Singing on the Mountain

Borrows from many traditions to create a heritage all of its own

The “Singing on the Mountain” is the largest and longest running Gospel music gathering of its kind in the Southern Appalachians. Although not an authentic representative of any one of the elements that comprise the cultural heritage of these mountains, the “Singing on the Mountain” borrows a little of the best from all of the mountain traditions to invent a heritage unique unto itself.

Ten years before the first “Singing on the Mountain” was held on this meadow, Joe Hartley's Sunday school group began meeting at the little white church in Linville for a picnic and hymn sing. In 1924, however, Uncle Joe decided to invite another little church in Linville to pack up their Sunday school and join his congregation in the meadow for a singing and dinner on the grounds. Everyone enjoyed themselves so much on that day that they decided to make it an annual occurrence, only the next year they decided to invite a few more churches from around the High Country.

Sunday schools in themselves had only just started to come into the Southern Appalachians in the early 1900s. The Sunday school movement was started in Chicago in the 1880s by B. F. Jacobs, “The Father of the American Sunday School” and an associate of Dwight L. Moody. So the fact that the "Singing on the Mountain” began as a gathering of Sunday school choirs in itself is an expression of a significant development in the mountain culture.

The “Singing on the Mountain” has always been similar to a camp meeting except in the fact that it was always limited to a one-day event. Folks arrive early and fellowship in a small campground community in the meadow for a few nights before the Sunday “Singing,” but never in a way that fit the classic description of a three to four-day camp meeting.

And the “Singing” has always had the flavor of a revival, but again, not in the classic tradition. At a traditional revival, the host church or fellowship would set up a tent and hold evangelical services every night for weeks on end. Certainly there was always plenty of singing and plenty of preaching, but a revival meeting always ended with the mandatory altar call. Culturally speaking, a revival was more of a religious experience than a concert or entertainment event.

The “Singing on the Mountain” never quite fit the mold of the traditional singing convention either. Started in the late 1700s and early 1800s, singing conventions were held together by a devotion to shape notes and to singing by shape notes.

Shape-note singing developed before the days of recorded music as a way to teach people to read music by shape. Each note had a different shape so singers could learn a new tune by the shape of the notes. The Sacred Harp, one of the more popular song books, was based on four notes: FA - SO - LA - ME. When a choir saw a song for the first time, they would sound out the melody by singing the FA-SO-LA and then repeat until it became familiar, at which point they would begin learning the words.

The early days of “Singing on the Mountain” were similar to a singing convention in that it was a participatory event, and in that many of the early performers were quartets sent forward by each of the participating Sunday schools.

The first professional Gospel quartet was put together in 1910 by a shape-note hymnal publisher named James Vaughn. The Vaughn Company, and rival Stamps-Baxter Publishing Company, would publish new collections of “convention” songbooks each year. They then organized Gospel quartets to travel from convention to convention to teach, perform and popularize the music in the new edition of the songbook.

In the 1940s the shape-note publishing market began to decline, but the rising popularity of radio offered the Gospel quartets a way to make a living separate from the sponsorship of the publishing companies. Over time, performance began to dominate the singing conventions as people came more to be entertained than to participate.

“Singing on the Mountain” became more of a concert than a sing-a-long in the 1940s, too. Radio performers such as Little Betty Johnson and Arthur Smith became regular performers on the Grandfather stage, and the “Singing” once again mirrored the evolution of the mountain culture.

And as radio helped the reputations of the individual groups to grow, more and more of the singers began to have record albums to sell to the Grandfather crowd.

As a representative of the cultural heritage of the Appalachian mountains, however, the “Singing on the Mountain” is an authentic example only of itself. Quilted from a piece of the Sunday school picnic, a patch of the revival and a scrap of the singing convention, the “Singing on the Mountain” preserved the texture of each of these traditions while it created a heritage all its own.