Mahalia Jackson

Early life (1911 – c. 1928)

Mahalia Jackson was born to Charity Clark and Johnny Jackson, a stevedore and weekend barber. Clark and Jackson were unmarried, a common arrangement among black women in New Orleans at the time. He lived elsewhere, never joining Charity as a parent. Both sets of Mahalia's grandparents were born into slavery, her paternal grandparents on a rice plantation and her maternal grandparents on a cotton plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish about 100 miles (160 km) north of New Orleans. Charity's older sister, Mahala "Duke" Paul, was her daughter's namesake, sharing the spelling without the "I". Duke hosted Charity and their five other sisters and children in her leaky three-room shotgun house on Water Street in New Orleans' Sixteenth Ward. The family called Charity's daughter "Halie"; she counted as the 13th person living in Aunt Duke's house. As Charity's sisters found employment as maids and cooks, they left Duke's, though Charity remained with her daughter, Mahalia's half-brother Peter, and Duke's son Fred. Mahalia was born with bowed legs and infections in both eyes. Her eyes healed quickly but her Aunt Bell treated her legs with grease water massages with little result. For her first few years, Mahalia was nicknamed "Fishhooks" for the curvature of her legs.

The Clarks were devout Baptists attending nearby Plymouth Rock Baptist Church. Sabbath was strictly followed, the entire house shut down on Friday evenings and did not open again until Monday morning. As members of the church, they were expected to attend services, participate in activities there, and follow a code of conduct: no jazz, no card games, and no "high life": drinking or visiting bars or juke joints. Dancing was only allowed in the church when one was moved by the spirit. The adult choir at Plymouth Rock sang traditional Protestant hymns, typically written by Isaac Watts and his contemporaries. Jackson enjoyed the music sung by the congregation more. These songs would be lined out: called out from the pulpit, with the congregation singing it back. They had a stronger rhythm, accentuated with clapping and foot-tapping, which Jackson later said gave her "the bounce" that carried with her decades later. She dutifully joined the children's choir at age four. Next door to Duke's house was a small Pentecostal church that Jackson never attended but stood outside during services and listened raptly. Music here was louder and more exuberant. The congregation included "jubilees" or uptempo spirituals in their singing. Shouting and stomping were regular occurrences, unlike at her own church. Jackson later remembered, "These people had no choir or no organ. They used the drum, the cymbal, the tambourine, and the steel triangle. Everybody in there sang, and they clapped and stomped their feet, and sang with their whole bodies. They had a beat, a rhythm we held on to from slavery days, and their music was so strong and expressive. It used to bring tears to my eyes."

Rise of gospel music in Chicago (c. 1928 – c. 1931)

In a very cold December, Jackson arrived in Chicago. For a week she was miserably homesick, unable to move off the couch until Sunday when her aunts took her to Greater Salem Baptist Church, an environment she felt at home in immediately, later stating it was "the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me". When the pastor called the congregation to witness, or declare one's experience with God, Jackson was struck by the spirit and launched into a lively rendition of "Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet, Gabriel", to an impressed but somewhat bemused audience. The power of Jackson's voice was readily apparent but the congregation was unused to such an animated delivery. She was nonetheless invited to join the 50-member choir, and a vocal group formed by the pastor's sons, Prince, Wilbur, and Robert Johnson, and Louise Lemon. They performed as a quartet, the Johnson Singers, with Prince as the pianist: Chicago's first black gospel group. Initially they hosted familiar programs singing at socials and Friday night musicals. They wrote and performed moral plays at Greater Salem with offerings going toward the church.

Jackson's arrival in Chicago occurred during the Great Migration, a massive movement of black Southerners to Northern cities. Between 1910 and 1970, hundreds of thousands of rural Southern blacks moved to Chicago, transforming a neighborhood in the South Side into Bronzeville, a black city within a city which was mostly self sufficient, prosperous, and teeming in the 1920s. This movement caused white flight with whites moving to suburbs, leaving established white churches and synagogues with dwindling members. Their mortgages were taken over by black congregations in good position to settle in Bronzeville. Members of these churches were, in Jackson's term, "society Negroes" who were well educated and eager to prove their successful assimilation into white American society. Musical services tended to be formal, presenting solemnly delivered hymns written by Isaac Watts and other European composers. Shouting and clapping were generally not allowed as they were viewed as undignified. Special programs and musicals tended to feature sophisticated choral arrangements to prove the quality of the choir.

This difference between the styles in Northern urban churches and the South was vividly illustrated when the Johnson Singers appeared at a church one evening and Jackson stood out to sing solo, scandalizing the pastor with her exuberant shouts. He accused her of blasphemy, bringing "twisting jazz" into the church. Jackson was momentarily shocked before retorting, "This is the way we sing down South!" The minister was not alone in his apprehension. She was often so involved in singing she was mostly unaware how she moved her body. To hide her movements, pastors urged her to wear loose fitting robes which she often lifted a few inches from the ground, and accused her of employing "snake hips" while dancing when the spirit moved her. Enduring another indignity, Jackson scraped together four dollars (equivalent to $75 in 2025) to pay a talented black operatic tenor for a professional assessment of her voice. She was dismayed when the professor chastised her: "You've got to learn to stop hollering. It will take time to build up your voice. The way you sing is not a credit to the Negro race. You've got to learn to sing songs so that white people can understand them."

Fish and bread singer (c. 1931 – 1945)

Steadily, the Johnson Singers were asked to perform at other church services and revivals. When larger, more established black churches expressed little interest in the Johnson Singers, they were courted by smaller storefront churches and were happy to perform there, though less likely to be paid as much or at all. Newly arrived migrants attended these storefront churches; the services were less formal and reminiscent of what they had left behind. Jackson found an eager audience in new arrivals, one calling her "a fresh wind from the down-home religion." Black Chicago was hit hard by the Great Depression, driving church attendance throughout the city, which Jackson credited with starting her career. Gradually and by necessity, larger churches became more open to Jackson's singing style. As many of them were suddenly unable to meet their mortgage notes, adapting their musical programs became a viable way to attract and keep new members.

When she first arrived in Chicago, Jackson dreamed of being a nurse or a teacher, but before she could enroll in school she had to take over Aunt Hannah's job when she became ill. Jackson became a laundress and took a series of domestic and factory jobs while the Johnson Singers began to make a meager living, earning from $1.50 to $8 (equivalent to $29 to $154 in 2025) a night. Steady work became a second priority to singing. Jackson began calling herself a "fish and bread singer", working for herself and God. She made her first recordings in 1931, singles that she intended to sell at National Baptist Convention meetings, though she was mostly unsuccessful. But as her audiences grew each Sunday, she began to get hired as a soloist to sing at funerals and political rallies for Louis B. Anderson and William L. Dawson. In 1932, on Dawson's request, she sang for Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidential campaign. She had become the only professional gospel singer in Chicago. Sometimes she made $10 a week (equivalent to $236 in 2025) in what historian Michael Harris calls "an almost unheard-of professionalization of one's sacred calling".

As opportunities came to her, an extraordinary moral code directed Jackson's career choices. Her lone vice was frequenting movie and vaudeville theaters until her grandfather visited one summer and had a stroke while standing in the sun on a Chicago street. Jackson pleaded with God to spare him, swearing she would never go to a theater again. He survived and Jackson kept her promise, refusing to attend as a patron and rejecting opportunities to sing in theaters for her entire career. She furthermore vowed to sing gospel exclusively despite intense pressure. In 1935, Jackson met Isaac "Ike" Hockenhull, a chemist working as a postman during the Depression. Impressed with his attention and manners, Jackson married him after a year-long courtship. Hockenhull's mother gave the couple 200 formulas for homemade hair and skincare products she had sold door to door. Hockenhull and Jackson made cosmetics in their kitchen and she sold jars when she traveled. It was not steady work, and the cosmetics did not sell well. At one point Hockenhull had been laid off and he and Jackson had less than a dollar between them. He saw that auditions for The Swing Mikado, a jazz-flavored retelling of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, were taking place. He demanded she go; the role would pay $60 a week (equivalent to $1,392 in 2025). Plus, he saw no value in singing gospel. He did not consider it artful. He had repeatedly urged her to get formal training and put her voice to better use. She refused and they argued about it often. Wracked by guilt, she attended the audition, later calling the experience "miserable" and "painful". When she got home she learned that the role was offered to her, but when Hockenhull informed her he also secured a job she immediately rejected the role to his disbelief. She furthermore turned down Louis Armstrong and Earl "Fatha" Hines when they offered her jobs singing with their bands.

Apollo Records and national recognition (1946–1953)

Each engagement Jackson took was farther from Chicago in a nonstop string of performances. In 1946 she appeared at the Golden Gate Ballroom in Harlem. In attendance was Art Freeman, a music scout for Apollo Records, a company catering to black artists and audiences concentrating mostly on jazz and blues. Apollo's chief executive Bess Berman was looking to broaden their representation to other genres, including gospel. Berman signed Jackson to a four-record session, allowing Jackson to pick the songs. Her first release on Apollo, "Wait 'til My Change Comes" backed with "I'm Going to Tell God All About it One of These Days" did not sell well. Neither did her second, "I Want to Rest" with "He Knows My Heart". Berman asked Jackson to record blues and she refused. Berman told Freeman to release Jackson from any more recordings but Freeman asked for one more session to record the song Jackson sang as a warmup at the Golden Gate Ballroom concert. "Move On Up a Little Higher" was recorded in two parts, one for each side of the 78 rpm record.

Meanwhile, Chicago radio host Louis "Studs" Terkel heard Jackson's records in a music shop and was transfixed. He bought and played them repeatedly on his show. Terkel introduced his mostly white listeners to gospel music and Jackson herself, interviewing her and asking her to sing live. "Move On Up a Little Higher" was released in 1947, selling 50,000 copies in Chicago and two million nationwide. It landed at the number two spot on the Billboard charts for two weeks, another first for gospel music. The best any gospel artist could expect to sell was 100,000. Berman set Jackson up for another recording session, where she sang "Even Me" (one million sold), and "Dig a Little Deeper" (just under one million sold). Instantly Jackson was in high demand. A position as the official soloist of the National Baptist Convention was created for her, and her audiences multiplied to the tens of thousands. She participated in the Harry S. Truman 1948 presidential campaign, earning her first invitation to the White House. Time constraints forced her to give up the choir director position at St. Luke Baptist Church and sell the beauty shop. True to her own rule, she turned down lucrative appearances in New York City at the Apollo Theater and Village Vanguard, where she was promised $5,000 a week (equivalent to $70,000 in 2025).

The next year promoter Joe Bostic approached her to perform in a gospel music revue at Carnegie Hall, a venue most often reserved for classical and well established artists such as Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Jackson was intimidated by this offer and dreaded the approaching date. Gospel had never been performed at Carnegie. Jackson was the final artist to appear that evening. After a shaky start, she gave multiple encores and received voluminous praise: Nora Holt, a music critic with the black newspaper The New York Amsterdam News, wrote that Jackson's rendition of "City Called Heaven" was filled with "suffering ecstasy" and that Jackson was a "genius unspoiled". John Hammond, critic at the Daily Compass, praised Jackson's powerful voice which "she used ... with reckless abandon". The revue was so successful it was made an annual event with Jackson headlining for years. The show that took place in 1951 broke attendance records set by Goodman and Arturo Toscanini.

Columbia Records and civil rights activism (1954–1963)

In 1954, Jackson learned that Berman had been withholding royalties and had allowed her contract with Apollo to expire. Mitch Miller offered her a $50,000-a-year (equivalent to $600,000 in 2025) four-year contract, and Jackson became the first gospel artist to sign with Columbia Records, a much larger company with the ability to promote her nationally. Miller attempted to make her repertoire more appealing to white listeners, asking her to record ballads and classical songs, but again she refused. "Rusty Old Halo" became her first Columbia single, and DownBeat declared Jackson "the greatest spiritual singer now alive". Columbia worked with a local radio affiliate in Chicago to create a half-hour radio program, The Mahalia Jackson Show. Although it got an overwhelmingly positive reception and producers were eager to syndicate it nationally, it was cut to ten minutes long, then canceled. She appeared on a local television program, also titled The Mahalia Jackson Show, which again got a positive reception but was canceled for lack of sponsors. Despite white people beginning to attend her shows and sending fan letters, executives at CBS were concerned they would lose advertisers from Southern states that objected to a program with a Black person as the primary focus.

Jackson attracted the attention of the William Morris Agency, a firm that promoted her by booking her in large concert halls and television appearances with Arthur Godfrey, Dinah Shore, Bing Crosby, and Perry Como in the 1950s. Her reverence and upbeat, positive demeanor made her desirable to progressive producers and hosts eager to feature a Black person on television. She appeared at the 1956 Democratic National Convention, silencing a rowdy hall of attendees with "I See God". Miller, who was in attendance, was awed by it, noting "there wasn't a dry eye in the house when she got through". Jackson broke into films playing a missionary in St. Louis Blues (1958), and a funeral singer in Imitation of Life (1959). As demand for her rose, she traveled extensively, performing 200 dates a year for ten years. She and her entourage of singers and accompanists toured deeper into the South, encountering difficulty finding safe, clean places to sleep, eat, and buy gas due to Jim Crow laws. Sometimes they had to sleep in Jackson's car, a Cadillac that she had purchased to make long trips more comfortable. Jackson remembered, "The looks of anger at the sight of us colored folks sitting in a nice car were frightening to see... It got so we were living on bags of fresh fruit during the day and driving half the night, and I was so exhausted by the time I was supposed to sing, I was almost dizzy." Jackson began to gain weight. She also developed peculiar habits regarding money. As a Black woman, Jackson found it often impossible to cash checks when away from Chicago. Her contracts therefore demanded she be paid in cash, often forcing her to carry tens of thousands of dollars in suitcases and in her undergarments.

Later years (1964–1972)

Jackson toured Europe again in 1964, mobbed in several cities and proclaiming, "I thought I was the Beatles!" in Utrecht. She appeared in the film The Best Man (1964), and attended a ceremony acknowledging Lyndon Johnson's inauguration at the White House, becoming friends with Lady Bird. When at home, she attempted to remain approachable and maintain her characteristic sincerity. Mostly in secret, Jackson had paid for the education of several young people as she felt poignant regret that her own schooling was cut short. Stories of her gifts and generosity spread. Her phone number continued to be listed in the Chicago public telephone book, and she received calls nonstop from friends, family, business associates, and strangers asking for money, advice on how to break into the music industry, or general life decisions they should make. Her house had a steady flow of traffic that she welcomed. Jackson had thoroughly enjoyed cooking since childhood, and took great pleasure in feeding all of her visitors, some of them staying days or weeks on her request.

Through friends, Jackson met Sigmond Galloway, a former musician in the construction business living in Gary, Indiana. Despite Jackson's hectic schedule and the constant companions she had in her entourage of musicians, friends, and family, she expressed loneliness and began courting Galloway when she had free time. As a complete surprise to her closest friends and associates, Jackson married him in her living room in 1964. Only a few weeks later, while driving home from a concert in St. Louis, she found herself unable to stop coughing. She checked herself into a hospital in Chicago. Since the cancellation of her tour to Europe in 1952, Jackson experienced occasional bouts of fatigue and shortness of breath. As her schedule became fuller and more demands were placed on her, these episodes became more frequent. This time, the publicly disclosed diagnosis was heart strain and exhaustion, but in private Jackson's doctors told her that she had had a heart attack and sarcoidosis was now in her heart.

Jackson's recovery took a full year, during which she was unable to tour or record, ultimately losing 50 pounds (23 kg). From this point on she was plagued with near-constant fatigue, bouts of tachycardia, and high blood pressure as her condition advanced. Jackson was often depressed and frustrated at her own fragility, but she took the time to send Lyndon Johnson a telegram urging him to protect marchers in Selma, Alabama, when she saw news coverage of Bloody Sunday. Galloway proved to be unreliable, leaving for long periods during Jackson's convalescence, then upon his return insisting she was imagining her symptoms. He tried taking over managerial duties from agents and promoters despite being inept. They argued over money; Galloway attempted to strike Jackson on two different occasions, the second one thwarted when Jackson ducked and he broke his hand hitting a piece of furniture behind her. The marriage dissolved and she announced her intention to divorce. He responded by requesting a jury trial, rare for divorces, in an attempt to embarrass her by publicizing the details of their marital problems. When Galloway's infidelities were proven in testimony, the judge declined to award him any of Jackson's assets or properties.

Style

Singing

Though the gospel blues style Jackson employed was common among soloists in Black churches, to many white jazz fans it was novel. As she was the most prominent — and sometimes the only gospel singer many white listeners knew — she often received requests to define the style and explain how and why she sang as she did. Jackson was mostly untrained, never learning to read or write musical notation, so her style was heavily marked by instinct. She answered questions to the best of her ability though often responded with lack of surety, saying: "All I ever learned was just to sing the way I feel... off-beat, on the beat, between beats — however the Lord lets it come out." When pressed for clearer descriptions, she replied: "Child, I don't know how I do it myself."

Jackson's voice is noted for being energetic and powerful, ranging from contralto to soprano, which she switched between rapidly. She resisted labeling her voice range instead calling it "real strong and clear". She used bent or "worried" notes typical of blues, the sound of which jazz aficionado Bucklin Moon described as "an almost solid wall of blue tonality". She moaned, hummed, and improvised extensively with rhythm and melody, often embellishing notes with a prodigious use of melisma, or singing several tones per syllable. Author Anthony Heilbut called it a "weird ethereal sound, part moan, part failed operatics". Gospel historian Horace Boyer attributes Jackson's "aggressive style and rhythmic ascension" to the Pentecostal congregation she heard as a child, saying Jackson was "never a Baptist singer". He continues: "bending a note here, chopping off a note there, singing through rest spots and ornamenting the melodic line at will, [Jackson] confused pianists but fascinated those who played by ear". Bucklin Moon was enamored with her singing, writing that the embellishments Jackson added "take your breath away. As a member of a Sanctified Church in Mount Vernon once told me: 'Mahalia, she add more flowers and feathers than anybody, and they all is exactly right.' She breaks every rule of concert singing, taking breaths in the middle of a word and sometimes garbling the words altogether, but the full-throated feeling and expression are seraphic." Writer Ralph Ellison noted how she blended precise diction with a thick New Orleans accent, describing the effect as "almost of the academy one instant, and of the broadest cotton field dialect the next".

By her own admission and in the opinion of multiple critics and scholars, Bessie Smith's singing style was clearly dominant in Jackson's voice. In Melody Maker, Max Jones contrasted the two: "Whereas Bessie's singing can sound harsh and unlovely, even to jazz students, on first acquaintance, Mahalia's voice is obviously an instrument of uncommon beauty... Her bursts of power and sudden rhythmic drives build up to a pitch that leave you unprepared to listen afterwards to any but the greatest of musicians." Other singers made their mark. In her early days in Chicago, Jackson saved her money to buy records by classical singers Roland Hayes, Grace Moore, and Lawrence Tibbett, attributing her diction, breathing, and she said, "what little I know of technique" to these singers.

Recording

Jackson estimated that she sold 22 million records in her career. Her four singles for Decca and seventy-one for Apollo are widely acclaimed by scholars as defining gospel blues. The earliest are marked by minimal accompaniment with piano and organ. Apollo added acoustic guitar, backup singers, bass, and drums in the 1950s. Her singing is lively, energetic, and emotional, using "a voice in the prime of its power and command", according to author Bob Darden. Although hearing herself on Decca recordings years later prompted Jackson to declare they are "not very good", Viv Broughton calls "Keep Me Every Day" a "gospel masterpiece", and Anthony Heilbut praises its "wonderful artless purity and conviction", saying that in her Decca records, her voice "was at its loveliest, rich and resonant, with little of the vibrato and neo-operatic obbligatos of later years". Likewise, he calls Jackson's Apollo records "uniformly brilliant", choosing "Even Me", "Just As I Am", "City Called Heaven", and "I Do, Don't You" as perfect examples of her phrasing and contralto range, having an effect that is "angelic but never saccharine". The New Grove Gospel, Blues, and Jazz cites the Apollo songs "In the Upper Room", "Let the Power of the Holy Ghost Fall on Me", and "I'm Glad Salvation is Free" as prime examples of the "majesty" of Jackson's voice. According to musicologist Wilfrid Mellers, Jackson's early recordings demonstrate a "sound that is all-embracing, as secure as the womb, from which singer and listener may be reborn. The breathtaking beauty of the voice and superbly controlled transitions from speech to prayer to song heal and anneal."

Columbia Records, then the largest recording company in the U.S., presented Jackson as the "World's Greatest Gospel Singer" in the 28 albums it released. She was marketed to appeal to a wide audience of listeners who, despite all her accomplishments up to 1954, had never heard of her. In contrast to the series of singles from Apollo, Columbia released themed albums that included liner notes and photos. Compared with other artists at Columbia, Jackson was allowed considerable input in what she would record, but Mitch Miller and producer George Avakian persuaded her with varying success to broaden her appeal to listeners of different faiths. Though her early records at Columbia had a similar sound to her Apollo records, the music accompanying Jackson at Columbia later included orchestras, electric guitars, backup singers, and drums, the overall effect of which was more closely associated with light pop music. She was marketed similarly to jazz musicians, but her music at Columbia ultimately defied categorization. Her albums interspersed familiar compositions by Thomas Dorsey and other gospel songwriters with songs considered generally inspirational. These included "You'll Never Walk Alone" written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the 1945 musical Carousel, "Trees" based on the poem by Joyce Kilmer, "Danny Boy", and the patriotic songs "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", among others. The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music describes Jackson's Columbia recordings as "toned down and polished" compared to the rawer, more minimalist sound at Apollo. Scholar Mark Burford praises "When I Wake Up In Glory" as "one of the crowning achievements of her career as a recording artist", but Heilbut calls her Columbia recordings of "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "The Lord's Prayer", "uneventful material". Jackson agreed somewhat, acknowledging that her sound was being commercialized, calling some of these recordings "sweetened-water stuff". When the themes of her songs were outwardly religious, some critics felt the delivery was at times less lively. John Hammond, who helped secure Jackson's contract with Columbia, told her if she signed with them many of her Black fans would not relate well to the music. This turned out to be true and as a result, Jackson created a distinct performing style for Columbia recordings that was markedly different from her live performances, which remained animated and lively, both in churches and concert halls.

Live performance

In live performances, Jackson was renowned for her physicality and the extraordinary emotional connections she held with her audiences. The New York Times stated she was a "massive, stately, even majestic woman, [who] possessed an awesome presence that was apparent in whatever milieu she chose to perform." So caught up in the spirit was she while singing, she often wept, fell on her knees, bowed, skipped, danced, clapped spontaneously, patted her sides and stomach, and particularly in churches, roamed the aisles to sing directly to individuals. All of these were typical of the services in black churches though Jackson's energy was remarkable. An experiment wearing a wig with her robes went awry during a show in the 1950s when she sang so frenetically she flung it off mid-performance. Anthony Heilbut writes that "some of her gestures are dramatically jerky, suggesting instant spirit possession", and called her performances "downright terrifying. At her best, Mahalia builds these songs to a frenzy of intensity almost demanding a release in holler and shout. When singing them she may descend to her knees, her combs scattering like so many cast-out demons." Jackson defended her idiosyncrasies, commenting: "How can you sing of amazing grace, how can you sing prayerfully of heaven and earth and all God's wonders without using your hands? My hands, my feet, I throw my whole body to say all that is within me. The mind and the voice by themselves are not sufficient."

In line with improvising music, Jackson did not like to prepare what she would sing before concerts, and would often change song preferences based on what she was feeling at the moment, saying: "There's something the public reaches into me for, and there seems to be something in each audience that I can feel. I can feel whether there's a low spirit. Some places I go, up-tempo songs don't go, and other places, sad songs aren't right." She had an uncanny ability to elicit the same emotions from her audiences that she transmitted in her singing. People Today commented that "When Mahalia sings, audiences do more than just listen—they undergo a profoundly moving emotional experience." Jackson used "house wreckers", or songs that induced long tumultuous moments with audiences weeping, shouting, and moaning, especially in black churches. Gospel singer Evelyn Gaye recalled touring with her in 1938 when Jackson often sang "If You See My Savior Tell Him That You Saw Me", saying: "and the people, look like they were just awed by it, on a higher plane, gone. She had that type of rocking and that holy dance she'd get into—look like the people just submitted to it." White audiences also wept and responded emotionally. According to jazz writer Raymond Horricks, instead of preaching to listeners Jackson spoke about her personal faith and spiritual experiences "immediately and directly... making it difficult for them to turn away". Promoter Joe Bostic was in the audience of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, an outdoor concert that occurred during a downpour, and stated: "It was the most fantastic tribute to the hypnotic power of great artistry I have ever encountered. Nothing like it have I ever seen in my life. Those people sat... they forgot... they were completely entranced."

Mildred Falls

Until 1946, Jackson used an assortment of pianists for recording and touring, choosing anyone who was convenient and free to go with her. As her career progressed, she found it necessary to have a pianist available at a moment's notice, someone talented enough to improvise with her yet steeped in religious music. Jackson found this in Mildred Falls (1921–1974), who accompanied her for 25 years. Falls is often acknowledged as a significant part of Jackson's sound and therefore her success. She was born Mildred Carter in Magnolia, Mississippi, learning to play on her family's upright piano, working with church choirs, and moving to California with a gospel singing group. A broken marriage resulted in her return to Chicago in 1947 when she was referred to Jackson who set up a brief training with Robert Anderson, a longtime member of Jackson's entourage. Falls accompanied her in nearly every performance and recording thereafter.

Always on the lookout for new material, Jackson received 25 to 30 compositions a month for her consideration. Falls played these so Jackson could "catch the message of the song". Once selections were made, Falls and Jackson memorized each composition, though while touring with Jackson, Falls was required to improvise as Jackson never sang a song the same way twice, even from rehearsal to a performance hours or minutes later. Falls found it necessary to watch Jackson's mannerisms and mouth instead of looking at the piano keys to keep up with her. At the beginning of a song, Falls might start in one key and receive hand signals from Jackson to change until Jackson felt the right key for the song in that moment. Falls remembered, "Mahalia waited until she heard exactly what was in her ear, and once she heard it, she went on about her business and she'd tear the house down."

Studs Terkel compared Falls to Paul Ulanowsky and Gerald Moore who played for classical singing stars Lotte Lehmann and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, respectively. Ralph Ellison called Falls and Jackson "the dynamic duo", saying that their performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival created "a rhythmical drive such as is expected of the entire Basie band. It is all joy and exultation and swing, but it is nonetheless religious music." Falls' right hand playing, according to Ellison, substituted for the horns in an orchestra which was in constant "conversation" with Jackson's vocals. Her left hand provided a "walking bass line that gave the music its 'bounce'", common in stride and ragtime playing. Similarly, television host Dinah Shore called Falls' left hand "the strongest thing in the whole world", giving Jackson's music a prominent beat usually missing from religious music. When Shore's studio musicians attempted to pinpoint the cause of Jackson's rousing sound, Shore admonished them with humor, saying: "Mildred's got a left hand, that's what your problem is." Anthony Heilbut explained: "By Chicago choir standards her chordings and tempos were old-fashioned, but they always induced a subtle rock exactly suited to Mahalia's swing."

Influence

On music

Jackson's influence was greatest in black gospel music. Beginning in the 1930s, Sallie Martin, Roberta Martin, Willie Mae Ford Smith, Artelia Hutchins, and Jackson spread the gospel blues style by performing in churches around the U.S. For 15 years the genre developed in relative isolation with choirs and soloists performing in a circuit of churches, revivals, and National Baptist Convention (NBC) meetings where music was shared and sold among musicians, songwriters, and ministers. The NBC boasted a membership of four million, a network that provided the source material that Jackson learned in her early years and from which she drew during her recording career.

Though Jackson was not the first gospel blues soloist to record, historian Robert Marovich identifies her success with "Move On Up a Little Higher" as the event that launched gospel music from a niche movement in Chicago churches to a genre that became commercially viable nationwide. The "Golden Age of Gospel", occurring between 1945 and 1965, presented dozens of gospel music acts on radio, records, and in concerts in secular venues. Jackson's success was recognized by the NBC when she was named its official soloist, and uniquely, she was bestowed universal respect in a field of very competitive and sometimes territorial musicians. Marovich explains that she "was the living embodiment of gospel music's ecumenism and was welcomed everywhere".

The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music identifies Jackson and Sam Cooke, whose music career started when he joined the Soul Stirrers, as the most important figures in black gospel music in the 1950s. To the majority of new fans, however, "Mahalia was the vocal, physical, spiritual symbol of gospel music", according to Heilbut. Raymond Horricks writes: "People who hold different religious beliefs to her own, and even people who have no religious beliefs whatsoever, are impressed by and give their immediate attention to her singing. She has, almost singlehandedly, brought about a wide, and often non-religious interest in the gospel singing of the Negro." Because she was often asked by white jazz and blues fans to define what she sang, she became gospel's most prominent defender, saying: "Blues are the songs of despair. Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have a feeling there's a cure for what's wrong. When you're through with the blues you've got nothing to rest on."

As gospel music became accessible to mainstream audiences, its stylistic elements became pervasive in popular music as a whole. Jackson, who enjoyed music of all kinds, noticed, attributing the emotional punch of rock and roll to Pentecostal singing. Her Decca records were the first to feature the sound of a Hammond organ, spawning many copycats and resulting in its use in popular music, especially those evoking a soulful sound, for decades after. The first R&B and rock and roll singers employed the same devices that Jackson and her cohorts in gospel singing used, including ecstatic melisma, shouting, moaning, clapping, and stomping. Heilbut writes: "With the exception of Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, there is scarcely a pioneer rock and roll singer who didn't owe his stuff to the great gospel lead singers." Specifically, Little Richard, Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers, Donna Summer, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Della Reese, and Aretha Franklin have all named Jackson as an inspiration. Jackson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early influence category in 1997. Mavis Staples justified her inclusion at the ceremony, saying: "When she sang, you would just feel light as a feather. God, I couldn't get enough of her." Franklin, who studied Jackson since she was a child and sang "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at her funeral, was placed at Rolling Stone's number one spot in their list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, compiled in 2010. Despite her influence, Jackson was mostly displeased that gospel music was being used for secular purposes, considering R&B and soul music to be perversions, exploiting the music to make money.

On Black identity

Jackson's success had a profound effect on Black American identity, particularly for those who did not assimilate comfortably into white society. Though she and gospel blues were denigrated by members of the black upper class into the 1950s, for middle and lower class Black Americans her life was a rags to riches story in which she remained relentlessly positive and unapologetically at ease with herself and her mannerisms in the company of white people. In Imitation of Life, her portrayal as a funeral singer embodied sorrow for the character Annie, a maid who dies from heartbreak. Scholar Johari Jabir writes that in this role, "Jackson conjures up the unspeakable fatigue and collective weariness of centuries of black women." Through her music, she promoted hope and celebrated resilience in the black American experience. Jackson was often compared to opera singer Marian Anderson, as they both toured Europe, included spirituals in their repertoires, and sang in similar settings. Jackson considered Anderson an inspiration, and earned an invitation to sing at Constitution Hall in 1960, 21 years after the Daughters of the American Revolution forbade Anderson from performing there in front of an integrated audience. But Jackson's preference for the musical influence, casual language, and intonation of Black Americans was a sharp contrast to Anderson's refined manners and concentration on European music. In interviews, Jackson repeatedly credits aspects of Black culture that played a significant part in the development of her style: remnants of slavery music she heard at churches, work songs from vendors on the streets of New Orleans, and blues and jazz bands. Her first national television appearance on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town in 1952 showed her singing authentic gospel blues, prompting a large parade in her honor in Dayton, Ohio, with 50,000 black attendees – more than the integrated audience that showed up for a Harry Truman campaign stop around the same time. Known for her excited shouts, Jackson once called out "Glory!" on her CBS television show, following quickly with: "Excuse me, CBS, I didn't know where I was." By retaining her dialect and singing style, she challenged a sense of shame among many middle and lower class black Americans for their disparaged speech patterns and accents. Evelyn Cunningham of the Pittsburgh Courier attended a Jackson concert in 1954, writing that she expected to be embarrassed by Jackson, but "when she sang, she made me choke up and feel wondrously proud of my people and my heritage. She made me drop my bonds and become really emancipated."

Malcolm X noted that Jackson was "the first Negro that Negroes made famous". White radio host Studs Terkel was surprised to learn Jackson had a large black following before he found her records, saying: "For a stupid moment, I had thought that I discovered Mahalia Jackson." Jazz composer Duke Ellington, counting himself as a fan of Jackson's since 1952, asked her to appear on his album Black, Brown and Beige (1958), an homage to black American life and culture. Due to her decision to sing gospel exclusively she initially rejected the idea, but relented when Ellington asked her to improvise on the 23rd Psalm. She was featured on the album's vocal rendition of Ellington's composition "Come Sunday", which subsequently became a jazz standard. As she became more famous, spending time in concert halls, she continued to attend and perform in black churches, often for free, to connect with congregations and other gospel singers. Believing that black wealth and capital should be reinvested into black people, Jackson designed her line of chicken restaurants to be black-owned and operated. She organized a 1969 concert called A Salute to Black Women, the proceeds of which were given to her foundation providing college scholarships to black youth. Upon her death, singer Harry Belafonte called her "the most powerful black woman in the United States" and there was "not a single field hand, a single black worker, a single black intellectual who did not respond to her".

Biopics

Mahalia Jackson was portrayed by American singer Ledisi in the historical drama film Selma (2014). Remember Me: The Mahalia Jackson Story, a biopic portraying her life and career, was released in September 2022, with Ledisi reprising as Mahalia. Ledisi received a nomination for Outstanding Breakthrough Performance in a Motion Picture and the film received a nomination for Outstanding Independent Motion Picture at the 54th NAACP Image Awards in 2023.