1935: Singing School At Chestnut Mountain

By Grace Cash © 1991

Issue: October, 1991

Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-doEditor's Note... The following is one of a series of articles written by Grace Cash. She lives in Flowery Branch, Georgia. Watch for more of her stories in future issues.

A gospel-song leader set up a two-week singing school at the Baptist Church in August of 1935. The music school was to coincide with the annual revival and it was to extend one week beyond the Big Meeting, by which time he hoped to acquaint us with rapid multiple notes that distinguished the new gospel songs from the old fashioned hymns. Gospel songs required far more musical knowledge, and deftness of tongue, than the hymns of our forefathers.

Papa paid the fifty-cent fee for each of his children who were old enough to enroll. This time Lillian and I were included, but there was a singing school at our church in 1925 when Papa could pay for only the three eldest children. Lillian and I spent those two weeks peeling peaches for drying on long tin slabs in the back yard. I could rest on the promise, "Your time's coming," but Lillian was agitated. She resented working when the three eldest were not only learning to sing, but were having a good time, thus rewarded for no other reason than having been the three first-born.

Coleman Sheffield was the son of a widely known preacher who was dedicated to his divine calling. (In 1936 the father was killed in the Gainesville, Georgia tornado along with over two hundred other people in the town proper and the surrounding mill villages. He thought he had lived to see the Second Coming of Christ, and he died rejoicing that he had been present when Christ returned to earth.) It was no wonder Mr. Coleman worked so hard to teach us the difference between whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second and sixty-fourth notes, including the basic rhythm: "Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do." He cautioned us about the rest stop indicated by a bird's eye (one dot) and a colon (two dots) as found in the Chorus of "On Jordan's Stormy Banks," which is shown below:

"I am bound for the promised lan-an-and...
I am bound for the promised;
O-o-o who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the prom-ised land."

Mr. Coleman's students consisted of the young folks around Chestnut Mountain. We were not only required to "learn to sing" but to become song leaders. He took turns having each of us stand before the school and wave a fluttering-hand as we gave directions for high and low and rest notes.

It worried Papa, and probably other fathers, who had some too timid to teach Sunday School to take "pulpit" parts in [Baptist Young Peoples Union] B.Y.P.U. The Sunday School Superintendent had once remarked to Papa that his "fine daughters" could hold any job offered them in the church, and he wondered why his boys didn't do likewise, not knowing how sorely displeased Papa was to hear the comparison. Now Mr. Coleman was there and he didn't ask anybody to lead a song — he told them to select the song of their preference, to stand by the piano and direct the other students.

Thanks to Mr. Coleman, Papa at last saw his sons taking part in church work. Yet Frank, my eldest brother had a talent for whistling that competed with the birds in the woodland. When he plowed the big red mule Belle his rest stops were "Gee-ee!" and "Haw-aw!" while the neighbors listened and smiled.

The singing school was an excuse to stay away from home all day, a picnic when we spread our basket lunches under the spreading oak tree. After the school ended we made exchange visits with other churches who had similar training programs. Even after all that, some pessimists among our number claimed that the school hadn't made "singers" out of any of us. Mr. Coleman's high-and-low-and-bird's eye notes have helped me all the years of my life in congregational singing, so that whether I have ever heard the song or not, I follow along and enjoy learning a new song.

After I got a town job, I bought a piano and took lessons a year, enabling me to play old-time religion hymns for my own pleasure in my home. Needless to say, I wouldn't have had enough self-confidence to take piano lessons without Mr. Coleman's singing school in 1935. Coleman Sheffield was a heavenly blessing to Chestnut Mountain that hot summer when the Depression had itself almost reached its highest note.