Move aside, Bonnie and Clyde. Modern-day desperados could put Chicago on pace for another record year of bank robberies.

Instead of career robbers, people from many walks of life are gravitating to robbery, ranging from drug addicts to employed middle-class individuals, according to Gregory Scott, professor of sociology at DePaul University.

"We're coming to the end of the really well-plotted, well-organized bank robbery that results from long-term strategic planning. Now we're talking about lower-level bank robberies," he said.

In addition, Scott said, the new breed of robbers is more diverse than the old guard.

According to the FBI, 9,010 people were involved in 7,272 bank robberies nationwide in 2006. Black males executed 46 percent of robberies nationwide, white males 36 percent, and women only 6 percent. Of these robbers, the FBI identified 3,584 people; 46 percent were narcotics users and 22 percent were previously convicted for bank robbery, bank burglary, or bank larceny.

Today's robbers are spontaneous and opportunistic, according to a 2007 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, which identified three factors contributing to rising robbery rates: more bank outlets and extended hours creating greater opportunities, robbers' perceptions of banks as a lucrative target and because robberies are usually fast, low risk crimes.

After decades of fewer than 100 robberies per year, robberies in the Chicago metropolitan area shot up in the mid-1990s. In 2006, the number of robberies peaked at 284, more than in the entire state of Florida.

The Chicago office of the FBI collects bank robbery data for the five-county area surrounding Chicago - Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and Will counties. As of March 12, there were 52 bank robberies in the area, on par with numbers for the same 10-week period in 2007. The total robbery tally for 2007 came in at 226, down 26 percent from 2006.

By extrapolating the first several weeks of robbery activity for the remainder of 2008, "we could be on pace for another record year," said Ross Rice, a spokesman in the FBI's Chicago office.

Illinois is not the only state grappling with higher robbery rates. Nationwide, a new era of bank robbery is on the rise - and banks are paying the price.

In 2006, robbers hit 6,985 federally insured financial institutions, stealing a total of $72.7 million, of which law enforcement recovered $11.2 million. Although 90 percent of robberies are a "success," according to the Department of Justice study, nearly 60 percent of robbers are eventually caught.

And robbers face big risks for a typically small reward. For an average take of $2,000 to $3,000 per robbery in the Chicago area, robbers face federal punishment of up to 20 years in prison.

To the non-robber, these risks may be too much, but Scott said some robbers may not even be aware of the how little they'll nab or how long they'll sit in prison if convicted.

"When people reach a point of fiscal desperation, they're often not weighing the costs and benefits," Scott said.

In addition, security measures apparently do little to deter robbers. Of the 7,272 robberies or attempted robberies nationwide in 2006, 98 percent of victim institutions had an alarm system and/or surveillance cameras.

One man accused of robbing seven Indiana banks told a newspaper earlier this month that his only deterrent to robbing banks was security guards. However, fewer than 10 percent of banks robbed in 2006 had a guard on duty.

After two robberies at a North LaSalle Street branch of Builders Bank, president Chas Hall said the bank decided to hire a guard for that location. He said the bank took this additional security measure in part to deter would-be robbers, but mostly to provide peace of mind to the bank's employees.

"We don't want that to happen to our employees again," Hall said.

But if a recession is on the way, could employees like Hall's be subjected to the desperate measures of desperate robbers again? Not necessarily.

There is no direct correlation between crime and unemployment according to Scott, though economic crime rates may move with changes in the economy.

"When things change fast - unemployment suddenly spikes or it suddenly goes down - people are thrown into what sociologists call anomie," Scott said.

Anomie is marked by instability and a lack of societal norms and Scott said individuals are more likely to take greater risks during such periods.

In addition, robbery was on the rise even before the r-word was on everyone's lips. Rather, rising robbery rates may just be a by-product of changes in the banking industry.

Price said the FBI does not interpret robbery data, but said the most commonly touted hypothesis for rising robbery rates is the proliferation of branch banking.

"The theory is that this creates a greater opportunity for people who are so inclined," he said.

This theory sticks with Scott. As financial institutions have become more decentralized, he said, banks have become more accessible to consumers, but at the expense of becoming more accessible to robbers.

"This is a technological innovation that has legitimate pro-social goals, but . the underbelly of greater accessibility is greater vulnerability," Scott said. "Banks are far more susceptible to being robbed and they're easier to rob."

But even as banks continue to expand, they are fighting back, according to Debbie Jemison, spokeswoman for the Illinois Bankers Association.

"Banks are doing everything they can to protect their employees and customers," Jemison said.

She said several security measures thwart would-be robbers, including security guards, bank fraud task force programs, and participation in the association's thumbprint signature program and FRAUD-NET.

The thumbprint signature program requires non-account holders to provide an inkless impression of their thumbprints for certain transactions. Meanwhile, FRAUD-NET is an online collaboration for banks to share information about robberies with other financial institutions and law enforcement agencies.

Within minutes of a robbery, for example, a bank can electronically disperse a physical description and information about the robber's modus operandi to other banks in the network and law enforcement officials.

In addition, many Illinois banks are participating in a program to combat rising robbery rates, the "No Hats, No Hoods, No Sunglasses" program. The bankers association launched the program in 2006--security guards ask people entering the bank to remove hats, hoods or sunglasses-- as an inexpensive way for banks to deter so-called "note job" robberies, in which a person hands a note to a teller demanding money. In 2006, more than half of robbers demanded money using a note.

Beyond the take, there are other costs to robberies, according to Hall, the Builders Bank president.

"The biggest cost [of a robbery] is that is such a traumatic experience for our employees," Hall said.

Hall said the emotional cost far outweighs any financial cost and said banks should be very appreciative of their tellers.

Jemison of the Illinois Bankers Association agrees. "There is definitely a psychological cost," both for employees and customers, she said. If a bank is a robbed, it will often provide a program for affected employees and customers. And the effects of a robbery are felt even after the robber has fled.

Working with the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, victim banks provide valuable information to law enforcement to catch serial robbers - people who have committed at least three robberies.

And bankers are always looking for ways to keep robbers at bay, according to Jemison.

"Banks constantly review their procedures to better thwart robberies from occurring," she said.

But Scott, of DePaul, is not optimistic that these efforts are working yet. While he expects robberies to reach a saturation point, he said some security measures - such as surveillance cameras - do not effectively deter criminals.

Even though the most recent condominium conversion craze has slowed, many Chicago renters are still at risk for losing their leases.

When the real estate market boomed a few years ago, many developers started buying apartment buildings and converting them to condominiums. The high demand for real estate meant that selling units was more profitable than renting them. The surge of 2004-06 was the latest in a pattern of condo conversions dating back to the 1970s.

As the market for real estate has slowed so has the conversion trend. The trend peaked last year, according to John Bartlett, executive director at the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, which helps tenants learn their rights in scenarios like condo conversions. But, he said, "It's still a problem."

In February 2006, Zakiyya Muhammad found a memo on the door of her Bronzeville apartment saying the building was sold and she should attend a meeting at the local church.  Muhammad said residents were then asked if they intended to buy.

Many of the residents were Section 8 (subsidized housing) tenants and could not afford to purchase their apartments. Eventually, their leases were renewed with a clause requiring them to move within 90 days if someone wanted to buy their space, Muhammad said. She added that renters paying market rate were allowed to stay without the 90-day moving stipulation.

With the real estate downturn, even former hot-spots are experiencing a housing lag. Muhammad said the first building in her complex to convert to condominiums has been experiencing slow sales. Her building is now part of a rent-to-buy program where residents rent for six to eight months with the option of buying and having their payments transferred to a mortgage.

"Not all buildings lend themselves to be conversions," said George Carlson, president of Conversion Specialist Incorporated, a condominium conversion firm that works in Chicago's suburbs. Muhammad said that her building has an assortment of problems including bad plumbing.

Carlson explained that Chicago's real estate market is slowing less than other regions of the country. "If you have a good locations you know people are going to buy," he said. "I think there's a pent-up demand out there."

That pent-up demand was probably what led to the interest in Muhammad's complex; Bronzeville has been gentrifying recently.

"Gentrification, urban flight, black flight, those are the terminologies that we use," Muhammad said.

Condo conversion is part of gentrification. Problems arise when people in the apartments can't afford to buy. Legally, the apartment resident has first option for buying, but many don't have the money to purchase right away.

According to Carlson, about 10 to 15 percent of people who live in a property will buy it if it converts, but the number can be as high as 20 percent or more. He adds that, with tax benefits and appreciation, it can actually be cheaper to own, provided the resident can make the down payment. With the credit crunch, however, even though interest rates are low, some lenders are reluctant to give mortgages to low-income buyers.

At the height of the condo conversion boom came more protection for tenants. They are now legally guaranteed 120 days to move, 180 for the disabled or elderly.

In Summer 2007 the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill allowing former tenants to receive up to $10,000 in damages if a developer misrepresented its intention to convert a building to condominiums.

According to Bartlett, though, "There's certainly not enough regulation [for condo conversions], especially if there's any problems."

On a recent Sunday outside Beth Eden Baptist Church, just two blocks from the whir of expressway traffic, a sacred sound rises above the crunch of autumn leaves under latecomers’ feet.

Beth Eden, the “Mother Church of Morgan Park,” is gearing up another Sunday service. The church is the place where the long road from the South first enters metropolitan Chicago, on West 111th Street and South Loomis Avenue, which is newly named for longtime music director Robert E. Wooten Sr.

This church and these sounds capture an original Chicago creation – modern gospel music – in its glory, complexity, and at an important crossroads.

Gospel thrives in new forms and influences popular music at large, but some experts worry that its roots in older congregations may be in danger; others say its very popularity is pulling it from its religious mission. Many artists, devotees and congregants are committed to gospel in many forms, and Chicago’s South Side maintains the richest traditions in the world.

Since 1923, Beth Eden has welcomed the Great Migration of African-Americans and nurtured generations of gospel music.

“Lord, I want to live up yonder.” On this particular Sunday, these lyrics are intoned slowly, carefully, in an a cappella jubilee version of the old spiritual.

“My Mother’s gone to glory, I want to go there too,” the ensemble continues in a pitch-perfect harmony revealing both practice and devotion. “Lord, I want to live up yonder, in bright mansions above.”

Soft shouts of praise from the sparse congregation obscure the end of this delicate paean to God and the Underground Railroad. But before the applause can fade, Minister of Music Robert E. Wooten Jr. slides into an organ-driven “I Thank You, Jesus” and the church erupts in tambourine sway and praise.

Gospel Tradition Intro >>

Page 2 - Pace, Pilgrim and the Gospel Blues

Page 3 - The Gospel Blues – Sacred or Secular?

Page 4 - Which Way Gospel?

Extra: Video Perspectives on Chicago's Gospel Traditions

History – Pace, Pilgrim and the Gospel Blues

Bronzeville's Pilgrim Baptist Church was an early adopter of what become modern gospel music.
Peter Holderness/MEDILL

Black migration streams from the South date back more than 150 years, but when World War I halted European immigration and raised Northern demand for industrial labor, the stream to cities such as Chicago became a mighty river. Historians estimate that up to 7 million African-Americans moved north in 50 years of The Great Migration – a movement of epic scale.

The pages of the Chicago Defender, disseminated at whistlestops across the South by Chicago-based Pullman car porters, trumpeted the opportunities awaiting blacks in Chicago, and new arrivals brought more than dreams for a better future, they brought rich cultural traditions. Black music was already changing from field and work songs to spirituals, blues, jazz and more.

“From 1915 to 1960 over a half-million African-Americans migrated to Chicago from the South, including my mother and father,” said Fernando Jones, a renowned bluesman and professor of music at Columbia College in Chicago. “A lot of the musicians that were the architects of modern music were part of that migration.”

One of these architects, known as the best brothel-and-party piano player in Atlanta, moved north in 1916 to find fortune in Chicago’s famed music bars. “Thomas A. Dorsey sang the blues,” Jones said, “but he also created a gospel music considered heavenly. He could sing both with complete conviction.”

Dorsey worked in churches – he was appointed music director at Chicago’s New Hope Baptist Church in 1922 – and in blues clubs and studios, recording a huge hit as Georgia Tom with the sexually suggestive single “Tight Like That” in 1928.

In 1925, Charles Henry Pace organized the Pace Jubilee Singers at Beth Eden, establishing the church as a center for the sounds of emerging gospel music. Though their toe-tapping, carefully arranged spiritual style was popular, the vocal improvisations of the “Dorsey Songs” performed by Mahalia Jackson, Willie Mae Ford Smith and others would establish Dorsey as the most famous gospel composer of all.

Still, his achievement was built on a rich foundation. “When the blues is added first to spirituals and then to jubilee, it becomes gospel,” gospel historian Robert Darden writes in his 2004 book, “People Get Ready!”

Pilgrim Baptist Church, the landmark Louis Sullivan structure built as a synagogue in 1890 at East 33rd Street and South Indiana Avenue, embraced this sound and invited Dorsey to form a gospel choir in 1932. Dorsey’s wife and newborn daughter died that same year, and Dorsey dedicated his life to the church, writing “Take My Hand, Oh Precious Lord,” the most famous of gospel songs.

“Even today, I bet that 1-in-3 African American funerals feature that song,” said Jones, who was born in Bronzeville, not far from Pilgrim Baptist.
Scores of Chicago churches supported the vibrant and evolving sounds of gospel worship, but a special bond remained between Pilgrim and Beth Eden.

In 1933, Associate Pastor Richard Keller left Pilgrim, then the second-largest church in the city, to become pastor at Beth Eden.

Dr. Robert E. Wooten Sr. founded the Wooten Ensemble at Beth Eden Baptist Church in 1949. The elder Wooten played for Thomas Dorsey and is a critical link in Chicago's storied gospel history.
Peter Holderness/MEDILL

Robert Wooten Sr. remembers growing up at Beth Eden in those days of intense music and movement. “Anybody who came here, they knew Beth Eden was noted for its music. On second and fourth Sundays,” he said, pointing around the warmly lit sanctuary, “you couldn’t get anywhere near here to get a good seat. It was that well-attended.”

In 1949 Wooten Sr. founded the Wooten Ensemble at Beth Eden, now under the direction of his son, who is known as “Bobby.” It is the longest-operating community ensemble in the country.

“We started rehearsing on Tuesday nights in ’49 and I never changed that time in all these years,” the elder Wooten said. “I had one member in the armed forces for 20 years and I saw him outside the church and said ‘When you comin’ back?’” Wooten said as the sanctuary emptied. “‘When you rehearsin’?’ he asked and I said ‘You know it’s still on Tuesday night,’ so he came right back.”

Wooten Sr., a music conservatory graduate, said he responded to a call from God to build an ensemble that would sing gospel jubilee, spirituals, anthems, hymns and more.

This unusual breadth and uncompromising commitment to black sacred music has entwined Beth Eden and the Wootens with the history of gospel.

“I had an audience with Thomas Dorsey,” Wooten said. “We did all of his selections and then he came out and spoke and shared a third verse of ‘Precious Lord’ with us. It was very, very meaningful.”

In January 2006, Dorsey’s famed Pilgrim Baptist Church burned to the ground. Today, across the street from the ashes and broken shell of the building, Pastor Keith Gordon leads a revival of the Pilgrim community. The key to Gordon’s faith? Beth Eden Baptist Church.

“I was age 15 in Sunday school class” at Beth Eden, Gordon said, “when I finally understood what Christianity really meant. … Gospel music was part of that same beginning for me.”

Gospel Tradition Intro >>

Page 2 - Pace, Pilgrim and the Gospel Blues

Page 3 - The Gospel Blues – Sacred or Secular?

Page 4 - Which Way Gospel?

Extra: Video Perspectives on Chicago's Gospel Traditions

The Gospel Blues – Sacred or Secular?

Fernando Jones is a renowned bluesman and professor of music at Columbia College in Chicago.
Peter Holderness/MEDILL

As famous as the blues-melded gospel sounds of Thomas Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson and Pilgrim Baptist have become, their acceptance was not inevitable.

“Initially the church was hostile toward this music as blues,” said gospel musician Johari Jabir, who is a member of the African-American Studies department at Northwestern University and an expert in black sacred music and cultural historical studies. “The church was shaping [newly arrived] black folks into obedient urban citizens, and the blues disrupts that,” he said. “Dorsey’s merging of these two forms was unsettling for people.”

Fernando Jones, winner of this year’s Keeping the Blues Alive award from the Blues Foundation, agrees. “During that time blacks were just one generation out of slavery or sharecropping.”

Churches, especially in the North, wanted arranged music that showed sophistication, Jones said.

“Memories from sharecropping were associated with the blues, with field hollers,” he said. “When Dorsey came to church he would put his foot up on the piano, he would put on a show. That’s why the gospel music moves us,” Jones said, “because it has that blues element in it, you know.”

One of Dorsey’s earliest and most important gospel collaborators explained her approach to both forms and is quoted in Darden’s history. “The gospel song is the Christian blues,” Willie Mae Ford Smith Said in the 1930’s. “I’m like the blues singer: When something’s rubbing me the wrong way, I sing out of my soul to settle it down.”

Dorsey, according to historians, was no less shy about his approach. “Everything is a show,” he reportedly said. “You got to know how to do your show.”

Eventually the power and popularity of the Dorsey songs made them canon in black churches, but the debate over secular influences in sacred music continues today.

“I was a kid when Edwin Hawkins came out with ‘Oh Happy Day,’” Jabir said, referencing the funky 1967 arrangement of a 19th century hymn. “And there were people in my church who said ‘oh no; no no no.’”

“It used to be just pianos and tambourines … It was almost sacrilegious to play electric instruments,” Jones said, but over time the organ became a staple of service, and gradually more instruments were added. Still, the boundaries seem mysterious to Jones. “My mother told me that when she was coming up in Mississippi you could do your religious shouts and move a little, but you can’t cross your feet, because that was dancing,” he said.

Darden also quotes the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, a co-founder and former executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, poking fun at the thin line sometimes drawn in church.

“The same beat that black folks dance to on Saturday night is the same beat that they shout to on Sunday morning,” Walker said. “If you hear the beat and do not know what the program is, watch the direction of the shout. It the shout is up and down, it’s religious; if it’s from side to side, it is probably secular,” he said, according to Darden’s 2004 book.

Other musicians with deep roots in Chicago’s gospel history tell similar stories of rejection and acceptance, usually mediated by time.

“People have been saying that [new gospel music] is too secular forever,” said Roxanne Stevenson, a life-long church musician who is now director of bands at Chicago State University. “When my dad played his music from Jubilee Showcase … the Swan Silvertones, Clyde Jeter ... and all those old guys, my grandfather thought those were the blues, too worldly,” she said.

“So I decided that if my granddad thought that Dad’s music, which I thought was old as dust, was too blues, then my music from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s must be OK. To me, if it’s holy 30 years later, it was holy 30 years ago.”

“I started playing piano at my mom’s church,” Stevenson said. “When I could finally make sense out of my saxophone, I brought my horn instead and the pastor, he didn’t care. He just said let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

Stevenson said many of her friends were not so lucky and used to trade stories of being thrown out of church for playing their horns “with too much blues” in houses of worship.

Stevenson takes her mission seriously, whether she’s playing at Trinity United Church of Christ, the mega-church on West 95th Street to which Barack Obama belongs, or at a secular club.

“I like the ministry, the spirit, the heart of the matter,” she said. “There are no real rules you have to follow. It doesn’t have to be danceable like R&B or swing like jazz. ... As long as the message is from the heart to the heart, and as long as the message is Jesus Christ, then it’s still gospel music.”

The director of Trinity’s formidable music program, Robert E. Wooten Jr., says the No. 1 concern of his music ministry is “having church.”

“Our music has a message,” he said. “Gospel music signifies some kind of reverence … If it’s speaking truth, biblical truth, then we can use it in worship. If it is just adornment, then it won’t get too much movement.”

Wooten Jr. leads one of the largest and most inclusive musical programs in the city, preparing 27 different pieces for the 10,000-member Trinity each week, and still serving as music minister at Beth Eden twice monthly. Although he occasionally stops his young players from “practicing your jazz at church unless you’re planning to work gospel at your jazz gig,” Wooten Jr. says gospel music is accepting. “If Thomas Dorsey could do [boogie-woogie] before doing ‘Oh Precious Lord’ and ‘I’m on the Battlefield,’ then certainly we can accept some of the things done by younger people now.”

Gordon, the young leader of Pilgrim Baptist, is taking a harder line as he rebuilds the venerable church.

“We’ll try to meet you on your ground,” he said, “but in this church we don’t compromise. If an artist isn’t based on Christ, he won’t play here.”

Gordon paused to break down his words. “Gospel means God’s spell,” he said, “and you can’t get God’s spell unless it comes from Jesus.”

Gospel Tradition Intro >>

Page 2 - Pace, Pilgrim and the Gospel Blues

Page 3 - The Gospel Blues – Sacred or Secular?

Page 4 - Which Way Gospel?

Extra: Video Perspectives on Chicago's Gospel Traditions

Which Way Gospel?

Percussionist Makaya McCraven came to Chicago to take advantage of the vibrant gospel music community.
Peter Holderness/MEDILL

If the stretch of road Bobby Wooten travels between Beth Eden and Trinity connects gospel music’s rich roots to its accessible modern sound, it also crosses paths with an ongoing debate about the sacred content of the celebrated form.

As congregations age and gospel shares its talented musicians with the secular world, more may be at stake than ever before.

Cultural critic Johari Jabir worries that commodification of gospel music – whether for recording contracts or to fill mega-churches – risks sapping the form of its swing, of the powerful human connection that has defined it across many forms.

“Anytime you have a media-driven production in worship, that’s going to be a different thing than when people depend on their bodies and will and talent. When you have cameras and big screens, it isn’t as raw as handclapping and people just swinging it out,” he said. “In the ’20s and ’30s, when gospel music emerges, black folks are still being lynched,” he said. “Our music imitates these horrors and you can’t just extract the hardships.”

“I don’t mean to diss or tell people what to play,” he added. “I know that to grow, the music has to change. …I know you’re not going to build a megachurch on the Dorsey canon, but what kind of gospel is being repackaged to draw people?”

Without the draw of new people, however, the multitude of churches that define and retain the South Side’s rich heritage in gospel music are threatened. Jabir sees no easy solution to the tension between a repackaged sound that thrives and the principled traditions upheld by shrinking congregations.

At the same time, black churches continue to incubate and support skilled musicians. Like Thomas Dorsey, these musicians are influenced by and contribute to popular and gospel music.

This two-way street between the sacred and secular is not new, but its intersection with the divide between megachurches and the raw gospel experience described by Jabir puts Chicago at the center of a crossroads.

In fact, Chicago’s gospel scene has become the prime training ground for young musicians, and an easy place to find talent. From BET’s “Sunday’s Best” to top touring acts, gospel musicians power popular music.

“I think the best musicians are in the churches,” Stevenson said between classes at Chicago State.

“A lot of them don’t learn to read music right away, but any song you want them to play, they could play in any key... I would take a gospel musician anywhere [on tour] because I know they bring ears … which is beyond most musicians.”

Makaya McCraven, a young percussionist who just moved to Chicago to pan its rich musical prospects, said gospel drummers are constantly picked up for tours and studio sessions.

“If they get you out of a gospel tradition, then they know you’re going to be able to play the parts. If it takes a few times to hear the part [because you don’t read music], it’s still worth it,” McCraven said, echoing the Stevenson’s argument. “They know you will really be able to hit it.”

“You hear some of these young guys out there on the scene and they’re just killing it, using strokes they developed in the church,” McCraven said.

“And the church provides a place for practice when there might not be other spaces to go,” he said. “Think about it – gospel musicians get a chance to play each week in church, plus rehearsals and other services. That’s a lot of time to practice and develop!”

Jones said that churches also incubate talent that the industry might ignore, citing as an example kids too young to play in clubs. “The church is not biased: If you’re overweight, too skinny, too light, too dark, freckles … you can still play,” Jones said. “The guys in the band might crack jokes on you, but you’re not going to be kicked out of the choir.”

But incubating talent does not guarantee that musicians will devote themselves to the church, especially if they must find income elsewhere.

Robert E. Wooten Jr. watches the congregation leave Beth Eden Baptist Church, where he is the minister of music. Wooten Jr. is also director of music at mega-church Trinity UCC, on 95th Street.
Peter Holderness/MEDILL

The younger Wooten said he has never had trouble finding musicians for Trinity, which pays its band.

“Biblically, the Levites were always taken care of,” he said. Although some people don’t think musicians should be paid, Wooten shakes his head. “Let me set the record straight, Trinity is not one of those churches,” he said. “You can’t expect a great music program and not be willing to invest in it.”

Every first and third Sunday, Wooten Jr. spirits away from Trinity after the 7:30 a.m. service to drive 15 blocks south to Beth Eden.

He leaves the massive modern sanctuary, hundreds choir and band members, and thousands more congregants, to spend a few hours at the place he calls his “home church.”

The older congregation gathered around his father at Beth Eden cannot tithe as well as it once did, but the church still fills with the sound of the Dorsey songs and their predecessors. The emotional sound of keys, drums and bass is filled by tambourines and voices no less strong for being fewer.

“I don’t care where anybody else comes from or what anybody else does,” Chicago gospel great Albertina Walker said in 1990. “Chicago is the capital of gospel and always will be. This is where great talents come to learn, this is where the great singers live. Gospel music, you know, can’t really be written down. You have to hear it and feel it, and you can do that best here in Chicago.”

But if gospel traditions continue to stretch to accept mainstream popularity and new musical forms, it will be left to the Wootens of Chicago to maintain the continuity on the road.

The survival of older gospel forms and the aging buildings and congregations for Chicago’s great repositories of gospel music concern Northwestern’s Jabir.

“We don’t have any institutions devoted solely to black sacred music, and that’s just not good,” he said. “Churches are not often good at preservation because they’re trying to bring in new people. …We need to change that. We need museums and cultural institutions … and I think that’s possible in Chicago,” he said.

Jones wants to be sure Chicago preserves a legacy already recognized worldwide.

“Oh, I’m optimistic about the future of black-based music, gospel and blues,” Jones said, wearing a smoothly-tipped hat and dark shades. “The rest of the world is mature and smart enough to appreciate the musical contributions that the African in America has made to the world. … The power to move people with the style of music that we make, you know.”

“Black music … coming out of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles,” Jones said, “We all come from folks on the plantation who had to survive and [we] used music as a second language when we didn’t even know the regular language here.”

That language will survive too, Jones said, for a simple reason. “Gospel music, it’ll move you.”

Gospel Tradition Intro >>

Page 2 - Pace, Pilgrim and the Gospel Blues

Page 3 - The Gospel Blues – Sacred or Secular?

Page 4 - Which Way Gospel?

Extra: Video Perspectives on Chicago's Gospel Traditions