Clark, Mattie Moss

1925-1994

Choir director, composer, arranger

The African-American gospel choir, passionate yet precise, seems as though it is a permanent fixture of the Christian music recording and performance scene. Yet during the first half of the twentieth century, when listeners thought of gospel music, they likely thought of solo performers like Mahalia Jackson. Among the individuals who brought the choral sound to prominence, the name of Detroit, Michigan, choir leader Mattie Moss Clark ranks high. "She's like the Bach of black gospel choral music," gospel artist Rudy Hawkins told Jenni Glenn of the Michigan Daily (referring to Johann Sebastian Bach, the German composer whose choral compositions are fundamental to the tradition of classical music). Clark also composed several gospel standards and pioneered a new gospel choir sound. Perhaps the most famous accomplishment of this generally underrated figure was the shaping of her five daughters into the Clark Sisters—among the most influential contemporary gospel groups, and one that has in turn spawned a group of new solo careers for younger relatives.

Clark was born Mattie Juliet Moss in Selma, Alabama, in 1925. The seventh of nine children, she was raised in the Church of Christ and Prayer where her mother, also named Mattie, preached, sang, and played the guitar. Several of Clark's siblings were musical (one brother, Bill Moss, later became the leader of his own gospel group, Bill Moss and the Celestials), and she began playing the piano when she was six. By age ten, she had the skills to accompany church services led by her mother. Aiming toward a college education as a music major at Fisk University in Nashville, she took piano and voice lessons all through her high school years.

Clark's father, Fred Moss, died during the summer after her high school graduation, and she did not want to leave her mother home alone. She enrolled in music classes at Selma University and continued to play at her mother's church services. In 1947 she moved north to Detroit to join her sister, Sybil Burke. Clark offered her musical services to various congregations and attended a Baptist church for a time, but she felt most at home at the Greater Love Tabernacle Church of God in Christ (or COGIC). That Pentecostal denomination had a strong tradition of call-and-response choral singing, sometimes including improvised elements. Clark was baptized and soon became the church's minister of music, later moving on to the same position at Detroit's Bailey Temple COGIC.

With multiple talents that included playing the piano and organ, directing choirs, singing, and composing original music, she soon found herself in demand to train choirs at other churches in the fast-growing denomination. That led to Clark's appointment as director of music for the Southwest Michigan Jurisdiction of the COGIC, which operated at the church's state headquarters in Detroit. In that position, Clark had the opportunity to form an elite choir drawn from among members of various churches, and to put some of her own musical ideas into practice. The result was the Southwest Michigan State Choir, with whom Clark made a series of recordings beginning with "Going to Heaven to Meet the King" in 1958. Clark's followers have claimed this as the first recording of a modern gospel choir; such recordings were certainly extremely rare at the time. The choir went on to make a series of recordings for the Savoy label in the 1960s.

Clark's early recordings were unusual in other respects as well. Her arrangements, perhaps influenced by her classical training, replaced the unison or two-part textures of earlier gospel music with three-part settings of the music for soprano, alto, and tenor voice ranges—a technique that remained common in gospel choir music for decades afterward. She sometimes wrote arrangements for choir and orchestra. And she added to the gospel repertory more than 100 songs, several of which, including "Salvation Is free" and "Save Hallelujah," became standards. In the words of gospel historian Horace Clarence Boyer, Clark "eschewed a choir with a vibrant and aggressive sound with a fully opened throat—sometimes resulting in volume that destroyed purity of tone—for a choir with close harmonies and crisp rhythms."

Along with James Cleveland, Clark is regarded as a key popularizer of the choral sound in gospel music. In the words of Rev. Dr. David Hall, quoted by Alan Young in Woke Me Up This Morning, "Mattie Moss Clark was the first lady of gospel music in terms of the big choir style. And it was her Southwest Michigan State Choir that recorded on the Savoy label back in the early '60s—the Salvation Is Free album, and ‘Climbing Up the Mountain’—that really put the big choir sound on the map." Clark eventually recorded more than 50 albums, mostly for the Savoy, Sounds of Gospel, Westbound, and Capitol labels; three were reportedly certified as gold records, for sales of more than 500,000 copies apiece.

Clark became something of a community institution in Detroit, directing a Christmas choral ensemble made up of General Motors Cadillac employees and assembling a large choir each year to perform at one of the most important events on Detroit's African-American calendar, the annual NAACP Freedom Fund dinner. Clark continued to advance through the COGIC hierarchy, although some male church members resented her prominence and influence. She was named international president of the church's music department in 1968 and became state minister of music in the Southwest Michigan Jurisdiction #1 in 1985. To train new choristers and musicians Clark established the Mattie Moss Clark Conservatory of Music, still extant in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale. Various artists, including Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Donald Vails, Esther Smith, Keith Pringle, and the Rev. Rance Allen, were influenced by Clark directly or indirectly.

Her influence showed in its purest form, however, in the sibling group the Clark Sisters. Clark had two children, Leo and Jacqueline (Jackie) while married to a man named Cullum and four more, Elbernita (Twinkie), Denise (Niecy), Dorinda, and Karen, by Elder Elbert Clark, her second husband. Jackie, Twinkie, Niecy, Dorinda, and Karen Clark became the Clark Sisters in the late 1970s and released a series of top-selling gospel albums, slimming down to quartet size in the 1980s when Denise left the group. Clark's perfectionist streak showed both in her occasional propensity to throw books or music at errant singers (including, according to Boyer, an assault on Twinkie Clark during an actual performance) and in the difficult vocal ornamentation that defined the Clark Sisters style.

Clark remained energetic as she approached senior-citizen status, traveling cross-country to train singers for the COGIC National Music Convention and serving as an editor of (and compositional contributor to) the denomination's new Yes, Lord hymnal. She touched the lives of numerous singers in Detroit's vibrant gospel scene until her death in Southfield, Michigan, on September 22, 1994. And her influence continued after her death, audible and visible in the solo careers of several of the Clark Sisters and of Karen Clark's daughter, Kierra "Kiki" Sheard.

At a Glance …

Born in 1925 in Selma, AL; died on September 22, 1994, in Southfield, MI; daughter of Fred J. Moss and Mattie J. Walker (a preacher and musician); married Elbert Clark (second marriage); children: Leo, Jacqueline (first marriage), Denise, Twinkie, Dorinda, and Karen (second marriage). Education: Attended Selma University, Selma, AL. Religion: Church of God in Christ.

Career:

Greater Love Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, Detroit, MI, minister of music, late 1940s; Southwest Michigan Jurisdiction, Church of God in Christ, and Bailey Temple Church of God in Christ, Detroit, minister of music, 1950s and 1960s; Church of God in Christ, international president of music department, 1968-85, state minister of music, 1985-94.

Awards:

Trinity College, PA, honorary doctorate, 1981; Michigan Heritage Award, 1990.

Selected works

Albums (with the Southwest Michigan State Choir, Church of God in Christ, except as noted)

Mattie Moss Clark and the Southwest Michigan State Choir of COGIC, Savoy, 1963.

Wonderful Wonderful, Savoy, 1963.

Humble Thyself, DME, 1964.

None but the Pure In Heart, Savoy, 1964.

A City Called Heaven, Savoy, 1965.

Salvation Is Free, Savoy, 1965.

A Closer Walk with Thee, Savoy, 1966.

Show Me the Way, Savoy, 1967.

Lord, Renew My Spirit Within, Savoy, 1968.

I'll Take Jesus for Mine, Savoy, 1969.

The Hand of God Reached Out and Touched Me, Westbound, 1973.

The Wages of Sin Is Death, Malaco, 1975 (as Mattie Moss Clark).

He Was Hung Up for My Hang-Ups, Malaco, 1976 (as Mattie Moss Clark).

The Best of the Southwest Michigan State Choir, Savoy, 1979.

I'm Not Alone, Sounds of Gospel, 1979 (as Mattie Moss Clark).

Make Me That Building Not Made by Hand, Sounds of Gospel, 1979 (as Mattie Moss Clark).

Wonderful Grace of Jesus, Westbound, late 1970s (as Mattie Moss Clark).

COGIC presents Jesus Is the Light of My Life, Tomato Music Co., 1980.

That's Christ, Westbound, 1980 (as Mattie Moss Clark).

Mattie Moss Clark presents The Greater Williams Temple Choir (COGIC) Live, GosPearl, 1982.

Dr. Mattie Moss Clark presents The Southern California Holy Gospel Music Workshop, Spirit & Truth, 1986.

Live in Atlanta, Capitol, 1994.

Watch Ye Therefore, Capitol, 1994.

Dr. Mattie Moss Clark presents A Reunion of the Southwest Michigan State Choir…Live!, Sparrow, 1995.

I'm Not Alone/The Hands Of God Reached Out And Touched Me, Sounds of Gospel, 2006.

That's Christ/He Was Hung Up for My Hang Ups, Sounds of Gospel, 2006.

God's Got All You Need/I'm Crucified with Christ, Sounds of Gospel, 2006.

Sources

Books

Boyer, Horace Clarence, How Sweet the Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel, Elliot & Clark, 1995.

Broughton, Viv, Black Gospel: An Illustrated History of the Gospel Sound, Blandford Press, 1985.

Young, Alan, Woke Me Up This Morning: Black Gospel Singers and the Gospel Life, University Press of Mississippi, 1997.

Periodicals

Michigan Daily, January 18, 2002.

On-line

"Dr. Mattie Moss Clark," Clark Sisters Fan Club, www.theclarksisters.com/mmc.html (April 25, 2007).

"Legends of Detroit Gospel Virtual Exhibit," Michigan State University Museum,http://museum.msu.edu/museum/tes/gospel/index.htm (May 29, 2007).

"Mattie Moss Clark," All Music Guide,www.allmusic.com (April 25, 2007).

"Michigan Heritage Awards: Mattie Moss Clark," Michigan State University: Michigan Traditional Arts Program,http://museum.msu.edu/s-program/mh_awards/awards/1990MC.html (April 25, 2007).