Black American Gospel Music Series, The Echo Singers
name: label: Collection Collector
content: Maltsby, Portia
label: Collection Creator
content: Smithsonian Institution. Program in African American Culture
setName: label: See more items in
content: Program in African American Culture Collection
label: See more items in
content: Program in African American Culture Collection / Series 1: Program Files
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1979 December 16
container: label: Container
content: Box 1, Folder 8
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The concert of the Echo Singers documented in the Program in African American Culture Collection celebrates and highlights the rich heritage of Black American community-based gospel music. Originally formed in 1945, the Echo Singers of Demopolis, Alabama, evolved a unique singing style that featured powerful, unaccompanied female voices creating harmonies rarely heard in modern gospel style. The repertoire heard in this program is built on forty years of gospel song evolution and is set in the gospel quartet arrangements of the late 1940s. The Echo Singers heard in this performance were re-organized in 1964 as a singing club by Sister Susie Ann Ingraham. At the time of this concert, they performed throughout Alabama and Mississippi in churches and for other clubs' anniversary dinners. The Echo Singers performers documented here are: Sister Susie Anne Ingraham (manager, arranger, tenor, swing lead); Sister Annie Lee Harris (alto, multa-bass); Sister Lottie Williams (bass); Sister Mattie Wilson (first lead); and Sister Lueticisha Smith, (third lead). Program number AC408.4.