Shining City Audio, a John Meacham and C-13 original studio.

January 27, 1972, Mahalia Jackson dies.

I'm John Meacham, and this is Reflections of History.

Her voice mattered, and not only in song, Mahalia Jackson was one of the most influential musicians in American history.

And she was the one who, fearing her friend Martin Luther King Jr. was losing the audience at the March on Washington for jobs in freedom, had said aloud,

tell them about the dream, Martin, tell them about the dream.

At that point in August 1963, King pivoted into his deathless pureration.

On this date in 1972, Mahalia Jackson died too young at age 60.

The granddaughter of an enslaved person, she was gospel's great voice in the middle of the 20th century.

As the New York Times wrote, many of Ms. Jackson's songs were evocations of religious faith and were intended in keeping with her own profound belief in God to be devotional.

Her soaring voice aimed to obey the psalmist's injunction to make a joyful noise unto the Lord.

Ms. Jackson's songs were not hymns nor were they jazz.

Convents that everything she said or did rested on the word of God, she resisted efforts of the late Louis Armstrong and other jazz or blues musicians to transform her into a jazz singer.

So wrote the Times.

Ms. Jackson's own insight on this question was profound.

Blues are the songs of despair, she remarked.

Gospel songs are the songs of hope.

When you sing gospel, you have the feeling there is a cure for what's wrong, but when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on.

Ms. Jackson sang at JFK's inauguration at the March on Washington and at King's funeral in Atlanta.

On hearing the news of her death, Coretta Scott King said that the causes of justice, freedom and brotherhood have lost a real champion whose dedication and commitment knew no midnight.

President Nixon marked the day by saying, America in the world, black people and all people today more in the passing of Mahalia Jackson.

She was a noble woman, an artist without peer, a magnetic ambassador of goodwill for the United States and other lands, an exemplary servant of her God.

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