HISTORY

Our timeline is a work in progress. We are continuing to learn about the history of music on the Georgia coast, and we welcome your contributions and feedback. Please click the "Contact Us" tab or post a comment to share your thoughts. Thank you!

1844

The Sacred Harp shape-note song book is published by west Georgians B.F. White of Hamilton (1800-1879) and E.J. King of Talbotton (c. 1821-44).

1845

Sir Charles Lyell tells of a “holy dance” he observed on the plantation of James Hamilton Couper, McIntosh County, Georgia. Music historian Dena Epstein believes that the dance he describes is the first description of the “ring shout,” although that specific phrase is not used.

1859

Dan Emmett writes the song, Dixie, as a “walk-around" for a minstrel show. Early 20^th-century music writer, Henry Edward Krehbiel believed that the “walk around” dance used in minstrel shows was a secular parody of the “ring shout.” The cake-walk also is believed to be a secular version of the ring shout, according to Georgia Conrad.

1860

Music historian Dena Epstein makes note of one of the earliest uses of the term “shout,” in an 1860 conversation between an unidentified English minister and a Beaufort, S.C., minister.

1867

Slave Songs of the United States, by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison, is published in 1867. The book includes several “shouts.”

1871

Amateur folklorist Lydia Parrish is born.

1888

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon is born in Bangor, Maine, on September 2, 1888.

1890

Lorenzo Dow Turner is born on August 21, 1890. He would become America’s first black linguist, specializing in the Gullah dialect.

1902

Singer Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Jones is born in Smithville, Georgia. Her mother, Julia Sampson, was a singer and dancer who played the autoharp. Her stepfather, James Sampson, played several instruments, including guitar and banjo.

1906

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon begins his study of English literature at Harvard. He remained in the school’s English department in varying capacities until 1916.

1912

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon meets and marries Roberta Peter Paul of Darien, Georgia. Their daughter, Roberta, was born two years later in Cambridge, Mass.

1914

At age 12, Bessie Jones gives birth to her daughter, Rosalie. Jones married the baby’s father, Cassius Davis, who was the nephew of John Davis of the Georgia Sea Island Singers.

1915

American folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax is born on January 31, 1915. He would later become the first to record legendary musicians such as as Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, McKinley "Muddy Waters" Morganfield and David "Honeyboy" Edwards.

1917

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon accepts the position of assistant professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. He has developed an interest in folk song, material culture, folk belief and technology. He spends much of his time collecting songs on the Oakland and San Francisco waterfronts. From 1917-24, Gordon collected more than 1,000 shanties and sea songs. Of those, 300 were  recorded on cylinders. He was particularly interested in learning more about the role that African-American traditions and minstrel shows played in the development of the sea shanty.

1920

Amateur folklorist Lydia Parrish organizes the Spiritual Singers Society of Coastal Georgia around 1920. The group, which would later become the Georgia Sea Island Singers, would perform  at the Cloister Hotel on Sea Island. The group’s past members have included Bessie Jones, Joe Armstrong, John Davis, Peter Davis, Mabel Hillary, Henry Morrison and Emma Ramsey.

1921

Bess Brown Lomax Hawes was born on Jan. 21, 1921, in Austin, Tex. She was the sister of folklorist Alan Lomax, and would later perform with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and co-wrote the Kingston Trio's hit song M.T.A. Bess Brown Lomax Hawes also collaborated with Bessie Jones on the book, Step it Down. See excerpts from her films here.

1924

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon leaves the University of California at Berkeley in 1924-25, and returns to Harvard. Shortly thereafter, he embarks on a year-long trip to collect and record American folk songs.

Gordon begins writing the monthly column, “Old Songs that Men Have Sung,” for Adventure magazine. He asks readers to send in all the folk songs they can remember.

Singer Bessie Jones leaves her daughter with her mother, Julia, and goes off looking for work in Fitzgerald, Georgia. Her husband, Cassius Davis, dies in Brunswick, Georgia, two years later. Bessie Jones ends up in Florida, where she works as a domestic and agricultural worker in Key Largo, Miami and other cities.

1925

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon moves to his wife’s hometown of Darien, Georgia. Gordon begins recording the African-American song traditions of coastal Georgia, including rowing songs and boat songs. The singers on his recordings include Mary C. Mann and J.A.S. Spencer. Other informants included W.M. “Billy” Givens, whom Gordon recorded singing Deep Down in My Heart. Gordon remained in Darien until 1929, recording shouts, rowing songs, rags, reels, and turning songs.

1928

Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress, appoints folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon "specialist and consultant in the field of Folk Song and Literature." Gordon’s title was later changed to Director of the Archive of American Folk Culture, and later, the American Folklife Center. At the Library of Congress, Gordon set out to fulfill his dream of collecting the entire body of American folk music. He called it a “national project with many workers.”  Also in 1928, Gordon does field work in Louisville, Kentucky, and records Nellie Galt and Ben Harney.

Singer Bessie Jones is in Okeechobee, Florida, working as a cook for farm workers. She meets her second husband, George Jones, of St. Simons Island, Georgia. They work as migrant workers, traveling from Florida to as far north as Connecticut.

1929

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon concludes his coastal Georgia field work and moves to Washington, D.C., to focus more on his work at the Library of Congress, where he as developing the Archive of American Folk Song.

Singer Mable Hillery (sometimes spelled Hillary) is born on July 22, 1929, in La Grange, Troupe County, near Atlanta, Georgia.

1932

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon travels to West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia, and records Betty Bush Winger and F.H. Abbot.

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon loses his position at the Library of Congress. He continues to work in the Washington, D.C., area, as a technical editor and English professor. John Avery Lomax become the new director of the Archive of American Folk Culture until 1942. He retains the title “honorary curator” until his death in 1948. His son, Alan Lomax, serves as “assistant in charge” from 1936-42.

On September 28, 1932, while still living in Florida, Bessie Jones becomes a born-again member of the Pentecostal church.

1933

Bessie Jones and her husband, George, move to George’s hometown of St. Simons Island, Georgia. Her second child, George L., would be born in 1935, followed by her third child, Joseph, in 1937. While they continue to do agricultural and domestic work, Bessie Jones joins the Spiritual Singers Society of Coastal Georgia. It is around this time that the group changes its name to Georgia Sea Island Singers.

Lorenzo Dow Turner, America’s first black linguist, visits the Georgia coast, and records stories and songs of the Geechee-Gullah people of Harris Neck, Sapelo Island, Darien, St. Simons Island and Brunswick. His recordings include Mende-Gullah songs performed by Lavinia Capers Quarterman and Emma Hall, both of Darien; and a Vai-Gullah song performed by Julia Armstrong of St. Simons Island. But the most significant recording is an entire Mende funeral song performed by Amelia Dawley of Harris Neck. 

1934

Amateur folklorist Lydia Parrish organizes The Plantation Singers, a secular music group.

1935

Alan Lomax visits St. Simons Island with Zora Neale Hurston, and discovers the Georgia Sea Island Singers. The singers would go onto perform for three presidents, including Jimmy Carter, at his inauguration

1936

Alan Lomax becomes “assistant in charge” of the Archive of American Folk Culture, serving with his father, John A. Lomax (honorary curator). Alan Lomax was the agency’s first federally funded staff member.

1940

Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes is published. It was written by the Savannah Unit, Georgia Writers' Project, Work Projects Administration. The University of Georgia Press republished the book in 1986.

1942

Lydia Parrish publishes her book, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. It was reprinted by the University of Georgia Press in 1992. Origin of the word “shout,” as in “ring shout,” is the Arabic word, saut, which means sound, Lorenzo Dow Turner explains.

1949

Linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner publishes his groundbreaking book, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect.

      
1950

Singer Mabel Hillery marries Will Adams.

1959
Alan Lomax meets Bessie Jones, when he returns to St. Simons Island to re-record some of the Georgia Sea Island Singers.

1960

Singer Mabel Hillery moves to Brunswick, Georgia, near St Simons Island.

Alan Lomax recruits the Georgia Sea Island Singers and other folk musicians for a film about the music of the Colonial Williamsburg era.

1961

Singer Mable Hillery, a contralto, joins the Georgia Sea Island Singers. She also begins touring college campuses, churches, festivals and coffee houses around the country.

Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon dies on March 29, 1961.

1962

Singer Mabel Hillery appears in an episode of the CBS series, Accent on June 14, 1962. The program was hosted by Alan Lomax, but the regular host was the poet John Ciardi.

1964

Members of the Georgia Sea Island Singers -- Bessie Jones, John Davis, Peter Davis, Emma Ramsey and Mabel Hillery, along with Ed Young of Memphis, gIve a two-week workshop at the State University of California at Northridge. The group demonstrates “games, dances, and songs of the Negro South.”

The film Georgia Sea Island Singers, is released, featuring performances of  Moses, Yonder Come Day, Buzzard Lope (Throw Me Anywhere, Lord), Adam in the Garden Picking up Leaves and Down in the Mire (Bright Star Shinning in Glory).

The Georgia Sea Island Singers perform in the Sing for Freedom Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia, with the SNCC Freedom Singers from civil rights movements in Albany, Selma, Birmingham, and several towns in Mississippi.SNCC Freedom Singer, Bernice Johnson Reagon, who would later be the leader of folk group Sweet Honey in the Rock, said meeting Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers changed her life.

1965

Alan Lomax produces and emcees a concert at New York City’s Central Park. The event is a preview for the Newport Folk Festival, and the goal was to bring attention to racism and segregation in the South. The Georgia Sea Island Singers performed at the concert, which was recorded.

 Bessie Jones accompanies Ed Young on the tambourine in the film Buck the Dancer, produced by Bess Lomax Hawes.

1966

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto produces the film, Blues Special, for its TV series, Festival. Blues Masters, a DVD of highlights from those sessions, includes performances by Mabel Hillery, along with Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Sunnyland Slim and others.

Bessie Jones demonstrates singing games at the Downtown Community School in New York, for the television show, The Rainbow Quest, hosted by Pete Seeger.

1968

The Georgia Sea Island Singers serve as staff culture-workers for Poor People’s March in Washington, D.C., on May 12, 1968. During the event, they taught their music to other African-Americans. The Poor People’s March was organized by activists Marian Wright and Martin Luther King Jr., but King was assassinated weeks before the event took place.

Mabel Hillery moves to New York City, and does a recording for the record label Xtra. After moving to New York, she continues to share her music and educate people about African-American and Southern folk music traditions. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, writes teaching materials about folk music.

1969

Douglas Quimby, born in Baconton, Georgia, in 1936, and his wife, Georgia sea island native Frankie Sullivan Quimby, become members of the Georgia Sea Island Singers.

1971

Mabel Hillery travels to Turin, Italy, and performs with blues singer/activist Barbara Dane, in a festival produced by a leftist Italian newspaper.

1972

Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes publish the book, Step It Down.

1974

Mabel Hillery performs during the Puerto Rican Solidarity Day concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

1975

Rounder Records releases Bessie Jones’ So Glad I'm Here.

Mabel Hillery performs at the Blues festival at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, and at the Civic Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She continues to visit and perform at prisons, schools and old folks’ homes.

1976

Mabel Hillery dies on April 27 (although some sources say April 26) of a heart attack at age 46, according to her New York Times obituary. She died at St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan, and was buried in Strangers Cemetery on St. Simons Island, Georgia.

1979

Rounder Records releases Bessie Jones’ Step It Down.

1980

The McIntosh County Shouters forms as a professional performing group. Mount Calvary Baptist Church, Bolden, Georgia, a community also known as Briar Patch. The group’s first public performance is at the Sea Island Festival on St. Simons Island, Georgia. The original members are Lawrence McKiver, Andrew Palmer, Catherine Campbell, Odessa Young, Thelma Ellison, Vertie McKiver, Oneitha Ellison, Elizabeth Temple and Doretha Skipper. Deacon James Cook often accompanied the group during their first few years.

1981

The McIntosh County Shouters perform at the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap Farm in Virginia.

 

1983

Bessie Jones', For the Ancestors: Autobiographical Memories, edited by John Stewart, is published. It was reprinted by the University of Georgia Press in 1989.

1984

Singer Bessie Jones dies on Sept. 4, 1984, of complications from leukemia. She is buried on St. Simons Island, Georgia.

1989

Nine Geechee-Gullah people visit Sierra Leone for an historic "Homecoming."  The trip was chronicled in Family Across the Sea, an award-winning PBS documentary that aired in 1991. 

1990

In 1990 the Georgia Sea Island Singers received the Governor's Award in the Humanities. 

1993

The McIntosh County Shouters are awarded the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Several members of the McIntosh County Shouters break away and form another group, citing disagreements over how the group is managed, among other reasons.

The Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society, Inc., is founded by island descendants. The organization's mission: to promote land retention, economic development and cultural and historical preservation in the last intact island-based Geechee community in Georgia. 

1994

The Georgia Sea Island Singers performed at the 1994 Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway.

The McIntosh County Shouters perform at Atlanta's Black Arts Festival in Piedmont Park.

1997

Anthropologist Joseph Opala researches Amelia Dawley's Mende funeral song first recorded in 1933 by Lorenzo Dow Turner in Harris Neck, Georgia. Opala and his colleagues find the village in Sierra Leone where the song is still sung, and takes the Georgia family to Africa. The remarkable family reunion is chronicled in the documentary, The Language You Cry In, released in 1998.

1998

Rounder Records' Alan Lomax Collection releases volumes 12 and 13, titled Georgia Sea Islands: Biblical Songs and Spirituals and Earliest Times: Georgia Sea Island Songs for Everyday Living.

Shout Because You're Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia, by Art Rosenbaum, is published by University of Georgia Press.

2001

Rounder Records releases Bessie Jones’ Put Your Hand on Your Hip, and Let Your Backbone Slip.

2004

The Georgia Sea Island Singers performed at the G8 Summit on Sea Island, Georgia.

2006

Doug Quimby of the Georgia Sea Island Singers dies on August 1, 2006.

The U.S. Congress designated the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, as the coastal region extending from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida.