How One Man’s Suffering Inspired an Iconic Hymn of Hope: “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”

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Speaker 1: And we continue with Our American Stories. Up next, the story of Thomas Dorsey, a musician and a songwriter, a gospel writer, not to be confused with Tommy Dorsey, the bandleader of the nineteen thirties. This is the story of Thomas Dorsey, who helped change and shape gospel music in American Black churches. And he’s also the composer of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” Here to tell the story is Robert Marovich, and he’s the founder and editor of the Journal of Gospel Music. Take it away.

00:00:48
Speaker 2: Robert Thomas Andrew Dorsey was born in Villa Rica, Georgia, in 1899.

00:00:56
Speaker 3: Villa Rica was a very interesting…

00:00:58
Speaker 2: town in that, despite the segregation of the era in the South, it was a town run by African Americans. So he grew up in an African American community that was sort of self-governing. His father was a pastor, a minister. In those days, often churches didn’t have their own minister, so he would go around to the different churches on different Sundays and be their minister, be their pastor for the day so that they could get their worship service.

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Speaker 3: His mother was very religious.

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Speaker 2: She played the organ. In fact, even though Thomas Dorsey emulated his father very much, he often said his mother was his greatest source of spirituality, but he did emulate his father. They bought him a little cane and a hat, and he would practice being a preacher. He would go and have his own little church service by himself. He’d hang up his cane and preach to probably the animals.

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Speaker 3: But he was very talented in music.

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Speaker 2: He had some music lessons on the piano, but he was essentially self-taught, as many gospel artists in his day were. But he was not playing religious music at the time. He was much more interested in vaudeville, blues, jazz, the popular music of the day, particularly listening to the blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, and so he developed his own piano style where he would go around to various homes that would have what they call house rent parties. He would play these events, and eventually he migrated to Chicago, and he became popular in Chicago for his… They called him the Whispering Pianist because he could play so quietly at these house rent parties that the neighbors wouldn’t get upset and call the police on them. But he also got involved in the music business.

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Speaker 3: He worked for Ma Rainey.

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Speaker 2: He was in charge of for Georgia Wild Cats jazz band, so he worked with her on the road. He helped Vocalion Records blues artists to make records by sort of teaching them how to be good studio artists so that whatever they did on the stage would translate well on a record. He wrote songs; he wrote blues; he did all of those things. And in 1921, as he’s living in Chicago, he reluctantly, by the way, goes with his uncle to the National Baptist Convention, and he hears Reverend Nix sing a brand new kind of song that comes out of a new book out of the Baptist Convention called Gospel Pearls. The song is called “I Do, Don’t You?” And Reverend Nix is singing this song, and he sees how the blues and this new sacred music kind of connects. He sees how Nix uses vocal ornamentation and pauses and draws the people in, and he’s like, “This is exactly the Atlanta nightclubs…”

00:03:45
Speaker 3: that I used to hang out, look at.

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Speaker 2: And so he decides, “I want to write sacred music.” So he writes a song, “If I Don’t Get There,” in 1921 or 1922; it’s published in the next issue of Gospel Pearls, and then he goes about his big… That’s when he starts working with Ma Rainey. That’s when he teams up with Tampa Red, and they start writing and recording songs called hokum. And these were kind of like double entendre, funny, kind of bluesy, jazzy songs that were very innuendo in nature. But he was always writing these songs, these… but he didn’t necessarily call them gospel songs all the time. But he was writing these sacred songs, sacred hymns. But they had this lift, the same lift that he was putting in his blues. He was putting in these songs, but getting nowhere with the churches because at that time in Chicago, as in most Northern churches—African American churches at that time—this kind of lively, joyful, blues-jazz-based music wasn’t accepted in the church. They thought this was not necessarily the kind of worship music that was becoming of a Christian, that sounded like the music of the club. So Dorsey felt he was being thrown out of more churches than he could imagine with his songs.

00:04:56
Speaker 3: They were sacred songs, but they had this little fast over.

00:05:00
Speaker 2: In 1930, he had written a song called “If You See My Savior,” written about a neighbor who passed away.

00:05:06
Speaker 3: He was getting nowhere with this song.

00:05:08
Speaker 2: But at the 1930 National Baptist Convention, once again in Chicago, a woman out of Saint Louis by the name of Willie Mae Ford Smith sings this song, and the convention goes crazy. They love this song! Where can we get this song? Who wrote this song? We know nothing about this! So somebody at the convention who knew Dorsey goes and tries to find him, drags him back to the convention, and says, “This is the man that wrote ‘If You See My Savior.’” And this very, very conservative National Baptist Convention, who kind of ignored him since he wrote the first and only song for their book, Gospel Pearls, said, “Young man, you can set up your booth here and sell your songs as long as you want.” And that was sort of the moment where Thomas A. Dorsey realized that these gospel songs he was writing finally had a chance of being successful. After the 1930 National Baptist Convention, Dorsey continued to sell his songs. In the meantime, there was a new pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side. Dr. Smith came in from Birmingham, and Dr. Smith wanted his church not only to have the very austere, sort of silk-stocking musical department that he was given. I mean, as the pastors—very classically oriented, very straight—that they sing hymns and anthems and oratorios and Bach and Beethoven and all that. But he wanted a little of the feel of the Southland in his church too, because he was a new migrant, and he recognized that new migrants were coming to Chicago whose memory of the South and memory of worship services were probably more like Dorsey’s songs than the anthems they were singing at church. So he wants something like this in his church, but he doesn’t know how to do it. So he contacts a friend of his by the name of Theodore Fry, and he asked Fry, “Can you help me get some of this old Southland music in my church?”

00:07:08
Speaker 3: And Fry is not 100 percent sure how to do it.

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Speaker 2: So he had met Dorsey at that 1930 convention; they’d become friends; and he said, “Let’s put something together for them.” So in late 1931, Dorsey and Fry create what’s now considered the first modern gospel chorus. It was debuted in early 1932. And you can imagine at a church with the very austere music ministry, with high expectations for music, and here comes this chorus, probably comprised mostly of migrants, with some old settlers as well, and they’re singing, you know, “I’m on the Battlefield for My Lord,” and they’re clapping and they’re swaying, and Dorsey’s playing the piano sounds like barrel-house music, and that could have gone over like a lead balloon. People could have been embarrassed. They can, you know: “These old fools aren’t singing anything.”

00:08:01
Speaker 3: But they loved it well.

00:08:03
Speaker 2: The next week, Dr. Smith at Ebenezer was invited to speak the sermon at Dr. Junius Austin’s anniversary of being pastor of Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago. Normally, Dr. Smith would have taken his senior choir with him for that event. Instead, he takes the gospel chorus, and the gospel chorus wows the Pilgrim Baptist Church congregation, same as they did with the Ebenezer Baptist Church. And Dr. Austin, sitting there looking at this, somehow he found out that Dorsey was a member of Pilgrim, and so he approaches Dorsey at some point and says, “I want you to set up one of those things that you have at Ebenezer here.” And he said, “What do you mean?” He said, “One of those… those choruses.” He said, “Yeah, give me a gospel chorus at Pilgrim.” Well, Edward Boatner was the musical director at Pilgrim at the time; he hated this idea, said, “Well, you can have Dorsey run this gospel chorus if he’s not paid.” So Dorsey did it anyway; he did it, took the job at Pilgrim, and all of a sudden you start to see every week in The Chicago Defender other churches in Chicago: they’re going to have a gospel chorus. The word is spreading that Dorsey and Fry have something going on that’s really appealing. And so in 1932, you have this explosion of gospel choruses around Chicago.

00:09:23
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Robert Marovich, founder and editor of the Journal of Gospel Music, telling the story of Thomas Dorsey and how he and others shaped the music—gospel music—of Chicago and, in the end, of African American churches across the country, Dorsey being the composer of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and many others.

00:09:50
Speaker 4: When we come back, more of this remarkable story—Thomas Dorsey’s—here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and with Robert Marovich, the founder and editor of the Journal of Gospel Music, telling the story of Thomas Dorsey and the broader story of African American gospel music and…

00:10:23
Speaker 1: its influences in and around Chicago in the 1930s. Take it away, Robert.

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Speaker 2: In August of 1932, Dorsey is asked to come down to Saint Louis. So he’s going to go down there and listen to some gospel choir sing. Now his wife is almost ready to give birth to their first son—his wife, Nettie Dorsey—and he’s not sure he wants to go because he’s afraid, you know, she’s going to give birth any minute. He wants to be there, but Nettie says, “Go ahead, I’m fine.” He kind of gets a bad feeling, but he said, “I’ll go.”

00:10:56
Speaker 3: I’ll go.

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Speaker 5: I get it. Where I was in Hey rely, and my wife was to become a mother. I went away with the feeling that, uh, she’d make a lovely, lovely mother. When I came back, I knew my people were well. When I left home, and they sent for me to come to the door. I said, “Boy, I brought me in the telegram.” I took it and read it; I almost fell out. It says, “Hurry home!” “Your wife just died.” I don’t know how you would accept that, but I couldn’t accept it at all, and uh, a friend of mine put me in the car, took me home. I got home, I jumped out and ran in to see if it was really true. And one of the goods, just hearted, crying, said, “Nettie just died!” And it just died, and it just died, and fell…

00:11:54
Speaker 4: in the floor.

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Speaker 5: The baby was left alive, but the next two days the baby died.

00:12:02
Speaker 1: Now what should I do?

00:12:03
Speaker 5: Then and there… And then they tried to tell me the things that were soothing to me, but none of it’s never been soothing to me from that day to this day.

00:12:15
Speaker 2: So he’s going on like this for a few days, and Theodore Fry decides, “You know, I better do something about this.” So he says, “You know, Dorsey, let’s go, let’s have something to eat.” “Let’s just go out, get out, get some fresh air. Let’s talk.”

00:12:29
Speaker 3: That’ll do you some good.

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Speaker 2: So they go to this community center and have dinner, and after dinner, there’s a piano there. It’s a grand piano there, and so Dorsey kind of wanders over to the piano after dinner and starts playing “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross,” and he’s thinking, “This is my cross. My wife is gone, my baby is gone. This is my cross, just like Jesus’.” But he starts playing around with the melody because he’s a jazz blues train. He kind of does little ornamentations, and he comes across a different melody—a different variation of the melody. He starts putting words to it: “Blessed Lord, take my hand,” and he’s playing, and he finally says, “Fry, come over here, listen to this song.” And Fry comes over, and he’s playing it, and Fry said, “It sounds pretty good, but why do you call him ‘Blessed Lord’?” He said, “Lord is a blessing,” that’s what Dorsey says. Fry said, “Why don’t you say ‘Precious Lord’?” He said, “Okay,” tries “Precious Lord.” It sounds pretty good, and…

00:13:26
Speaker 5: I’ll call the Lord some one thing. And then one or the other says said, “No, that’s not his name.” Said, “Precious Lord.” I say, “That does sounded good!” And he’s got several amens. “Precious Lord,” and ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not, I started singing red Den in there, “Proracious Lord,” my…

00:13:56
Speaker 6: Me, me.

00:14:02
Speaker 5: And let miss, “I am tied.”

00:14:10
Speaker 2: You. He introduces this song to the congregation one Sunday morning, right there after the funeral service.

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Speaker 3: He’s written the song, and…

00:14:25
Speaker 2: he’s thinking, “This is his testimony, this is my testimony.” “Take my hand, lead me on, help me stand.” “I am weak, I am worn.” But the congregation hears this, and they just tear that church up! They’re up shouting, they’re up, their hands are raised. People are in the aisles. Dorsey’s confused. He thinks, “This is a very personal song of my personal testimony. I should be the one feeling sorry.” But he had sort of captured the grieving of the migrants and all African Americans in Chicago at that time. It was their testimony too, even among older settler Blacks who looked down at the new migrants, you know, thinking, “They don’t know how to act, they don’t know how to dress, they don’t know how to do, do, do.” So this was a group of people who felt like strangers in a strange land. And I mean, you can’t even turn sometimes to your own church for guidance because they’re whispering prayers and they’re singing these lofty anthems, and this is nothing like my Baptist church in the South.

00:15:33
Speaker 3: Where do you turn? And it was “Take My Hand,” and the Lord was the last place to turn.

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Speaker 2: And this was the way that this song connected. And from then on, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” became sort of an anthem of grieving and sort of asking for that last bit of help.

00:15:54
Speaker 3: My only sort of strand of…

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Speaker 2: hope is in the Lord’s load.

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Speaker 6: Take my hand, lead me on. I’m weak.

00:16:21
Speaker 1: Through the story.

00:16:30
Speaker 6: To “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.”

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Speaker 5: Lead.

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Speaker 2: Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Art conveys to others feelings he has experienced, and other people are affected by these feelings and live them over in themselves.” And that’s the thing: Dorsey was writing this song as sort of a catharsis for himself. He was getting out all his grief of the loss of his wife and son and calling on the Lord for help. He really was needing that hand to lift him up and lead him on to the light, because there was no light.

00:17:10
Speaker 3: It was darkness around him at that time.

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Speaker 2: Inadvertently, or through the grace of God, he inspired others to realize that was their message as well. A gospel singer here in Chicago named Betty Lester said to me—she said, “Even in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s,” she said, “listen, for Black people, sometimes gospel music was all we had, but those songs kept us going.” And I think that’s to Tolstoy’s point: art from one person becomes another person’s testimony. And it has always seemed to me, in gospel, the best songs are written out of times of terrible turmoil in one’s life. These are the songs that just burst out of your soul. And I would say of all of Dorsey’s songs—certainly he had hundreds—but “Precious Lord” has lived so long because it is that catharsis, that last opportunity to really just say, “Help me.” It’s like Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me, Jesus.” “I don’t know where else to turn.” And as long as there’s trouble in the world, there will be “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.”

00:18:16
Speaker 6: Take my hand, Precious Lord.

00:18:22
Speaker 1: Me… And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler and our own Reagan Habib, and a special thanks to Robert Marovich, the founder and editor of the Journal of Gospel Music, telling this story not just of Thomas Dorsey, but the story of Thomas Dorsey’s most precious and most popular song, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” and how it came to be out of great grief and tragedy. And out of that brings this remarkable song. And when it was played at church soon thereafter, Dorsey didn’t expect anything. It was his own personal testimony, but the church exploded because it was their grief he was tapping into—the story of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and Thomas Dorsey’s story—here on Our American Stories.