited subset of lined-out hymns. Not all of these hymns use texts by Isaac Watts, and yet, somewhat ironically, in spite of Watts’s own distaste for the practice, black church communities have referred to the genre as “Dr. Watts” singing. Musicologist William T. Dargan described how this happened:

Though the Reverend Isaac Watts was not the first to compose or publish hymns, as opposed to the psalm paraphrases of the Calvinist tradition that followed the English Reformation, his published collections achieved unprecedented popularity in England and the American colonies, and this currency continued throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Therefore, slaves who learned hymns by various authors through the lining-out form apparently came to associate the entire tradition with the name and honorific title “Dr. Watts.”[4]

B. I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry

One particular lined-out hymn from the common repertoire, widely known and performed in this style, is “I love the Lord, he heard my cry.” Dargan explained its early significance in the life of the slave community and its influence on future generations:

In reaching out toward God, slaves received a voice of their own, a sound of crying and laughing, a musical language that codified the developing blend of Standard English and the black vernacular termed “Spoken Soul” by Rickford and Rickford (2000). Therefore, in the Watts paraphrase of Psalm 116, “I love the Lord, he heard my cries,” we can hear the believer’s gratitude not only that the Lord heard the cries but that there was an effective means of crying out. Through Dr. Watts, the ambient cries, calls, and hollers, which reflect the most direct of African musical transfers to American soil, were fashioned into a new form as the slaves and later freedpersons learned the verses of Watts and Wesley. During the nineteenth century, this new voice of weeping and wailing, the “moaning” sound, became a fixed pattern and a reference for still other African American musical styles.[5]

C. Notated Transcriptions

Notated transcriptions of this lined-out melody are rare. One example was made by Curtis Duncan for his 1979 dissertation, transcribed from an audio tape he made for that purpose, recorded from the singing of Union Sinai Baptist Church, St. Louis, Missouri. The original tape is held by the Gaylord Music Library of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and the relevant portion is presented below. In his dissertation, Duncan included four figures in music notation, 6.8–6.10, each annotated with different explanatory markings. The one shown here (6.10) was annotated with arrows to show vocal slides from one pitch to another. Whereas some lined-out hymns are based loosely on older English hymn tunes, Duncan explained how this one does not seem to have a tune precursor.[6] This melodic formula can also be used for other texts; Duncan recorded an example of the same tune being sung to “I heard the voice of Jesus say,” a text by Horatius Bonar.

Another example appeared in the African American Heritage Hymnal (2001 | Fig. 4). In the hymnal, the transcription was credited only as “lined out by M. Adams and Louis Sykes.” This instance is more highly ornamented and it is pitched a fourth higher, but it contains many similar melodic shapes and inflection points as the one notated by Duncan. A demonstration was later recorded by the Morgan State University Choir (Baltimore, MD), directed by James Abbington, on 46 More Hidden Treasures (2007), although a listener must bear in mind the highly unusual nature of this performance, rendered by a trained choir with responses given in perfect unison to match the printed score.

D. Recorded Audio & Video Examples

The oldest surviving recordings of “I love the Lord, he heard my cry,” lined out, were made on behalf of the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture). Unfortunately, none of these have been reissued digitally or commercially. Known examples are as follows:

1. An audio cylinder recorded by Robert Gordon for the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song, “I love the Lord,” circa 1926–1928, featuring Mary Ann Small of Darien, Georgia, cataloged as A-236 (GA-24). https://lccn.loc.gov/2009655325 [Dixon 1997, p. 801]

2. A disc recording made by Herbert Halpert for the Library of Congress, “I love the Lord, he heard my cry,” featuring Mrs. Mary Shipp at a church in Byhalia, Marshall Co., Mississippi, on 13 May 1939, cataloged as AFS 3005-B1. https://lccn.loc.gov/2008700314 [Dixon 1997, p. 794 / Dargan 2006, p. 258]

3. A disc recording made by John Henry Faulk for the Library of Congress, “I love the lawd, he heard me cry,” during a meeting of the Good Hope Baptist Association in Austin, Texas, led by Rev. Laws, 18 July 1941, cataloged as AFS 5195-A and 5195-B. https://lccn.loc.gov/2008700328 [Dixon 1997, p. 313]

4. A disc recording made by Alan Lomax, Elizabeth Lomax, Charles Johnson, John Ross, and Lewis Jones, jointly for Fisk University and the Library of Congress, “Long meter hymn” [“I love the Lord, he heard my cries”], sung by the congregation of Rev. Ribbins, Maple Springs Baptist Church, near Medon, Tennessee, 26–27 August 1941, cataloged as AFS 4761-A2. https://lccn.loc.gov/2002522628 / fisk_guide_master.pdf [Dixon 1997, p. 752 / Dargan 2006, p. 259]

5. A disc recording made by Alan Lomax jointly for Fisk University and the Library of Congress, “Dr. Watts hymn” [“I love the Lord, he heard my cry”], sung by members of Silent Grove Baptist Church, Clarksdale, Mississippi, 25 July 1942, cataloged as AFS 6604-B1 (Fig. 4). https://lccn.loc.gov/2002522628 / fisk_guide_master.pdf

One of the earliest commercially produced recordings was made by the Southern Sons Quartette, recorded 4 December 1951 in Jackson, Mississippi, as a single for Trumpet Records (DRC-86 | Fig. 5). Members of the group were Sammy Downs, David C. Smith (tenors), James Emerdia Walker, Earl Ratcliff, Clarence Hopkins (baritones), and Clifford Charles Givens (bass).[7] In this case, the group’s response to the leader was harmonized.

As a testament to the lined-out hymn’s continuing influence and longevity, it is still being recorded, with a handful of examples made within the last two decades. Representative examples from the digital era include:

1. Bishop Carlton Pearson and Bishop James Morton, performed live with attendees of the Azusa Conference at Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Live at Azusa 3 (Word Records, released 21 Sept. 1999).

2. Debra Henderson, recorded at an unspecified church in the San Francisco Bay area, released on Higher Ground (Alpha 7 Ministries, 2007).

3. Pastor Danny R. Hollins and the Greater Fairview Sanctuary Choir, recorded live at Greater Fairview Baptist Church, Jackson, Mississippi, released on A Journey Back Home (2011).

4. William N. Heard, a solo rendition, recorded in Samuel P. Miller Chapel, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, released on Songs from the Sanctuary: Hymns, Spirituals & Classic Gospels, Vol. III (HeardSong Productions, released 7 July 2012).

5. Timothy Flemming Sr., a solo rendition, released on Old Meter Hymns (2012).

Representative video recordings, publicly available on YouTube, include Pastor T.L. James live in Memphis, Tennessee (1989), Bishop Carlton Pearson live in Tulsa, Oklahoma (1999), Rev. Alphonso Bowens live in Greensboro, Alabama (posted 2 Mar. 2011), and an example of deacons leading the song in the context of a worship service at Solid Rock Missionary Baptist Church, West Memphis, Arkansas (recorded 9 Sept. 2012).

V. SMALLWOOD TUNE

A. Background

Gospel composer and performer Richard Smallwood (1948–) was raised by his mother, Mabel Ruth (Locklear) Smallwood (1915–2005), and his step-father, the Rev. Chester Lee Smallwood (1898–1971). Richard showed a strong musical aptitude at an early age and was encouraged to sing, play piano, and direct choirs in Baptist churches where his father pastored. In 1962, at age 14, when his father was between churches, he had the opportunity to serve as a musician at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., where Cleavant Derricks (1910–1977) was pastor. Rev. Derricks was a skilled musician, having written songs such as “Just a little talk with Jesus,” and his wife Carrie was a pianist; Smallwood was asked to play the Hammond B3 organ even though he had never played one before. It was his first paid job as a church musician, and it was a formative experience in many ways. While at Pleasant Grove, he was exposed to lined-out hymnody for the first time:

I loved how, before the choir would march in every Sunday, the deacons would sing common-meter hymns and old devotional songs (some that I’d never heard before). . . . I remember how the devotion leaders would “line out” the hymns. In other words, they would sing a couple of the lines of the hymn and then the congregation would fall in with the most amazing harmony in response. I think it might have been one of the first times that I heard the old hymn “I love the Lord, he heard my cry,” lined out in that way. Hearing that hymn as much as I did proved very useful to me later on in life.[8]

Smallwood resigned his position at Pleasant Grove when he entered Howard University (Washington, D.C.) in the fall of 1967. In 1969, his step-father C.L. Smallwood founded Union Temple Baptist Church (Washington, D.C.), and although Richard was not initially involved, he eventually opted to assist with the music and took on greater responsibilities there, including the creation of the Union Temple Young Adult Choir, which included classmates from Howard and other friends of his from the community. The elder Smallwood struggled with a debilitating kidney malfunction in 1971 and died on August 22, just a few months after Richard graduated from Howard.

The younger Smallwood continued to develop the music ministry at Union Temple. In 1974, he and the Young Adult Choir produced an album, Look Up and Live, which featured some of his own compositions. In the fall of 1975, he enrolled at Howard to pursue a masters degree in music with majors in piano and ethnomusicology. This time around, he was less motivated in his studies, lasting only one semester, as he was focused more on his church music, including the production of a second album for his church choir:

I remember we decided that the Young Adult Choir would do another project after the first one had been quite successful. I figured I had better start working on the music, as I knew I would have to write an album full of songs again. . . . As stated before, I grew up on hymns as a child. . . . One of the common-meter hymns that always stayed in my memory through the years was “I love the Lord, he heard my cry.” I would still go up to Howard’s Fine Arts Building and write in the practice rooms in the basement. One day, as I sat at a baby grand piano down there, a melody entered my mind to go with those old lyrics. The harmony fell right in with the melody and before I knew it, the first original song for the next album was done.[9]

“I Love the Lord” was registered with the Library of Congress Copyright Office on 30 October 1975, along with three other songs for the new album: “Give Us Peace,” “For God So Loved the World,” and “He’s All You Need.”[10]

B. Recordings

His Union Temple Young Adult Choir recorded “I Love the Lord” on their album Give Us Peace (1976), led by alto Elett Ricks, a fellow Howard grad. This original recording featured the choir singing the first stanza, followed by Ricks embellishing two lines of the first stanza and two of the second (“O let my heart no more despair,” etc.), a key change with a return of the choir and the first stanza, then a gospel vamp, “I’ll hasten to his throne.”

The following year, Smallwood formed his own touring choir, the Richard Smallwood Singers, and began in earnest to pursue a record contract and a career based on his own music. His group gained notoriety and favor while they struggled to secure an appropriate record deal. In the meantime, Smallwood was invited to participate in a recording by the Donald Vails Choraleers in Detroit, Michigan, If You Move Yourself, Then God Can Have His Way (Savoy SGL7039, 1980), which included “I Love the Lord” with Smallwood at the piano. He finally secured a contract for the Richard Smallwood Singers at Benson in Nashville in 1981, and “I Love the Lord” thus appeared on their self-titled first album (Onyx R3803, 1982), featuring Dottie Jones as the soloist. Smallwood later recalled how Jones commanded that song:

When Dottie first joined in 1979 I pulled out one of my favorites, “I Love the Lord,” and gave it to her. Dottie would literally demolish wherever we were when we’d perform it. We used to call her the ad-lib queen because she could get on the vamp of that song and literally deliver a sermon about “hastening to God’s throne.” The amazing thing is that she would never repeat herself during those ad-libs. The words and the encouragement would just flow effortlessly.[11]

This track from 1982 was later reissued on the compilation The Praise & Worship Songs of Richard Smallwood (Verity, 2003). The song reached a broader audience and greater notoriety through its appearance in the film The Preacher’s Wife (1996), as performed by Whitney Houston and the Georgia Mass Choir.

In 1996, I received another call from my friend Mervyn Warren in LA. Producer/actor Penny Marshall was doing a remake of the 1947 movie, “The Bishop’s Wife.” It would be called “The Preacher’s Wife,” starring Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston. Merv was musical supervisor for the film and it was filled with gospel music, a genre to which Whitney certainly was no stranger. He told me “I Love the Lord” was one of Whitney’s favorite songs and one that she had grown up singing in church. It also was a song that she wanted to do in the movie. When I found out—excited is an understatement! One of my songs in a major motion picture sung by one of the greatest singers ever, was a dream I never thought was possible. I love the arrangement that Mervyn did. It stayed true to the original, yet gave room for Whitney to make it her own. Merv kept me up with the process as it was recorded by sending me cassettes and playing sessions over the phone, from scratch vocals to the final mix. It’s still one of the highlights of my life. My then road manager Jerome Bell helped put together a DC premiere and sent invites out to all of the major preachers and their wives in the area. The theater was packed. Vision and I performed “I Love the Lord” live, right before the movie began. It was a wonderful and memorable night. As I watched my name roll with the credits at the end of the movie, I began to thank God. He still was doing unexpected and great things.[12]

In 1994, Richard Smallwood participated in a video produced by Bill Gaither for his Homecoming series, Gospel Pioneer Reunion (not released until 2016), in which Smallwood played “I Love the Lord” on the piano, with Donald Vails and Jennifer Holliday as soloists, leading a group of legendary gospel musicians. Smallwood had worked closely with Holliday during a short-lived tour of the musical Sing, Mahalia, Sing in 1985, in which Holliday played the esteemed gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Smallwood was music director for the show, and the Smallwood Singers served as the show’s choir. A few years later, Richard Smallwood and Vision performed “I Love the Lord” on Verity Records Live at the Apollo (Verity, 1997), recorded at the Apollo Theater in New York City.

Additional appearances of the song in medleys include a brief appearance in the “Smallwood Medley” on Live at Howard University (1993), the instrumental overture composed by Darin Atwater for Healing: Live in Detroit (Verity, 1999) (“Musically, he thinks so much like me that I very seldom had to tell him what I wanted”[13]), and a special performance by Dottie Jones within the “Smallwood Singers Medley” on Anthology Live (RCA, 2015).

C. Published Scores

The same year Smallwood released his first album with the Richard Smallwood Singers, “I Love the Lord” was included in Yes, Lord! (1982), a Church of God in Christ hymnal (Fig. 6). For the hymnal, the harmonization was lightly altered by Iris Stevenson. In this case, as in many subsequent hymnals, the music was erroneously described as “Traditional” (some others say “African American spiritual”) with Smallwood merely the arranger. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the song’s roots in the lined-out tradition. Proper credit for the song should go to Isaac Watts, text, and Richard Smallwood, music, because Smallwood’s tune was newly composed in 1975; it is not an adaptation of the lined-out melody.

A score representing the version recorded in 1982 by the Richard Smallwood Singers was later included in a compilation volume, Praise & Worship Songs of Richard Smallwood (Warner Bros., 2004 | Fig. 7), credited to Richard Smallwood, words and music.

Songs from The Preacher’s Wife were published as a score by Hal Leonard in 1996 (Fig. 8). Here again, the song was not accurately credited, omitting any attribution to Watts, and also not crediting the film’s music director/arranger Mervyn Warren.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
11 July 2021

Footnotes:

1. An Extract from the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s Journal, from February 16, 1755, to June 16, 1758 (Bristol: William Pine, 1761), p. 20: Archive.org

2. “The Magazines for June,” The Nation, vol. 4, no. 100 (30 May 1867), p. 433: HathiTrust

3. See especially the account of J. Spencer Curwen, in “Metropolitan Tabernacle,” Studies in Worship Music (London: J. Curwen & Sons, 1880), pp. 208–210: Archive.org

4. William T. Dargan, Lining Out the Word (2006), p. 26.

5. William T. Dargan, Lining Out the Word (2006), p. 9.

6. Curtis Daniel Duncan, A Historical Survey of the Development of the Black Baptist Church (1979), p. 182.

7. Cedric J. Hayes & Robert Laughton, Gospel Discography 1943–2000, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (2014), p. 955.

8. Richard Smallwood, Total Praise (2019), pp. 109–110.

9. Richard Smallwood, Total Praise (2019), p. 244.

10. Catalog of Copyright Entries: Music, Third Series, vol. 29, pt. 5, no. 2, sec. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Copyright Office, July–Dec. 1975), p. 2003: Archive.org

11. Richard Smallwood, Total Praise (2019), p. 299.

12. Richard Smallwood, Total Praise (2019), p. 378.

13. Richard Smallwood, Total Praise (2019), p. 384.

Related Resources:

George Hood, A History of Music in New England (Boston: Wilkins, Carter & Co., 1846), pp. 184–190: Archive.org

Alice Morse Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), pp. 202–229: Archive.org

Curtis Daniel Duncan, A Historical Survey of the Development of the Black Baptist Church in the United States and a Study of Performance Practices Associated with Dr. Watts Hymn Singing: A Source Book for Teachers, dissertation (St. Louis: Washington Univ., 1979).

William T. Dargan, “Congregational singing traditions in South Carolina,” Black Music Research Journal, vol. 15, no. 1 (Spring 1995), pp. 29–73: JSTOR

Robert M.W. Dixon, et al., Blues & Gospel Records, 1890–1943, 4th ed. (Oxford: University Press, 1997).

Esther Crookshank, “‘We’re marching to Zion’: Isaac Watts in Early America,” Wonderful Words of Life: Hymns in American Protestant History & Theology, Richard J. Mouw & Mark A. Noll, eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 17–41 (especially 33–38).

William T. Dargan, Lining Out the Word: Dr. Watts Hymn Singing in the Music of Black Americans (Chicago: Center for for Black Music Research, 2006).

Cedric J. Hayes & Robert Laughton, Gospel Discography 1943–2000, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Canada: Eyeball Productions, 2014).

Susan Roach, “Penola Caesar: Maintaining old gospel singing traditions,” Folklife in Louisiana [2014]: https://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/DeltaCaesar.html

Richard Smallwood, Total Praise: The Autobiography (Newark, NJ: Godzchild Publications, 2019): Amazon

Hymn Tune Index: https://hymntune.library.uiuc.edu/default.asp

“I love the Lord, he heard my cry,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/i_love_the_lord_he_heard_my_cries_and_pi