“Move On Up A Little Higher” by Mahalia Jackson

song info

    “Move On Up A Little Higher” by Mahalia Jackson is a gospel song from 1947.

    This song is the number three (3) song of 1947 according to Digital Dream Door’s Adam.

link to the static song information page for this song:
http://www.thissideofsanity.com/music/songs/mo/moveonupalittlehigher.php

    Summary quotation from Wikipedia:

    “Move On Up A Little Higher” is a gospel song written by W. Herbert Brewster, first recorded on September 12, 1947, by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, that sold eight million copies. The song was honored with the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in (1998). In 2005, the Library of Congress honored the song by adding it to the National Recording Registry. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts, and is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock.

    Composer Rev. William Herbert Brewster (1897-1987) composed “Moved On Up A Little Higher,” through the imagery of a “Christian climbing the ladder to heaven,” the song encourages black upward mobility, hence reflecting the postwar Afro-modernist sentiments:

    “The fight for rights here in Memphis was pretty rough on the Black church … and I We’ll have to move in the field of education. Move into the professions and move into politics. Move in ahas to have to survive. That was a protest idea and inspiration. I was trying to inspire Black people to move up higher. Don’t be mediocre the freedom fights started, before the Martin Luther King days, I had to lead a lot of protest meetings. In order to gengerous could sing it.”

    “Move on Up” was originally written for one of Brewster’s religious pageants or passion plays. Brewster’s maintained that the entire piece—lyrics, melody, and harmony—came to him in one flow, and shortly thereafter he taught the song to his principle vocal soloist, Queen C. Anderson. But it was the Queen of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson, who, according to Brewster, “knew what to do with it. She could throw the verse out there.” Producer Art Freeman insisted Jackson record “Move on Up a Little Higher”; released in early 1948, the single became the best-selling gospel record of all time, selling in such great quantities that stores could not even meet the demand. Brewster was pastor of East Trigg Avenue Baptist Church, one of the churches where young Elvis Presley studied the ecstatic moves of his gospel heroes.

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Proverb:

No person is born great; great people become great when others are sleeping. —African Proverb