This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/17/2022
DORSEY, Thomas Andrew (1899–1993). An archive of materials relating to the life and work of Gospel music pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey. 20th century. Approximately 25 items including photographs, sheet music, broadsides, and vinyl records, once owned and used by Thomas A. Dorsey. Initially a blues musician, Dorsey moved to Chicago from Georgia in the midst of Great Migration of southern African Americans to the industrial cities of the north in 1919; the following year he filed a copyright for his song “If You Don’t Believe I’m Leaving, You Can Count the Days I’m Gone,” making him one of the first blues musicians to do so. In 1923 he became the pianist and leader of “the Mother of Blues”, Ma Rainey’s backing band, the Wild Cats Jazz Band. It was during this time that Dorsey became plagued by a deep depression which only lifted after attending a church service with his sister-in-law in which Dorsey claims the preacher pulled a live serpent from his throat that he turned his full attention towards gospel music, dedicating himself to marketing it as one would market secular music and practically creating a new genre; it is because of this that Dorsey is remembered as the “father of gospel music.”