Jerry Zolten | |
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Alma mater | Penn State |
Occupation(s) | Author, Music Producer, Educator |
Years active | 1960s - present |
Notable work | Great God A'Mighty! The Dixie Hummingbirds. Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Music (Oxford University Press) Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream [Co-Editor] (Ashgate) ContentsWreckin' the House The Fairfield Four (Dead Reckoning Records) Beautiful Stars Isaac Freeman (Lost Highway Records) Chimpin' the Blues with Robert Crumb and Jerry Zolten (East River Records). |
Style | American Roots Music |
Awards | Kjell Meling Award for Distinction in the Arts and Humanities |
Website | jerryzolten |
Jerry Zolten is an American writer, advocator for, and producer of American roots music. A Professor at Penn State University, he is best known as the author of a book tracing the 90 year career of the African-American Dixie Hummingbirds gospel group and their influence on both sacred and secular music. He also writes about and is a noted expert on the history of American stand-up comedy. Zolten is also known for numerous articles and album liner notes on blues, country, and gospel music as well as collaborations on musical projects with Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar. His more recent writings and musical releases include "The Beatles as Recording Artists" in The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles , biographical and musicological entries on Paramount recording artists for The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records 1917–1927, and Chimpin' the Blues with Robert Crumb and Jerry Zolten, an audio collection of conversation and rare blues and blues-related recordings from the early 20th Century. In 2017 he co-produced and narrated the public radio program Time to Lay It Down: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War. Zolten appears in the documentary film Ballad of the Dreadnought , produced by the Martin Guitar Company telling the story of their flagship D model guitars. He is also a co-producer and appears in the documentary film How They Got Over: Gospel Quartets and the Road to Rock and Roll
As an undergraduate at Penn State, Zolten was president of the Penn State Folklore Society. He performed in numerous musical groups, most notably a jug band, the New Old Time Wooley Thumpers. The Wooley Thumpers opened for Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at a 1968 Penn State performance. With the group and as a single, Zolten performed at diverse venues such as the Jawbone Coffeehouse, the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, and Lewisburg Penitentiary. [1] The Wooley Thumpers also recorded a single in 1969 for Buddah Records. Billed on the label as "Protozoa," a name assigned by the label, the tracks, written as parodies of then popular "bubblegum music," were "Ring Around My Rosie" and "Pink Hippopotamus." (Buddah 142)
Zolten was instrumental in resurrecting the career of the Grammy-winning Fairfield Four, producing two albums, Wreckin' the House/Live at Mt. Hope (Dead Reckoning) and, by their bass singer Isaac Freeman, Beautiful Stars (Lost Highway). Among his public radio productions are Chimpin' the Blues , a history of early blues and pre-blues co-hosted with underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, In the Spirit , a history of Black gospel music, and Boppin' With Pekar , an overview of jazz history with Harvey Pekar of American Splendor and special guest, artist Phoebe Gloeckner. Zolten along with Mark Bernhard and Ken Womack produced in conjunction with Penn State Altoona, Monmouth University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Southern Indiana a series of GLORY DAYS/A BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SYMPOSIUM conference/conferences. (2005, 2009, 2012) In collaboration with the GRAMMY Museum and the Guthrie Foundation, Zolten produced WOODY@100 at Penn State, a 2012 Centennial Celebration of American folk music icon Woody Guthrie.
Best Research Recorded Blues and Gospel Music Award, 2004, ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections), Great God a’Mighty! The Dixie Hummingbirds: Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Music by Jerry Zolten (Oxford University Press)
Recipient of the Kjell Meling Award for Distinction in the Arts and Humanities, 2010. [2]
Recipient of a 2018 PRNDI Award as co-producer, writer, and narrator of the public radio program Time To Lay It Down: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War. |url=//http://atimetoheal.wpsu.org/soundtrack/
Recipient of the 2021 Lion's Paw Medal, an annual award from Penn State University recognizing notable service to the University and its students. |url=//https://altoona.psu.edu/story/36986/2021/03/10/penn-state-altoona-professor-receives-lions-paw-medal/
Robert Dennis Crumb is an American cartoonist who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contemporary American culture.
The Soul Stirrers were an American gospel music group, whose career spans over eighty years. The group was a pioneer in the development of the quartet style of gospel, and a major influence on soul, doo wop, and Motown, some of the secular music that owed much to gospel.
The 37th Annual Grammy Awards were presented on March 1, 1995, at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Bruce Springsteen was the night's biggest winner with 4 awards, including Song of the Year while opening the show with his Grammy nominated hit.
Okeh Records is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name was spelled "OkeH" from the initials of Otto K. E. Heinemann but later changed to "OKeh". Since 1965, Okeh was a subsidiary of Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Today, OKeh is a jazz imprint, distributed by Sony Masterworks.
A blues shouter is a blues singer, often male, capable of singing unamplified with a band.
The Dixie Hummingbirds are an influential American gospel music group, spanning more than 80 years from the jubilee quartet style of the 1920s, through the "hard gospel" quartet style of gospel's golden age in the 1940s and 1950s, to the eclectic pop-tinged songs of today. The Hummingbirds inspired a number of imitators, such as Jackie Wilson and James Brown, who adapted the shouting style and enthusiastic showmanship of hard gospel to secular themes to help create soul music in the 1960s.
Paul Owens was one of the foremost artists in African American gospel music, performing with The Dixie Hummingbirds, the Swan Silvertones and the Sensational Nightingales. Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, he started as a soloist with the Israelite Gospel Singers, the Baystate Gospel Singers and the Evangelist Singers, then joined a group known as the Nightingales before moving to the Hummingbirds in 1948. Paired with Ira Tucker, they adopted a daring style, which they called "trickeration", in which they would mix melisma with intricate harmonies, sharing the lead while often improvising phrases.
Clara Mae Ward was an American gospel singer who achieved great artistic and commercial success during the 1940s and 1950s, as leader of The Famous Ward Singers. A gifted singer and arranger, Ward adopted the lead-switching style, previously used primarily by male gospel quartets, creating opportunities for spontaneous improvization and vamping by each member of the group, while giving virtuoso singers such as Marion Williams the opportunity to perform the lead vocal in songs such as "Surely, God Is Able", "How I Got Over" and "Packin' Up".
The Swan Silvertones are an American gospel music group that first achieved popularity in the 1940s and 1950s under the leadership of Claude Jeter. Jeter formed the group in 1938 as the "Four Harmony Kings" while he was working as a coal miner in West Virginia, United States. After moving to Knoxville, Tennessee and obtaining their own radio show, the group changed its name to the Silvertone Singers in order to avoid confusion with another ensemble known as the "Four Kings of Harmony." They added the name Swan shortly thereafter, since Swan Bakeries sponsored their show. Their wide exposure through radio brought them a contract in 1946 with King Records.
The Sensational Nightingales are a traditional black gospel quartet that reached its peak of popularity in the 1950s, when it featured Julius Cheeks as its lead singer. The Nightingales, with several changes of membership, continue to tour and record.
The Fairfield Four is an American gospel group that has existed for over 100 years, starting as a trio in the Fairfield Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1921. They were designated as National Heritage Fellows in 1989 by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. The group won the 1998 Grammy for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album. As a quintet, they featured briefly in the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Apollo Records was a record company and label founded in New York City by Hy Siegel and Ted Gottlieb in 1944. A year later it was sold to Ike and Bess Berman. Apollo was known for blues, doo-wop, gospel, jazz, and rock and roll.
Traditional Black gospel is music that is written to express either personal or a communal belief regarding African American Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music. It is a form of Christian music and a subgenre of Black gospel music.
James Bodie Davis was an American gospel music singer and a founder of The Dixie Hummingbirds, one of the longest-lasting and most influential groups in gospel music.
Chalmers Edward "Spanky" Alford was an American gospel, jazz, and neo-soul guitarist. Alford was born in Philadelphia. He was well known for his playing style, utilizing chord embellishments. He had an illustrious career as a gospel quartet guitar player in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s with groups such as the Mighty Clouds of Joy. His most notable contributions are to the D'Angelo album Voodoo, and his contributions to music from other popular artists including Tupac Shakur, Roy Hargrove, and The Roots.
Claude A. Jeter was an American gospel music singer. Originally a coal miner from Kentucky, Jeter formed the group that would eventually become one of the most popular gospel quartets of the post-war era – the Swan Silvertones. He was also, at one time, a member of the Dixie Hummingbirds.
Kenneth Womack is an American writer, literary critic, public speaker, and music historian, particularly focusing on the cultural influence of the Beatles. He is the author of the bestselling Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles and John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.
Irving Berman, was a Newark, New Jersey businessman, record company owner, and nightclub impresario.
Let Us in Americana: The Music of Paul McCartney is a tribute album to musician Paul McCartney. Phil Madeira produced the album, released by Reviver Records in 2013. All the proceeds for the album were donated to the Women and Cancer Fund, a charity established in memory of Linda McCartney.
Last Kind Words Blues, more commonly known as Last Kind Words, is a 1930 blues song, written, performed and recorded by Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas. It was released on the Paramount Records label in July 1930, with Skinny Leg Blues as B-side.