Can I read “A Wheel in a Wheel, ’Way Up in the Middle of the Air”: 1916–1928 on EtoBox?

“A Wheel in a Wheel, ’Way Up in the Middle of the Air”: 1916–1928 by Jerry Zolten is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is “A Wheel in a Wheel, ’Way Up in the Middle of the Air”: 1916–1928 about?

Abstract James Davis, founding member of the Dixie Hummingbirds, came of age in 1920s segregated Greenville, South Carolina. The African American community nonetheless thrived there with its own institutions, businesses, schools, churches, and entertainment. Blacks and whites lived in proximity but interacted rarely and out of necessity. Davis was close to his mother, Jannie, a devoutly religious homemaker. His father, John, was constantly on the move, hustling a living as best he could. His father taught him to sing using shape notes, where the shape of a note, not its position on a staff, indicated pitch. Davis attended the all-black Sterling High School, where he and friend Barney Parks with encouragement and training from teachers organized an acapella quartet to sing at high school programs and local churches. In 1928, the group traveled to Atlanta, where at the annual Church of God in Christ Convention they performed for the first time for an audience outside their own community. Billed as the Sterling High School Quartet, they were applauded and as a self-perceived sensation set out in a borrowed car to seek their fortune as professional gospel quartet singers.

Author

Jerry Zolten

Published

2022

Language

EN