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SHOUT! Black Gospel Music Moments - Mahalia Jackson

Mahalia Jackson is still consider gospel music’s greatest singer – and “Move on Up a Little Higher” is still considered her greatest song.

This is the 300th episode of Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments – and it seems to be a pretty good time to thank everyone who has made it possible to bring us great gospel music each week, including our sponsors and Brodie, Elizabeth, Stephen and Travis and all of the other great engineers who make it sound so good.

It’s also a good time, I think, to celebrate the artist that got me hooked on gospel music more than 60 years ago – Mahalia Jackson. According to my parents, it was an early album by Mahalia that started my lifelong love affair with this music.

Mahalia’s best-known and best-selling song is “Move on Up a Little Higher” – the first and for a long time the only song to sell millions of copies. The great Studs Terkel once asked her about the future. She replied, “I hope one day I can teach people to sing songs with the deep feeling they once had.” And that “deep feeling” can be heard and cherished in every song Mahalia ever recorded.

2219 Mahalia Jackson - Move On Up a Little Higher pt1.mp3

MUSIC: “Move on Up a Little Higher, Part 1,” LP, Mahalia Jackson 21 Greatest Hits, Side 2, Track 1

I’m Robert Darden … “Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments” is produced by KWBU, the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University Libraries and is funded by generous support from the Prichard Foundation.