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Written by David L. Carlton
Vanderbilt University

This collection of essays, best described as an extended set of liner notes to its accompanying compact disc, frames its topic with deceptive modesty. Benjamin Lloyd (1804-60) was born in Georgia but moved to Alabama as a young man, becoming a successful planter, land speculator, and public official. More important, lie was a Primitive Baptist preacher, who in 1841 published some 535 hymn texts tinder the title Primitive Hymns. Lloyd's Hymnal (as it is often called) has been a small but consistent seller ever since, finding wide use among Primitive Baptists throughout the South.

But, as the CD and book under review wonderfully show, Lloyd's is chiefly significant for the uses to which it has been put by southern folk, both white and black. Like hymnals generally before the nineteenth century, Lloyd's was a "words only" hymnal, leaving congregations to match the hymn text with an appropriate tune of the same meter. Typically, a leader would choose the tune and then "line out" the words and tune for the congregation. Scattered across the southern interior, segregated by race, differing in musical heritage and openness to outside cultural influence, the congregations that used Lloyd's adapted it to a broad range of musical styles.

The CD appropriately uses Lloyd's as a point of reference from which to navigate the varied landscape of folk worship in the South. As sung by the Lee Family of South Georgia, Lloyd's has the sturdy, open harmonies of colonial New England psalmody, adorned with graceful ornamentation. The white Primitive Baptists of Eoline, Alabama, use tunes and settings from the Sacred Harp in their renditions, whereas those in Davidson County, North Carolina, veer toward more gospel-flavored stylings. Folksinger Ginny Hawkins of Elkins, West Virginia, interprets "From Every Stormy Wind That Blows" (No. 333 in Lloyd's) as a classic mountain ballad.

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Especially illuminating, though, are the uses to which Lloyd's has been put by African Americans. The old traditions of lined-out hymnody, camp-meeting choruses, and shape-note tunes played signal roles in the conversion of slaves to Christianity, and their influence on black sacred music has carried forward to the present. But they have also been filtered through a distinctively African musical sensibility, as is illustrated in the transformation of the old shape-note standard "Wondrous Love" (No. 263 in Lloyd's) by Amanda Smith and Ella Pearl White of Loachapoka, Alabama. Most stunning are the four instances of the "Dr. Watts" style of hymn singing (although only a minority of the hymns in Lloyd's are by Isaac Watts, the book is revered by many black southerners as "Dr. Watts's Hymns"). In these examples the black Primitive Baptists of the Sipsey River Association transform the old lined-out tradition into a rich, multistranded interweaving of leader and respondents, their elaborate melismas overwhelming the melodic line and building to almost unbearable intensity. The value of these recordings are greatly enhanced by two fine interpretive essays: Joyce Cauthen's on the worship practices of the Sipsey River Association and, especially, William T. Dargan's close analysis of the recordings. Dargan admirably disentangles the underlying interplay of white influences and black creativity, and his superb transcriptions of the music help the reader to visualize its complex architecture.

Because the book consists largely of discrete essays, it is inevitably uneven. Among the other contributions, Beverly Patterson's discussion of singing among white Primitive Baptists (drawn from her book The Sound of the Dove [Urbana, 1995] ) and Joey Brackner's chronicle of the history of Primitive Hymns are especially fine. The collection suffers a bit from repetition, however, and many readers will be content to avoid the scholarly apparatus, notably the lengthy listing of editions. But, all in all, the editor should be congratulated on this melding of text and music. Those who find beauty in the music and worship of the southern folk will be overwhelmed by the sounds and the spiritual intensity; those who grapple with the tangled biracial culture of the South will find a key to understanding the devotion of southerners, black and white, to this small book.

David L. Carlton
Vanderbilt University

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