[Dixielandjazz] Who wrote Precious lord Take My Hand

[TBW504 at aol.com]

Always worth consulting Brian Wood's scintillating "The Song for Me":
 
DORSEY, Thomas Andrew a.k.a. "Georgia Tom"  Piano; guitar;  vocals
1899, Jul 1: Villa Rica, Carroll County, GA   1993, Jan  23
Son of a revivalist Baptist minister (Thomas Madison Dorsey) and Etta  
Dorsey, his church organist mother. The family moved from Georgia for a time  after 
Tom was born, but returned to Villa Rica in 1903. An early influence was  his 
uncle, Phil Plant, a wanderer who sang and played the guitar in the country  
blues style. Tom studied music formally in his teens, but despite his 
background  he began his career in secular music performing as "Barrelhouse Tommy" in  
Atlanta. His first composition was a spiritual, "If I Don't Get There". He  
copyrighted his first blues composition, "If You Don't Believe I'm Leaving, You  
Can Count the Days I'm Gone," in 1920. Notably, he was one of the first 
artists  to recognise the importance of copyrighting compositions: his 1928 bawdy 
hit  "Tight Like That" was a money spinner for him. King Oliver recorded 
Dorsey's  "Riverside Blues" in 1923. In April 1924, Dorsey became piano player and  
director of Ma Rainey's Wild Cat Jazz Band on tour, marrying Rainey's wardrobe 
 mistress, Nettie Harper. After suffering from incapacitating depression 
starting  in 1926, Dorsey underwent a spiritual conversion in 1928. However, the 
financial  lure of commercial secular music convinced Dorsey to begin composing 
and playing  the blues again. After Dorsey's wife and son died in childbirth 
in 1932, he  forsook the blues. Stricken with grief, Dorsey sat at his piano 
to console  himself, composing "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"  - (more 
accurately, if a  trifle pedantically, Dorsey adapted the words of one hymn to the tune 
of  another, "Maitland" both by an earlier nineteenth-century composer, 
George N.  Allen 1812-1877) -  as a salve to his utter misery. He was to become the 
 most important composer and publisher of gospel music. Discovered Mahalia  
Jackson and Clara Ward. Among his more than 1,000 songs are "Peace in the  
Valley", "If You See My Saviour" and "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" as well as a  
great number of blues from his secular days. Interestingly, he is quoted in  later 
years as saying, "I'm a good church man, but I don't put the blues away."  
(Quoted in Blues and Evil by J. M. Spencer, University of Tennessee Press,  
1993)   In 1975 he sang at the Newport Jazz Festival. His compositions  have 
proved continually popular with jazz musicians.
 
Brian Wood