Joe and Rev. Gates

Old Joe. I never knew my paternal grandfather, Joe B. Phillips. He died a few years before I was born, but I heard interesting things about him. My father used the word “eclectic” in describing his father’s taste in music, for example: One of the few things Joe left was a collection of recordings from the 1920’s forward. He liked the music of “Fiddlin’ John Carson” and the preaching/singing of Rev. James M. Gates.

History calls John Carson the father of country music, and Rev. Jimmie Gates was probably the best known African/American preacher of his era, and he started a genre that continues.

He moved from west Georgia to the Summerhill community, the neighborhood of the old Atlanta stadium. He and his wife joined Mount Calvary Baptist Church, and soon the pastor left.

Jimmie became an ordained minister and pastor of Mount Calvary until his death in 1945 at 61.

He somehow came to the attention of a record producer who recorded some segments in the church as it happened. Later recordings were made in a studio with members of his church in the background singing and participating in the antiphony style.

The recordings were marketed to urban black people but caught the ear of everybody else including my grandfather.

My father said that “Death’s Black Train is Coming” was an old sermon preached by many old preachers in a number of styles but today is owned by Rev. Gates.

I did a deep dive and could find no reference to that sermon except being attached to Rev. Gates. It was his first commercial recording. It sold in the thousands, launched him as a media star.

His widespread fame in recorded sermons started the practice of preachers recording and selling their sermons.

Nobody was prepared for the success Rev. Gates enjoyed. I suppose there were fans who were attracted by the oddity of some sermon titles that addressed issues within context of the times.

Women’s roles and styles changed in the 1920’s. Women wore dress slacks, cut their hair. Rev. Gates recorded “Manish Women,” and “Women Smoking In The Street.”

He complained that women were trying to do everything men do including flying in airplanes, a place where a woman has no business, according to him.

Some sermons lacked scriptural context but were entertaining, such as “Dead Cat On The Line,” bemoaning that when things go wrong for no apparent reason, there might be a dead cat shorting out the “telegram wire.”

There are scores of Gates’ sermons on the Internet, but many of his most popular titles are held by The Douglas County Museum of History and Art.

Rev. J.M. Gates is buried under a simple stone in West View Cemetery in Hogansville, Georgia.

He deserves better.

joenphillips@yahoo.com