When Praise and Worship Is Also a Really Good Time: Trombone Shout Bands
Trombone shout bands are not well known to your typical music enthusiast -- probably not even your average gospel music fan -- but a major hub for this style of gospel music thrives in Charlotte, NC
Welcome to another episode of Southern Songs and Stories, or at least the transcription of the podcast, including my article about trombone shout bands. Enjoy!
First, the article:
Hymns and gospel songs have flowed into, and very often, back out of out of every style of music with roots in the American South. From the music itself to its context in worship through choirs, instruments ranging from piano to organ to praise bands, and communal singing, the gospel tradition is, if not front and center in one’s life experience, then at the very least somewhere along the spectrum of influence for everyone native to the region. We touch on this often in episodes of Southern Songs and Stories, with guest artists who lean heavily on the gospel tradition (like The War & Treaty and Darin and Brooke Aldridge), and others who were brought up in church settings and whose music is often informed by gospel music (like Paul Thorn). Gospel music has tremendous depth and width, and here, we focus on one of its many branches, a little known tradition thriving in places like Washington D.C. and Charlotte, NC: the trombone shout band.
According to historian Tom Hanchett, no one seems to know when the trombone shout band tradition began. In the Pentecostal Holiness churches such as the House of Prayer For All People, which is central to our story here, brass bands go back at least a century, but in the early twentieth century, featured a full range of instruments rather than massed trombones. It was a time when brass band music was big everywhere in America, among blacks and whites alike. The House of Prayer took the praise band template and transformed it, with a new and unique instrumental configuration and style, around the 1940s. The history gets murky as to exactly where this happened and who gets credit, but by 1960, trombone shout bands had become synonymous with the United House of Prayer for All People.
Fast forward to 2024, when Henry Louis Gates Jr. became the face of the PBS documentary series, Gospel. In a series of events described in this episode, the impact of that series reverberated throughout the public television and radio world, eventually making its way to public radio station WNCW. From there, host and producer Kevin Washington and I produced a radio special on gospel music in this region of North and South Carolina especially; I would then, reluctantly at first, go on to help produce a live event at the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, NC that showcased and delved into even more of the region’s gospel music past and present. That event led to my discovery of trombone shout bands, courtesy of Tom Hanchett. From there, it was only a hop, skip and a jump over to producing this podcast. I think you will enjoy finding out about where we landed.
Now, the audio transcript:
[Cunningham Spiritual Return, live at GospelSHOUT!, ~24:45 up to 16:28, continuing as bed]
Have you ever heard the phrase, “The Lord works in mysterious ways”, or perhaps “God moves in a mysterious way”? They are two ways of saying the same thing, which originated with a quotation of Jesus in the New Testament book of John, and was brought into the modern vernacular back in 1773, when Englishman William Cowper wrote his hymn “Light Shining Out Of Darkness” which opens with the line, “God moves in a mysterious way”.
There is a lot of mystery as to how this episode came to be, or at least, it has been nothing short of a process of revelation, because everything about it shows how completely unaware I was of not only the individuals here, but also everything about the rich musical tradition of trombone shout bands, which are also referred to as trombone praise bands or simply, shout bands. Granted, trombone shout bands are not all that well known to your typical music enthusiast, and probably not even your average gospel music fan. But the fact that one of the hubs for this music was in nearby Charlotte, North Carolina, and that it is part of such a vibrant culture that has existed for the better part of a century in my own corner of the American South but is just now, seemingly by accident, being discovered by me, a so-called music expert -- well, that’s a puzzle that I simply cannot leave in the box.
There is a lot to unpack with the history, culture and music of trombone praise bands, and in this episode, we unravel some of the mystery with the help of WNCW’s Kevin Washington, who went to Charlotte in April 2024 for the annual GospelSHOUT! event at the United House of Prayer For All People, where he interviewed Clouds of Heaven band leader Hubert Redfern Jr. as well as former leader Ceodric Mangum Sr. and son Ceodric Mangum Jr., plus we hear from historian Tom Hanchett, who was instrumental in helping the event begin its run as a part of the Charlotte Shout! festival more than twenty years ago. Ceodric Mangum Jr. 's group Cunningham Spiritual Return was part of the lineup at the event, and you are hearing them now. I am your host Joe Kendrick, welcoming you to our episode on shout bands here on Southern Songs and Stories.
[SSaS theme song and intro by Corrie Askew]
00:08:02 Tom Hanchett
So, you almost entirely play within the House of Prayer. This is not usually. It's very unusual to have a concert setting. It's almost always as part of the church service.
00:08:17 Hubert Redfern Jr.
Yes, Sir.
00:08:18 Tom Hanchett
Talk a little bit about. How you how you interact with the other? In the church?
00:08:25 Hubert Redfern Jr.
Well, it's sometimes where you may come in. And a general Gospel service, and like Elder Ceodric Mangum, he'll be on the organ and. Will be what we would call 8:00 prayer and that that's 20 minutes of where we can come in and whatever problems you have or any situations you have, you could just come in while he's on the organ you may have where if you may hear tonight you may hear old senior citizen. Break out in the song and somebody may start praying. And the tambourines would get the shaking. Spirits would get to move in and where we'll move on into a testimonial service and that's where somebody can come up and tell you how good God's been. Just a brief synopsis and then you may hear well, other man go may hop off the organ and he may nod to the band and the band gets together and the band comes in and all that you went through that day. That's for everybody in that service. All that you went through that day. You're thinking about how you've. It's been just rough for us. Somebody may not have food on that table or somebody may not have clothes on their back enough, but just to know that God has been good and you have breath in your body and you think about it and the band gets to move and it moves onto your soul, you may see somebody come out of those pews and come over to what we call this, this threshing floor. Little that's why you see the wood right here, where it's different from right there. So, where they can shout, it's easier to shout right here and that just provides, we're just helping that joy. We're just providing some music. It's not about us. We just slip into the to the background. And it's just it just we just unbuckle your seat belts.
That was Hubert Redfern Jr., and beginning with a question from Tom Hanchett about what the music is like at the House of Prayer when there is not a special performance like that night for GospelSHOUT! The joy that Redfern describes is key to all this, and is a point of emphasis throughout the history of shout bands.
And what is that history? As Tom Hanchett writes on his website History South dot org, a good place to begin is with the Pentecostal Holiness movement, which began in the early twentieth century. Characterized by emotional fervor, dancing, gyrating and speaking in tongues, which is speaking in words or sounds believed to be an unknown language, the Pentecostal movement resonated especially well in the Black community all across the US. In that style of worship, there was an echo of many African spiritual practices that remained in the community’s cultural memory, especially the “ring shout”, where people would clap, shout and stomp their feet and shuffle counterclockwise in a circle.
Enter Charles Manuel Grace, an African-Portuguese immigrant who made his home in New Bedford Massachusetts, an area still known for its Portuguese speaking population. Working as a railroad cook on the Southern Railway, “Daddy Grace” as he came to be known, was traveling the Eastern Seaboard regularly, and at stops he would often preach. One of those stops was in Charlotte, NC, a city that would soon become one of the hubs of his church, the United House of Prayer for All People. It was in Charlotte on June 26, 1926 that Grace hosted a tent revival in the Second Ward neighborhood. Originally scheduled for two weeks, the revival was so popular that it stretched out for the rest of the summer. Newspapers reported estimated crowds of over 20,000 attendees filling every square foot of the tent lot, and overflowing into neighboring streets and alleys.
Although Grace eventually made his church headquarters in Washington, D.C., Charlotte was the second most active center, and today there are well over a dozen Houses in the Queen City. The complex known as the “Mother House” is host to the GospelSHOUT! event where we drop back in for some of this a capella performance by the Golden Angels Choir:
[“He’s Still Alive” by Golden Angels Choir, live at United House Of Prayer in Charlotte, 04/09/24, excerpt]
00:05:04 Kevin Washington [NOTE: There’s a glitch in the original audio but under here is the question being asked]
And, wanted to also highlighting the importance of local gospel groups and local groups that people aren't aware of in North Carolina. Do the groups perform mostly locally or in the surrounding areas?
00:05:22 Tom Hanchett [note: begins at 06:28]
The tradition is in every House of prayer, I believe. I think that everyone has some kind of musical thing going on and the bands that are highlighted here at the mother house in North Carolina, on the Gospel shout program.
00:05:41 Tom Hanchett
Are folks who are from the Charlotte area?
00:05:44 Tom Hanchett
Most of these people are not professional musicians. They are people of faith, people who sometimes are working third shift when they can get off. They come, there's the church is an important part of their life and having the music close at hand is a powerful builder of community when it comes to the shout band tradition.
00:06:10 Kevin Washington
And what else do you want folks to know about the program than other things associated with it?
00:06:21 Tom Hanchett
The, I'm, I'm a white person who was raised in the Episcopal Church, and this is so not that. It is improvisatory. A lot of what goes on is improvised. There's there's kind of an idea of how an evening will flow, but there's not a printed program. And if the spirit is moving in the house, there may be extra music that happens that no one planned, that that just comes out of the moment. And that that combination of deep tradition and improvisation in the moment is a a powerful thing. It pulls people together, they talk about the spirit moving in the house. I I was brought up to take religion with with great seriousness. And these people are are very serious about what they do, but when it's over, Cedric, will say. Tom, did you have a good time? Because part of the religion is to lighten the load of everyday cares and worries and music does that.
That was Tom Hanchett, interviewed by Kevin Washington, who also produces the podcast Vibes, History and Culture. Kevin is producing his own version of the conversations he recorded at GospelSHOUT! for a June 2024 episode of VHC, which is a series focusing on music history and culture with artist interviews and in-depth profiles and lots of music that is often relatively unknown. Well worth a listen and a follow.
I mentioned at the top of the podcast how mysterious trombone shout bands were to me before making this episode, and Kevin Washington was as new to this music and culture as I was. Both of us first heard of it from historian Tom Hanchett, who we met at an event I helped produce in February 2024 at the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby NC called “Carolina Gospel: An Exploration of the Sacred Sounds of the Piedmont”, and which you can watch on the Earl Scruggs Center’s YouTube channel. That event was a small miracle in how unlikely it was to happen at all, and were it not for that event, neither Kevin nor I would have met Tom, and you would not be hearing this episode now.
It was a curious turn of events that led me here, and they began with Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s PBS series titled Gospel, which documents the people and events involved in the genre’s birth, and evolution as an American art form. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting created a grant program for public television and public radio stations to host community engagement events to go along with the series, and my old friend Zac Altheimer, who was part of a team working on the program, contacted me to invite WNCW to take part. But there was the matter of applying for the grant, which I had never done. And I was going to be alone in doing it, which gave me a lot of pause.
After that initial hesitation, I jumped in, but only as far as agreeing to work with Kevin Washington on producing a WNCW radio special titled Carolina Gospel, which was something I was comfortable with doing. What I was not comfortable with doing was what Zac Altheimer asked me to consider doing on top of that, which was a community event.
This is where the story had its best chance to end before it began. After hitting a dead end where I thought there was no way forward, I spoke with the Earl Scruggs Center about the possibility of hosting an event, and they were all in. Pretty quickly, everything started coming into focus: a free public event at the museum with a panel discussion including clips of the Henry Louis Gates Jr. series, as well as the group The Gospel IQ’s. And that is what we did.
At that event, we touched on everything from how gospel music helped break down racial and class boundaries in the region, to how gospel music performed by Blacks informed and influenced artists like Earl Scruggs, and with the panel itself, for example, how many gospel artists from the region made their mark on the genre’s rich history. Much of this was new to me, and to the audience. I felt amazed that it had happened, and afterward, that it had gone so well. Mysterious ways, indeed.
[“Keep Oil In Your Vessels” by Clouds of Heaven, from Saint’s Paradise: Trombone Shout Bands from The United House of Prayer, excerpt]
The unique place in music that trombone shout bands carved out is documented in the Smithsonian Folkways compilation Saint’s Paradise: Trombone Shout Bands from The United House of Prayer, which includes this live, 1996 performance by Clouds of Heaven with Ceodric Mangum Sr. leading and arranging this version of “Keep Oil In Your Vessels”.
In his interview, Kevin Washington commented to Ceodric that the United House of Prayer’s style of worship service was nothing like what he was used to. Here is Ceodric Mangum Sr:
00:10:42 Ceodric Mangum Sr.
Yeah. Well, we start out with general cost of service 7:30. From 7:30 to 8:00, and that's what brother Deacon Redfern was talking about. The 8:00 prayer. See, from 7:30 to 8:00. Like you were saying, if you're going through any type of troubles in your life, we'll sit and meditate. For about 30 minutes. Doing those 30 minutes sometime, a Deacon may come up, read the scripture. To help ease your troubled mind. You know, doing whatever you're going through. And then when 8:00 approaches, we'll come to the front, to we, we call to the Holy Mountain. Some people called it the altar. We'll come to the holy mountain and give it to God. We'll thank him for what he's going to do. So that's what we do for those 30 minutes and then from 20 from 8:00 to 8:20, then that's when we do our 8:00 prayer doing that, that, that point of time somebody sing then after somebody get you singing then somebody would pray. And have to get through praying somebody. The spirit would lead them to lead another song. And after they sang that song, then we'll do another. Prayer. Until about 8:20. Then from 8:20 to we had started the testimony service at 8:30. And like Deacon Redfern was saying, you know, that testimony would uplift somebody. That's sitting in the audience might be going through the same thing that they going through. And from there, you know. Then we go continue on with the preaching and everything. But it's a nightly thing. Yes, this is nightly. Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir.
[jump to]
00:13:20 Kevin Washington
How young do you have to be to be in this? Or is there a cut off?
00:13:26 Ceodric Mangum Jr.
Well, especially in a House of prayer, you'll find even little babies running around with hangers. Like I know when I was when I was one of, I was one of those little boys when he would bring me to service with him. Most of us start out with maybe a block. Or sticks like I said, hangers, anything in the shape of a horn, we could get our hands on, and that's the foundation. Then when we get maybe a little older, maybe three or four years old, some will have a little mini horn mini trombone with some, you know, we'll even go as far as have a full size horn. And you just see the evolution as they get older and they transition into like maturity cause like even this group of three right here you have the past, you got the present and the future is it's all it is really just the evolution. That's the beauty of it because it's like you don't expect. 5, 6, 7 years old and playing fluently on the instrument. That people take years to master. That's why we call it a gift. And it's the honor to get that because you don't. You don't see that anywhere else.
[jump to]
00:16:00 Hubert Redfern Jr.
Yeah. Can I state something as far as when he had, he had kind of reminded me when he was talking about the hangers and a lot of times where and he elder said you maybe won't even realize it. When my mother was pregnant with me. Where? She would come to service and she would say when she would come she would come here and at the time the band that I I've followed in his footsteps and I'm leading now I fell, fell on me. She would come here for service and she was pregnant with me. She said every time the band would play, she would feel me kick. I would kick, I would kick. So, a lot of times this doesn't even start when they walk in. This starts in the womb. So as far as when we're coming out and we, once we finally become a, you'll be surprised where if you if a regular, I'll say a person that's a that a baby that doesn't attend House of prayer, you put them around a lot of music, they'll cry and they'll yell because they're not used to it. But it's amazing how. A child that comes in here because we're used to because our parents are coming nightly and they're hearing. We heard the music in the womb, so our ears are automatically attentive to it. So, it goes back to the scripture. When you say train up a child in the way that it should go. And when he grow old, he won’t depart. So, when he's talking about when you go to school. And you go to college and it's just all these things going around and you know, it's not right whatever. But always come your mind always says, hey, I gotta get to the House of prayer. Get back to God, give some God give God his praises. I'm right back here.
00:17:47 Tom Hanchett
Beautiful. Wonderful. Wonderful.
[“Spiritual Conversation” by Clouds of Heaven, from Saint’s Paradise, continuing as bed]
That was Hubert Redfern Jr, preceded by Ceodric Mangum Jr.and Ceodric Sr. talking with WNCW’s Kevin Washington, bringing us to the close of this episode of Southern Songs and Stories.
We appreciate you taking the time to listen, and hope you can help us by spreading awareness of this endeavor. It is as easy as telling a friend and following this podcast on your platform of choice, both of which are quick, easy and free! Next, it takes just a moment to give us a top rating, and where it is available, a review! It makes a great difference because the more top reviews and ratings we get, the more visible we become to everyone on those platforms, which means that more people just like you connect with the hundreds of artists and their stories awaiting you in this series.
This is the first Southern Songs and Stories episode focusing solely on gospel music, but there are many episodes with artists who have a gospel background, like Rissi Palmer -- you can check out her episode from early 2024 titled Finally, A Country That Welcomes Her: Rissi Palmer.
This series is a part of the lineup of both public radio WNCW and Osiris Media, with all of the Osiris shows available at https://www.osirispod.com/. You can also hear new episodes on Bluegrass Planet Radio at https://www.bluegrassplanetradio.com/. Thanks to Corrie Askew for producing the radio adaptations of this series on public radio WNCW, where we worked with Joshua Meng who wrote and performed our theme songs. A big thanks to Tom Hanchett and everyone involved with GospelSHOUT! for their time and for welcoming us to their annual event.
We wrap up our episode on trombone shout bands with another live performance from the Smithsonian Folkways compilation Saint’s Paradise, and the song “Spiritual Conversation” by Clouds of Heaven, recorded in March 1996 at Wolf Trap, when Ceodric Mangum Sr. was leading the group. I am your host and producer Joe Kendrick, and this is Southern Songs and Stories: the music of the South and the artists who make it.