Just Mahalia, Baby

The queen of gospel and a symbol of integrity, Mahalia Jackson's story is the story of an era. Jazz was young, gospel music was strong, and Downbeat magazine had named Mahalia Jackson one of the top four vocalists in the country along with Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan. As fast-paced and richly detailed as a novel, Mahalia's tale is revealed by her close friend and biographer Laurraine Goreau. Goreau traces the development of the gospel movement and Mahalia's central role in it, reaching back to re-create the world of the singer's youth-- rich with hidden folklore and heavily influenced by the black church. Born poor in New Orleans, one of seven girls in an extended family, Mahalia is said to have begun her singing career at the age of four in the choir of New Orleans's Plymouth Rock Baptist Church, when her voice was "twice as big as she was". But it was in Chicago, where she moved at the age of ten, that she began her ascent to fame. In her lifetime she befriended and earned the admiration of people as diverse as Louis Armstrong, Lyndon Johnson, Carl Sandburg, Dinah Shore and Martin Luther King, who asked her to sing before his speech at a 1966 freedom rally in Chicago. All the while, Mahalia remained undaunted by fame: "Look, I'm a gospel singer, I sing for the Lord; that's all I'm going to be."