Wings Over Jordan

WINGS OVER JORDAN was a choral ensemble dedicated to the performance of spirituals and similar literature by black composers. The group was assembled in early 1936 as a touring church choir under the leadership of Rev. Glenn (or Glynn) T. Settle (1894–1967), shortly after he became pastor of Gethsemane Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio. His wife and two of his children, Glenn (“Buddy”) and Gwendolyn, sang in the choir. Conductors of the church choir included Leelis Rosser Wilson (1900–1981) and James E. Tate. Wilson, who is not mentioned in most sources, seems to have left the choir before or around the time Settle was made pastor; he formed and directed his own ensemble, the Wilson Jubilee Singers, which performed for many years.

In the summer of 1937, Settle approached Worth Kramer, a white program director at WGAR, about singing on the radio. Kramer agreed but recommended they enlarge the group; he provided vocal coaching and took over as conductor. They first appeared on the station’s Negro Hour on 11 July 1937, then after only a few months were picked up by CBS and given a national audience under the name “Wings Over Jordan.” The meaning of the name was explained as follows:

When a Negro dies, it is said that he has crossed over the River Jordan. . . . It was his hope that he would hear the winged chorus of angels, singing the praises of the Most High, calling the earth-worn traveler to his place of rest. Hence, Wings Over Jordan, the choir of angels God’s children will hear as they cross from earth to heaven.[1]

Their first advertised national broadcast was on Tuesday, 9 November 1937. A couple of months later, they were given a weekly slot on Sunday mornings, starting on 9 January 1938. The earliest shows were written and announced by Wayne Mack. The choir’s popularity and demand for performances grew in such a way that they had to hire support staff. Alice McCrady was hired in February 1938 as an administrative assistant; she filled that role until 1945. Maurice Condon, publicity manager for WGAR handled some of the group’s early management; his work with the choir was turned over to Neil Collins in December 1939, who assisted with publicity until August 1941. The choir’s contract with WGAR ended 30 June 1940, after which the choir’s booking and publicity were handled mostly by larger agencies, such as the Alber-Zwick Company in New York.

Their first major tour outside of the Midwest was in the fall of 1938, starting at Lexington, Kentucky, on 20 Oct. 1938 and heading south from there. Eleanor Roosevelt was an early supporter of the choir; she invited members of the group to a luncheon at the White House in December 1938. The following year, their popularity had become so enormous that they drew a crowd of 18,000 at the Baltimore Armory on 1 June 1939. In March 1940, they were invited to perform in New York City, where they were given a key to the city by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. On 10 June 1940, Time magazine reported their swift rise to prominence and the beginnings of their longstanding scholarship program:

Today, under the program name of Wings Over Jordan, the choir is carried by 107 Columbia stations, attracts 5,000 letters a week, is heard via short wave all over the world. No mercenary motives inspire Wings Over Jordan. A five-minute spot is reserved on every Wings Over Jordan program for a talk by a distinguished U.S. Negro on how the white and colored races can best get along together.

The choir’s concert tours have enabled the 35 members of the troupe to throw up jobs as house painters, waiters, butlers and cooks, vacate their berths on WPA. To date the choristers have given 61 concerts at up to $1,500 an appearance, traveling in their own $19,000 bus, from which they once serenaded an astonished chain gang in Georgia. Last week Messrs. Settle & Kramer announced what they were going to do with their net at the end of this season and henceforth. They will provide 20 college scholarships for colored youngsters all over the U.S., to be competed for by examinations in high schools.[2]

A few weeks later, on the 4th of July, 1940, they entertained their largest-ever crowd of 75,000 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

Kramer conducted the group for the first several years, while Settle was known for his narrative voice-overs, except Kramer’s responsibilities in Cleveland prevented him from going on tours, so he would fly to meet the choir on Sundays wherever they were. Other road performances were conducted by Williette Firmbanks (1910–1992), a member of the choir. Kramer’s leadership was somewhat controversial, being a white man in charge of a black choir. As Settle’s granddaughter later explained, “People did resent Worth Kramer, because he did get a lot of the credit, but Worth Kramer opened doors that my grandfather could not get in.”[3] To his credit, Kramer defended the group by writing an open letter—dated 19 March 1941 and published in multiple newspapers—addressed to popular swing band leaders (Fred Waring, Glenn Miller, etc.), to ask them to stop arranging religious spirituals as dance band pieces, which he believed was disrespectful.

In April or May 1941, Kramer conducted the group in their first major project for Columbia Records, Wings Over Jordan, a set of eight sides (four 78-rpm discs) in the Columbia Masterworks series (M-499); the set was released in May 1942. In June 1941, the choir made its first tour of California, which included performances at the Municipal Auditorium in Long Beach and the Hollywood Bowl, then a swing through the south—Arizona, New Mexico, Texas—on the way back.

The group’s radio program, described as “a program series of distinction,” was vital in bringing a Peabody Award to CBS and to Cleveland’s WGAR in 1941, for “serving the diverse interests and widely different cultural backgrounds of Greater Cleveland.”[4] Kramer resigned at the end of 1941 to become general manager of radio station WGKV in Charleston, West Virginia.

That year, Mrs. Settle also left the group and became increasingly estranged from her fame-seeking husband, maintaining the family home in Cleveland while Mr. Settle started to develop a preference for operating out of California. Later in the 1940s, she would move back to her childhood home of Uniontown, PA.

After a nationwide search and temporary leadership by Frederick D. Hall of Alabama State College, the group hired conductor Gladys Olga Jones, a native of New Orleans with a music degree from Dillard University, in February 1942. Also in 1942, Reginald Merridew joined WGAR and became a regular announcer. Jones’s tenure as conductor was brief. She was replaced by Joseph S. Powe of Dallas, Texas, who filled that role for 14 months before joining the Navy. Powe’s successor in the summer of 1943 was Hattye Easley, who also sometimes served as a soloist. For about nine months from May 1944 to February 1945, she shared conducting duties with Maurice Goldman, a white man.

Wartime touring came with its share of challenges, such as losing male singers to the military, clamoring for exemptions to strict fuel rationing, shifting their message from racial reconciliation to patriotism, performing at military bases, and participating in the promotion of war bonds.

Easley was still conducting the group when the choir was selected by the U.S.O. to tour and perform for troops in Europe, leaving in March 1945. The group included 17 singers, plus Settle and their road manager, Mildred C. Ridley. At the end of February, the group gathered in New York City, where they were given immunizations, fitted for uniforms, and instructed on regulations. The famous wartime photo of the choir in a V formation was taken by a Life magazine photographer. From there, they were transported to Virginia and boarded the U.S.S. West Point on 21 (or 29) March 1945, heading for Italy.

After arriving in Naples, the choir participated in a memorial service in Caserta for President Roosevelt, who died 12 April 1945. In one especially notable performance overseas, the choir was invited to participate in the repatriation of Christopher Columbus’s ashes, which had been hidden during the war. The ceremony was held on 6 June 1945 in Genoa, Italy, and the choir sang “God Bless America.” According to Rev. Settle, “This auspicious occasion was followed by a request of the Mayor of Genoa to Maj. Gen. E.M. Almond to permit the Wings Over Jordan group to sing before high ranking and their guests at ceremonies marking the termination of military government of Genoa.”[5] While in Italy, the choir sang for Pope Pious XII in Rome. For a while, they accompanied the 92nd Infantry, which was a troop of black soldiers. Kenneth Slaughter, a member of the choir at the time, later described the demeanor of those troops:

The morale among the black troops was so bad that I never saw them smiling, because all the top officers were white, so it wasn’t really completely black troops, and they resented being separated from the regular Army.[6]

The choir sang also in France, Germany, and Belgium. Rev. Settle recalled a memorable event at Christmas time:

One of the choir’s most popular numbers is Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. We sang it on Christmas Day, 1945, in Frankfort, Germany, at a broadcast in which Mickey Rooney, Red Skelton, and a member of Fred Waring’s orchestra also took part. An old German displaced person played the organ. An American Army officer invited us to have Christmas dinner at the Officer’s Club in Bad Nauheim. Every officer at the dinner was a white man from the South.[7]

During the war years, the choir was recorded on two 12-inch, 78-rpm V-Discs, nos. 353 and 397 (1945), and recordings of some of their CBS radio programs were distributed by the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) on 16-inch platters, including nos. 20, 36, and 67.

While the choir was in Europe, their radio show in the U.S. was filled by other groups, including the Fisk University Choir of Nashville, the Tuskegee Institute Choir of Alabama, and the Legend Singers of St. Louis, directed by Kenneth B. Billups. The choir returned to New York around the first of February 1946 and were promptly involved in giving a concert of spirituals for the observance of Lincoln’s birthday on February 12, which aired on CBS radio. Their regular Sunday broadcasts on CBS resumed 3 March 1946. Around this time, Easley left the group to start a family in Oklahoma, and the conductor’s baton was taken over by Charles King, who had been a singer in the choir since 1940 and was part of the European tour. Before they fulfilled engagements awaiting in New York City in April, including performances at Town Hall and Madison Square Garden, they stopped in Cleveland and picked up new recruits Evelyn Freeman and Tommy Roberts.

That year, Settle legally changed his name from Glenn to Glynn, and his church in Cleveland voted to part ways with their ever-absent pastor. In June 1946, Settle took the choir to King Records in Cincinnati, where they recorded twelve sides, released as a series of 78-rpm singles under the Queen label, conducted by King. After their performance at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on 17 July 1946, Freeman and Roberts opted to head back to New York to pursue other opportunities there.[8] In August 1946, the choir hired a second conductor, James Lewis Elkins, who split duties with King, apparently based on their touring and radio schedules. Elkins led the group intermittently through November 1948, including a successful performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles that month; he seems to have played a secondary role to King and others, eventually relinquishing his role to focus on teaching music at Albany State College in Albany, Georgia. Los Angeles started to become more like home base for Settle and the choir than Cleveland.

The following summer, amidst a relentless touring schedule, several members of the group complained strongly against what they felt was inadequate pay and poor leadership from Settle. They staged a strike on 24 August 1947, ghosting a Sunday radio appearance in San Diego, but Settle was unmoved; he quickly fired and replaced 17 members and managed to miss only that one broadcast. Among those who were ousted were Cecil Dandy and Marvin Hayes. In the aftermath of the dispute and the negative publicity, CBS terminated their contract and ended their ten-year run on national radio. Their final performance on CBS was October 12. Several of the former members created a new choir called the Ambassadors of Good Will, sometimes claiming to be the true or original version of the Wings Over Jordan choir, and they secured King as their conductor.[9]

Following King’s dismissal, Gilbert F. Allen, a Julliard-trained musician, became conductor and led the choir’s final few performances with CBS. On 8 June 1948, the choir recorded six tracks for RCA Victor in New York, Allen conducting. Among them was their first recording of “Amen,” a song by B.H. Hogan and Laura B. Davis, adapted by Jester Hairston. The choir was the first to record the song and the first to popularize it; it would become a staple of their concerts and albums. In spite of the loss of their weekly radio program, the choir continued to sing to large crowds. In their first-ever performance in South Dakota, at the Sioux Falls Methodist church, 1 October 1948, they drew a capacity crowd of over 1,200 people.[10]

In 1949, the choir was given an opportunity to headline another weekly program, this time sponsored by the U.S. Treasury Department, carried on a network of more than 500 stations called the Mutual Broadcasting System. They considered this to be a continuation of what they had done before, the first of these being their 510th program, starting on January 8. As before, they dedicated part of the program to an educational speech, but rather than using that time to convey messages of racial reconciliation, they featured biographical notices of notable black persons, starting with Mildred Bunton, chief dietician of Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, D.C.[11] During this era and the CBS era, the choir’s tour managers always had to plan to be near a suitable affiliate station on Sunday, equipped with a studio large enough to accommodate the choir. Also in 1949, the choir formed a partnership with Sterling Records in St. Louis, Missouri. The record company sponsored an updated version of their brochure, illustrating the endeavors of the group and listing the choir’s personnel.

Gilbert Allen’s final performance with the group was 27 April 1949 at Pittsfield High School, Pennsylvania, and the choir at this point was down to just 15 singers. Allen left to become head of the music department of Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. He was replaced for a couple of months by James Hobart Barr, then more permanently by George Ronald McCantz (1921–1994) by August 1949. McCantz led the group in recording two sides for Sterling Records (“Rock’a my soul” / “Sweet little Jesus boy”).

The choir’s relationship with the Treasury (and thus also the radio program) ended in March 1950, which caused the choir to rethink its business model. In their press materials, they offered this explanation:

Until recently, Wings Over Jordan of necessity followed the pattern of an entertainment group, and has sung at concerts which were underwritten by means of advance guarantees and through the sale of tickets. However, once again Reverend Settle has realized the necessity for using the talents of his great choir to bring a message to the people of America. Therefore, Wings Over Jordan has withdrawn from the commercial field of paid admissions, and guarantees, where they were handicapped in carrying out their mission. Instead, the choir is now on a good will tour of the country to foster friendlier relations between the two races, and to combat the influence of communism in America as it affects the American Negro. To carry out this program, they feel that everyone, whether or not they have the price of a ticket, should have the opportunity to hear and to learn to know them as conscientious, God loving, American citizens. In order to reach the greatest number they have determined to appear in as many places as possible, wherever people will hear them sing their songs of faith and praise, without admission charge, and purely on a free will offering basis.[12]

Around this same time, the 55-year-old Settle seems to have spent less time traveling with the choir and more time resting at his home in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, with McCantz serving as both conductor and spokesman. The choir continued to draw full audiences, performing mostly in school auditoriums and church sanctuaries, and it continued its scholarship program. In 1951, they added conductor Frank C. Everett, while McCantz sometimes served as spokesman in the absence of Settle.

On 9 May 1951, they offered two successful programs in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, singing to 600 high school students in the afternoon and a crowd of 700 at Trinity Methodist Church later that evening. The group reported travelling 3,200 miles per month, with performances almost every night.[13] A year later, news emerged of how the choir was quietly waging its own battles against racial inequality. They insisted on being accommodated by white-owned homes and hotels in places where they expected to sing but they agreed to being housed by blacks when they were passing through or resting; moreover, they would not give a concert in any facility where the audience was segregated.[14] According to private accounts, Settle had a long history of demanding equal treatment for him and the group, refusing to be relegated to back doors and freight elevators, among other divisive racial customs of the time.

On 30 April 1953, the choir returned to King Records in Cincinnati to record twelve more tracks conducted by Frank Everett with narrations by Settle. These were issued as a series of four-song EPs (232, 233, 234) and as an LP titled Amen (395-519). The backside of the LP included commentary on the songs. The choir was in top form, singing with good energy and good quality. In December 1953, the group left on its second military concert tour to entertain troops, this time traveling to Japan, Korea, and Hawaii. While in Japan, they were broadcast daily on television for two weeks.

As demand for the choir became unmanageable, Settle began to approve satellite groups under the Wings Over Jordan name. In December 1949, Settle had approved a group based out of Wichita, Kansas, directed by WOJ veteran Hattye Easley, but in January 1950 he declared the Legend Singers of St. Louis to be the second official touring group, under the direction of Kenneth B. Billups. By 1955, the choir included three regular touring groups to better accommodate requests for concerts in disparate parts of the country, with Frank C. Everett still conducting the primary group. Clarence H. Brooks, who had sung under Everett, conducted an eastern unit starting in the second half of 1956. These choirs generally ranged from 9 to 12 singers.

On 18 May 1955, Settle lost his wife of 36 years, Mary Elizabeth (Carter) Settle (1889–1955), the mother of three of his children, Dorothy Elizabeth, Glenn Howard, and Gwendolyn Bernice. She died suddenly while visiting Elizabeth in Cleveland; she had intended to travel west to meet Glynn in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was out on tour in the southwest. She was buried near the Settles’ home in Uniontown, PA. Shortly thereafter, Settle moved his residence permanently to Los Angeles and married Mildred C. Ridley (1908–2009) on 1 June 1955. She had served as the choir’s business manager for several years and had given birth to Thomas A. Settle in 1947.

The three-choir arrangement continued until the summer of 1957, at which point they reorganized as two choirs, one under Frank C. Everett and Glynn Settle, which was enlarged to 21 singers and performed mostly in the western U.S., and the other led by Clarence H. Brooks, which maintained a smaller size of 9 vocalists. Billups’ group went back to performing as the Legend Singers. In 1958, Settle declared his intent to record and preserve spirituals and reiterated his disdain for jazz adaptations:

We are endeavoring to perpetuate and preserve the Negro spirituals in the traditional sacredness against the invasion of those who are converting them into dance-hall and barroom juke-box jive selections. In order to do this, we plan to establish a laboratory, utilizing the choir as a nucleus to train and demonstrate to other choirs the proper and authenticated method of singing spirituals. We also plan to carry the Wings Over Jordan choir, which is directed by Frank C. Everett, into various communities and establish clinics for the benefit of other groups in the community by demonstrating the proper method of singing and methods of applying embellishments which mark the difference between Negro and Caucasian renditions of the spiritual.

We will carry our demonstrations into schools, catering to all age groups, outlining the profound methods of singing and the influence of the spirituals in all phases of human endeavor. Recordings will be made of all existing spirituals, with research, we hope, to gather and record those still lingering in the hearts and minds of older people. Copies of each will be placed in a sealed vault for future generations.[15]

To that end, they recorded twelve new tracks for Dial Records in Los Angeles and issued them on an album titled World’s Greatest Negro Choir. Many of the songs had been recorded before, such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Amen,” and “Deep River,” but others were new to them, including “Wade in the Water” and “In the River Jordan.” They recorded two other tracks for Dial, issued as a 45-rpm single (Dial 1238), “Take me to the water” / “Hush children, somebody’s calling my name.” Their ambitious plan to record all known spirituals and seal them in a vault was never realized, but in 1990, Mildred Settle donated a significant collection of the group’s materials to the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio.

In 1960, the eastern choir recorded an album for ABC-Paramount Records, recorded in Mineral Wells, Texas, conducted by Clarence Brooks with narration by Glynn Settle. The backside of the album cover offered commentary on each of the songs, plus a description of how the session was held in an auditorium in an abandoned U.S.O. building, and the extent to which they had to minimize extraneous sounds, such as tree limbs brushing up against the windows, a construction crew next door, and creaky floors. Brooks continued to lead his group through 1964. By the dawn of 1965, both choirs seem to have ceased operations, but in June the western choir was revived and reorganized by musical entrepreneur Leroy Hurte in Los Angeles. Hurte at the time was also director of the Leroy Hurte Chorale and the Angel City Symphony, among other endeavors. The extent and duration of his involvement are unclear. On 25 July 1965, Settle used the choir as the centerpiece of a choral festival held at his church, First Baptist of Los Angeles.

Settle was involved with the choir nearly up until his death on 16 July 1967. An obituary in the Pittsburgh Courier said he had directed at a music festival a week prior at First Baptist Church involving 3,000 people. After Settle’s death, the choir continued to operate, although with much less press coverage or fanfare. On 16 February 1969, they presented a program, “A Tribute to Rev. Dr. Glynn T. Settle” with Frank Everett as conductor. In October 1969, they sang at the grand opening of new facilities for St. Michael’s First Church of Deliverance in Los Angeles. An annual fundraising concert at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, 10 May 1970, conducted by Frank Everett, was called the “Third Generation Musical Extravaganza” because the choir was starting to incorporate a third generation of young singers. Thomas Settle served on the committee for the event. On 21 February 1971, they held a 35th anniversary banquet and concert at the Hollywood Palladium. The choir presented Outstanding Service Awards to boxer Archie Moore, composer William Grant Still, novelist John Ball, and journalist Ruth Washington, and they presented a small scholarship to student Nancy Martinkus who was attending Los Angeles City College.

The choir went on two Japanese tours in 1970 and 1972. They entered into another recording project in 1971, but it was never released. The tapes are housed in the archives at Wilberforce, Ohio. Everett conducted the group through at least 1972; the conductors after that time are not well attested.

In 1984, Thomas Settle started a charitable ministry as an outreach of Wings Over Jordan, the Caring Hands Program, which started as a food distribution ministry for needy people in the Wilshire area of Los Angeles and eventually grew to include a clothes closet, job training, and a transitional housing facility, reaching up to 10,000 people per month. Settle died of pneumonia on 17 April 1988 at age 40. A couple of months later, 11 June 1988, the choir held a 50th anniversary commemoration, with Glenn H. Settle as chairman. This also marked the premiere of a spin-off group, the Wings Over Jordan Celebration Chorus, directed by Glenn A. Brackens (Brackens’ grandmother, Persie Ford, was a founding member of WOJ). A version of the original Wings choir continued to operate into the 1990s. Both groups were still functioning in 1998. The Celebration Chorus has carried the legacy into the 21st century, including a 75th anniversary program at Holy Trinity Baptist Church, Cleveland, on 20 October 2012, which included Rev. Settle’s granddaughter, Teretha Settle.

The choir’s legacy also lives on through its numerous recordings and the influence the group had on countless singers who made their own marks in their local communities. Several singers developed careers as soloists and used the Wings Over Jordan name as a credit to their abilities. Two former Wings members, Tommy and Evelyn Roberts, created a charitable organization called The Young Saints Scholarship Foundation in 1958, which provides free training in performing arts for young students in Los Angeles.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
30 August 2021
rev. 19 December 2021

Footnotes:

1. “Wings Over Jordan,” Newsweek (18 May 1941), p. 17.

2. “Radio: Wings Over Jordan,” Time (10 June 1940).

3. David C. Barnett, “Radio show chronicled blacks’ harsh realities,” All Things Considered (NPR, 3 Mar. 2008).

4. “Cite Wings Over Jordan for radio public service,” Phoenix Index (12 Apr. 1941), p. 7.

5. “Lincoln Day feted in song by Wings Over Jordan choir,” California Eagle (Los Angeles: 14 Feb. 1946), p. 14.

6. Bob Marovich, Interview with Kenneth Slaughter, Gospel Memories, WLUW (Chicago: 7 Jan. 2012).

7. John T. Stewart, “Jordan Choir Brings a New Understanding,” St. Louis Star-Times (14 Jan. 1950), p. 1.

8. Karin Patterson, “Interview of Evelyn Freeman Roberts,” UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive (Los Angeles: 6 Apr. 2007): UCLA

9. “Wings Over Jordan at Bethel AME,” The Northwest Enterprise (Seattle: 16 June 1948), p. 4.

10. Minerva Bridgewater, “Wings concert in Sioux Falls draws capacity house,” Minneapolis Spokesman (8 Oct. 1948), p. 2.

11. “Wings Over Jordan returns to networks,” The Detroit Tribune (8 Jan. 1949), p. 2.

12. “Wings Over Jordan: World’s Greatest Negro Choir!” [advertisement], The Corsicana (Corsicana, TX: 28 Mar. 1950), p. 5.

13. “Jordan choir pleases many listeners here,” The Lock Haven Express (Lock Haven, PA: 10 May 1951), p. 3.

14. Raynard Whitney, “Calvin’s Digest,” Miami Times (17 May 1952), p. 10.

15. “Wings Over Jordan choir will preserve spirituals,” California Eagle (Los Angeles, CA: 26 June 1958), p. 1.

Wings Over Jordan discography and bibliography >