Sweet King Jesus will be there!
When she hit the final E-flat at the end of the song and held it, many people in the room heard the ice in their glasses crack. Some singers sing at the top of a note, some at the bottom, but Minnie Oatman had perfect pitch and always hit the note dead center with the accuracy of a silver bullet. More than a few in the audience still had a ringing in their ears long after the curtain closed.
It had been a lively show, to say the least. When it was over Doc commented to the man next to him, "I'll say this for them: I never saw folks look more forward to dying in all my life." But Dorothy had thoroughly enjoyed the show. She had heard gospel music before but she had certainly never heard it sung like this. What the Oatmans may have lacked in polish and style they certainly made up for in enthusiasm.
She and Doc were not particularly fans of gospel but she knew that a lot of her listening audience out on the farms loved it. While most of the other banquet attendees began stumbling out of the room in a daze, headed for the bar, not really sure what they had seen and heard, Dorothy headed backstage to find the Oatmans and compliment them on their performance. When she finally found her way backstage they were still packing up their sound equipment. She walked over and introduced herself to Minme Oatman and told her how she had so enjoyed their singing and said if they were ever in the vicinity of Elmwood Springs, Missouri, she would love to have them on her radio show. Minnie, who had worked up quite a sweat, was dabbing her face with a big white handkerchief. She said, "Well, bless your heart," then turned and called out, "Ferris, ain't we doing a revival somewhere in Missouri this year… or is it Arkansas? Look it up in the book. This nice lady wants us on her radio show."
She apologized to Dorothy. "We hit so many places, honey, I can't keep up."
Ferris Oatman, who weighed a hundred pounds more than his wife, struggled to pull a long thin black book from his inside coat pocket. After he looked through it he said, "We're booked at the Highway 78 Church of Christ outside of Ash Hill, Missouri, first week in July."
Minnie turned to Dorothy. "Is that anywheres near you, honey?"
Dorothy said, "Yes, I know Ash Hill; it's not that far away from us. I'll be happy to have somebody come and pick you up and bring you back. Where will you be staying?"
Minnie laughed. "Oh Lord, honey, we never know till we get there. We stay with whoever can put us up. The church usually finds us a place. There's six of us including Floydhe's out in the car waiting, he don't work banquets, just churches and revivals, so if you know of a family willing to put one or two of us up for a week, let us know. You don't happen to have an extra bed or sofa, do you? "
Dorothy was put on the spot because the woman had just agreed to appear on her radio show. She glanced over at the young girl in the group, who looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, and said, "Ahh… well, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Oatman, we have a girl just about your daughter's age and I'm sure she would be just tickled pink to have her stay with us."
Minnie looked up to the ceiling and sang out, "PRAISE JESUS!" and looked back at Dorothy and said, "I tell you, Mrs. Smith, the Lord just drops good people right in our path every day." She sang out again in a loud voice, "THANK YOU, SWEET JESUS!" Dorothy was a little taken aback at this display and quickly added, "But now, Mrs. Oatman, just so you know, we're not members of the Church of Christ and I don't know if that matters but…" Minnie waved her hand and dismissed the idea.
"Oh honey, that don't matter a whit just as long as you're Christian and don't drink alcohol or smoke or gamble." Before Dorothy could say anything one way or another Minnie yelled, "Ferris, we already got one placed in Ash Hill," and then turned back to Dorothy. "That's real kind of you, and of all of us, she's the leas test trouble, hardly eats a thing, you won't even know she's there." She waved the long white handkerchief at her daughter. "Betty Raye, come over here. This nice lady wants you to stay with her when we're over there in Missouri."
Betty Raye, a pale thin girl with light brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a lavender dress exactly like her mother's, came over somewhat reluctantly. Dorothy smiled at her. "Hello, Betty Raye. We're looking forward to having you with us. We have a daughter about your age and I know she's going to be very happy you are coming."
Minnie nudged Betty Raye. "Tell the lady thank you." The girl blushed and said something but she spoke so softly Dorothy could not hear what she said.
Later, after Dorothy returned to the table and realized what she had just done, she said to Doc, "Anna Lee is going to kill me."
The Oatman family was just one of the many white gospel groups traveling all over the South and Midwest that year. Groups like the Spear Family, the Happy Goodman Family, the Statesmen, the Harmony Boys, the Weatherfords, the LeFevres, the Dixie Four, the Tennessee Valley Boys, and the Melody Masters made their living by traveling and appearing at small churches, singing conventions, revivals, all-day sings, and dinner-on-the-ground events. The roots of what was now called southern gospel music had actually started in New England in the 1700s, when early colonists brought hymn books from the Old World.
Gospel was the dominant musical style in America for a long time and was very popular at churches and camp meetings all over the country.
However, after the Civil War the style of singing known as Sacred Harp or shape note music lost its popularity in the North but was kept alive in the rural churches of the Deep South. In 1910 a man named James D. Vaughan published his first songbook, Gospel Chimes. To promote it he sent out the Vaughan Quartet, the first all-male southern gospel group in America. Eventually, he started the Vaughan School of Music in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. Soon other schools opened, and by the 1930s southern gospel groups featuring men and women and children were springing up everywhere and crisscrossing the South, Midwest, and as far north as Iowa. The more successful gospel groups began to appear and thereby advertise over the radio and were able to promote a good crowd at their appearances.
But in 1946 radio appearances were a fairly new thing for the Oatmans. Ferris and his brothers, Floyd and Le Roy, had all been raised on a hard scrabble dirt farm in northern Alabama by strict Pentecostal parents. Because of his upbringing Ferris believed that just listening to the radio, much less singing and preaching over it, was a sin. As Minnie put it, "Ferris is bad to think the devil is behind everything."
However, in 1945, after seeing how the other groups were attracting so many people to their appearances by using broadcasts to tell people where they would "be at," he prayed about it. A week later he said, "Minnie, the Lord spoke to me and said he wants us to go on the radio," and so it was settled.
Minnie Varner, the fourth child of an Assembly of God preacher, was born outside of Shiloh, Georgia. The Varners were a musical family and Minnie was playing piano in church by age nine. She met Ferris Oatman when she was twelve and he was twenty-four. She had been at an all-day sing and dinner on the ground playing for the Harmonettes, an all-girl gospel group from Birmingham. That day Minnie saw Ferris, with all that black curly hair, she fell in love. Ferris must have felt the same. That night he told his brother Le Roy, "I just met my wife today." Two years later, when she was fourteen, she ran off with him, ignoring the warnings of her parents and older brothers about marrying into a traveling gospel group. They said if she did she would be living in the back of a car hawking song books out of the trunk all her life. So far they had been right. But Ferris Oatman, who had worked picking cotton to send himself through the Stamps-Baxter School of Gospel Music in Dallas, felt he had a real calling. From the age of six all he ever wanted to be in life was a gospel quartet man. All Minnie wanted from age twelve was to be his wife and so she joined the group and went on the road.
After the two boys, Bervin and Vernon, and later Betty Raye were born, Minnie's parents bought them a small, two-bedroom house a few miles from where she was raised. They wanted the children to have a home base but they were hardly there long enough to do anything but wash and iron all their clothes and take off again. It was a hard life. During the Depression they lost Ferris's brother, Le Roy, their bass singer, who ran off to join a hillbilly band. Aside from the few dollars they made selling song books they performed for free-will offerings, which could range anywhere from five dollars to ten dollars a night, depending on the size of the congregation. Money was scarce. Minnie said the only consolations were knowing they were doing the Lord's work, and the food. Most of the churches were in the country and there was always plenty to eat. In the homes where they stayed and at the numerous dinner-on-the ground all-day singing events, even during the Depression, they were well fed. Fried chicken, ham, pork chops, fried catfish, fresh vegetables, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy, cornbread, fresh buttermilk, honey, jellies and jam, homemade bread, cakes, pies, and cobblers. They ate so much rich food it began to look like a lot of the gospel singers had been picked out by the pound. One man in Louisiana who had been an eyewitness to a car wreck outside of Shreveport involving a well-known gospel group remarked, "Why, they must have pulled out two thousand pounds of gospel singers in that one car alone. Of course the advantage of all that padding was that not one of them had been hurt." The disadvantage was, as Minnie put it, "Gospel singing is good for the soul but bad on the gallbladder."
In the Oatman family only Betty Raye was thin and they couldn't understand it. But there were many things about Betty Raye they did not understand.
Dorothy and Doc got back from the convention late Sunday night and Monday at 9:30 she was back on the air as usual. She opened the show with a "Good morning, everybody, I hope it's a beautiful day where you are but I'm mad at the weather over he reit an old gray drizzly day.
But rain or shine I am glad to be home again and especially to be back with all my radio friends. Our trip to Memphis was wonderful and we saw quite a few sights. Not only was there a family of ducks living in our hotel lobby, right across the street there was a hot dog stand that was open twenty-four hours a day. I said to Doc I couldn't imagine anyone wanting a hot dog in the middle of the night but I guess they do. Anyhow, Memphis is lovely but…" Mother Smith played a few bars of "There's No Place Like Home" and Dorothy laughed. "That's right, Mother Smith, and by the way, we are so glad to have Mother Smith back with us this morning and she reports that her sister Helen is doing well and is on the mend, as we say… and we send out our special good wishes to her this morning and to all our precious little shut-ins everywhere.
And speaking of special, I have an exciting announcement for all of you gospel fans coming up later, but first… "Let me ask you this: can you make biscuits that make your family say 'yummy'? If not, I want you to get yourself a bag of Golden Flake Lite-as-a-Feather Flour, guaranteed to make your entire family say 'yummy'. And before I read the winning letter of our How I Met My Husband Contest, I need to say a great big hello and thank-you to our radio homemaker friend Evelyn Birkby, whose show Down a Country Lane is heard on KMA all the way up in Shenandoah, Iowa, for the sour cream raisin pie recipe she has sent along. And let's see what else do I have… Oh, Fred Morgan called and says he just got in a new shipment of brand-new Philco console radios, so come on down. I hate to say it, but I'm so old I can remember homemade radios, crystal sets made out of oatmeal containers and an old cigar box. What? Mother Smith says she remembers when we didn't have radio at all. Well, I'm glad we are living now instead of then because I love visiting with all my radio neighbors by way of the airwaves but how it works don't ask me. With so many of us on the air at the same time, why radio shows don't crash into one another up in the sky is still a mystery. I often wonder if a show disappears into thin air after it is heard or if it just keeps on floating around up there, but if you know don't tell them sure it would just scare me to death. "Beatrice is here and has a song for all my Kentucky listeners, "Starlight on the Blue Grass," but first to our contest winner. Mrs. Boots Carroll of Enid, Oklahoma, writes,
"Dear Neighbor Dorothy,
"I met my husband at Alcatraz. No, he was not a criminal he was a prison guard. My church group was on a tour and when he saw me and I caught his eye, he followed us back to the tour bus and found out where we were staying and called me that night for a date. Although he was a guard he was handsome in his uniform and we have four grown children".
"Well, Mrs. Carroll, you win the prize hands down, so look for your certificate for a free five-pound bag of Golden Flake Flour." After Beatrice sang and Dorothy did a few more commercials, she made her announcement.
"You know I'm always looking for good entertainment for you and while Doc and I were in Memphis I was lucky enough to see and hear a wonderful singing group, the Oatman family, and they will be here live on our show next month. I'll keep you posted on the exact date for all of you out there who love gospel music. Be sure to tune in, because you are in for a big treat."
Some of Neighbor Dorothy's audience in the towns may not have been aware of the Oatmans, but many others out in the country were happy to know they were coming. Particularly Norma's Aunt Elner Shimfissel, who had heard them on Gospel Time, U.S.A. She was just beginning to lose the hearing in her right ear and loved a group that sang loud. After the show, as Dorothy was in Anna Lee's room admiring her new saddle oxfords and hearing all about how impossible Bobby had been while they were gone, Dorothy tried to find a way to gently drop the news about the houseguest that was coming next month. She pretended to be preoccupied with fluffing the curtains. She started off with a casual "And oh, by the way…" but it did not work.
"A Church of Christ gospel singer?" Anna Lee screamed. "In my room for an entire week? I can't believe it!"
"Now, sweetheart, I'm sure you will like her when you meet her. She seemed very nice," said Dorothy hopefully. Anna Lee wailed and fell back on her bed in agony. "Oh, Mother, how could you do this without even asking me?"
"Well, it just sort of happened. Mrs. Oatman asked me if we had an extra bed… and you weren't there to ask… I thought you wouldn't mind. She's about your age and, besides, you might enjoy meeting someone a little different."
"Different! Mother, those people don't even go to the movies or dance or wear makeup or anything!"
Dorothy remembered what they had looked like and had to confess, "Well, probably not. But that's their religion, so we'll just have to respect the fact. You can give up going to the movies or a dance for just one week, can't you?"
Anna Lee looked at her mother in horror. "Why do I have to give it up? I'm a Methodist."
"I just don't think it would be very nice to do something that she couldn't do."
"How am I supposed to entertain her if she can't do anything?"
"You can introduce her to some of your friends. I'm sure you can find a lot of things to do."
"Name one."
"Well, take her to the swimming pool or… maybe we can plan a little party for her in the backyard. Take her on a picnic."
"What else?"
"Oh, I don't know, Anna Lee, I'm sure you'll come up with a lot of things to entertain your guest while she's here."
"She's not my guest I'm just the one who's going to be stuck with her night and day. What if she goes through all my things?"
"Don't be silly. She's not going to go through your things. She's a very sweet girl and I'm sure it will all work out just fine and it's not going to kill you to be nice to someone for one week. We'll talk about this later. Right now I've got to go and get supper started."
Dorothy was almost out the door when Anna Lee added, "All right, but if she shows up here wearing some tacky homemade dress I'm not taking her anywhere. She can just stay home."
Anna Lee had not really meant it but that last statement stopped Dorothy cold. Her mother rarely got upset with her but Anna Lee knew in an instant she had gone too far. Dorothy turned around and looked at her for a long moment.
"Anna Lee, don't tell me that I have raised a daughter who has turned out to be a snob. If I thought for one minute that you would ever be unkind to anyone, much less some poor girl who is probably looking forward to coming here and meeting you, it would just break my heart. I told that girl you would be happy to have her here but I guess I was wrong."