International Womens' Day

My blip today is a tribute to the world's greatest gospel singer.....Mahalia Jackson.
She was born into abject poverty in New Orleans. She died at the age of sixty years in 1971. She said that she was 'born to sing gospel music' and although she would have been a wonderful jazz and blues singer, she never sang anything but gospel music.

In 1958 she sang at the Newport Jazz Festival, the first gospel singer to be invited to sing. A film was made of the Jazz Festival, called 'Jazz on a Summers Day', and a friend and I went to the Cosmo Cinema in Glasgow to see it. It was a Sunday, and my friend had to avoid telling her mother where she was going as it would have been frowned on in these days to go to the cinema ona Sunday. My father was more broadminded, and I was able to go without any fear of reprisal. As her last number Mahalia sang 'The Lord's Prayer' as I had never heard it sung before. The audience in the cinema were spellbound, there was not a sound, a cough, anything. At the end of her song there was complete silence, then someone stood up and started to clap, and then we were all on our feet. It was a very emotional moment.

I thought you might like to share my memory of this wonderful woman on such a day.