Shirley Caesar

After hearing the voice of God during a college exam, Shirley Caesar (born 1938) believed it was her duty to spread the Gospel. This "calling" has developed into 150 concerts per year, volunteer work for the poor, numerous Grammy awards, and over 30 record albums.

With 150 concerts a year, 25 hours a week helping the poor in her Outreach Ministries, several Grammies, and 30 record albums to her credit, Shirley Caesar may seem to be a whole army of gospel singers instead of just one diminutive (5'1, 3/4") cherubic-looking woman. The "Queen of Gospel" packs a lot of wallop in her small frame. Backed by a sixty-person choir, rocking like a tempest, she is a bundle of fireworks on the Fourth of July. The gospel style of song and sermonette, singing that involves both the spoken word and dramatic acting, was developed primarily by Shirley Caesar. She journeys all over the world, sometimes traveling all night to return to her pulpit in Durham, North Carolina, the town where she was born. "It is not easy," said Shirley in her 1995 video He Will Come (Word Records), "In fact, sometimes it is downright mind-boggling. But, somehow, even though I'm wearing all of these hats, the Lord helps me to just barrel through it." Shirley has barreled through fifty years of touring and preaching, starting at age ten, and she continues to bring the house down every time she performs.

The tenth of 12 children, Shirley Caesar was born October 13, 1938. Her father James was a tobacco worker who was well-known in the Carolinas as the lead singer in a gospel quartet, the Just Came Four. Shirley began singing with the group at age ten. When she was twelve, her father died, and she began touring with an evangelist named LeRoy Johnson, who also had a television show in Portsmouth, Virginia. In 1951, at thirteen, she recorded her first song "I'd Rather Have Jesus." While still in high school, she toured throughout the Carolinas.

This was a time when Jim Crow laws were still in effect in North Carolina. Shirley remembers restaurants putting up the CLOSED sign when she would arrive. "I went to school in the days when all the white kids got things better," she told People, "I remember once when a lady gave cookies to all the kids in the state. The white kids got the fresh ones; we got the stale ones." Despite these obstacles, her beloved mother Hannah taught her to respect herself and to persevere.

Her determination took her to North Carolina Central College where she studied business education. She has said that she got the call to God's work in the middle of a typing test. According to Kim Hubbard of People, she heard someone call out her name. Shirley turned to the young woman next to her and asked if she had spoken. When Shirley went home, she lay on the bed, and heard the same voice: "Behold, I have called you from your mother's womb and I have anointed your lips to preach the gospel." Shirley believed that this was a message that foretold special work for her in spreading the Gospel. Around the same time, Shirley heard Chicago's female gospel group, the Caravans, and she saw an opportunity to answer the call. She sought an audition with the group, was immediately hired, and left school for a life of singing and ministry.

The Caravans had several members who became famous in the history of gospel music: Albertina Walker, Inez Andrews, and Sarah McKissick. Each woman had a different style and Shirley's contribution was an energetic and dramatic approach where she would act out the songs and walk among the congregation, engaging the members directly. On the song "I Won't Be Back," she would run through the hall searching for an exit, then leave for a brief period. Her forte was the sermon in the middle of songs that addressed the subject of the song and expounded on its theme. She exhorted the listeners to reach out to God and to take the example of Jesus. On the subject of motherhood, she was particularly effective. Her song "Don't Drive Your Mama Away" tells of a son who is shamed for putting his mother in the rest home.

Along the way, Shirley found a male counterpart in the singer James Cleveland and they made several records together. They became known as the "King and Queen of Gospel." Shirley formed her own group in 1966 called the Caesar Singers, but she would reunite with the Caravans and the Reverend Cleveland occasionally throughout the years. In 1971, she won her first Grammy, for the popular song "Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee." On the night of the awards, she had returned very late from an engagement in Homer, Louisiana. People began banging on her door, and when she eventually answered, her sister Ann, one of her backup singers, shouted "You won!" It was the first Grammy for a black female gospel singer since Mahalia Jackson. Shirley went on to win the award in 1980, 1984, 1985, 1992 and 1994--for an astonishing total of seven Grammys.

Among her numerous honors are eight Dove awards, the Gospel Music Association's highest tribute. She was inducted into the Gospel Hall of Fame in 1982. She was the first female gospel artist to perform at Harvard University. In recent years, Shirley Caesar moved into other media, making several videos: Live in Memphis,I Remember Mama, and He Will Come. Broadway found that the gospel singer could conquer a big city when Shirley packed them in for the musical Mama I Want to Sing (1994). Her second Broadway musical in 1995 was titled Sing: Mama 2 and her third in 1996 was titled Born to Sing! Mama 3. Perhaps her proudest achievement was the creation of a ministry in Durham to provide emergency funds, food and shelter for the needy, the Shirley Caesar Outreach Ministries. When Shirley ran for public office and was elected to the Durham City Council in 1987, she concentrated her efforts on housing and care for the poor and elderly.

Recently, Caesar went into the studio to help recording artist Bishop T.D. Jakes with his upcoming album, "Woman, Thou Art Loosed." The album, recorded live at Jakes' national conference in New Orleans, was released in the summer of 1997.

Her biggest fan, the Rev. Harold I. Williams, whom Shirley has called "my pastor, my best friend, my husband," assessed his wife's character in the 1995 video He Will Come: "After twelve years, I'm going to say the same thing I said after the first year I was married to Shirley: exciting! You never know what is coming next. I mean it is exciting. It is from one thing to another. She's an exciting person. She's a joy to be around." Most who have seen her perform would agree.

Historical Context

• The Life and Times of Shirley Caeser (1938-)
• At the time of Caeser's birth:
• Franklin D. Roosevelt was president of the United States
• Britain and Ireland concluded a three-year pact that temporarily ended the trouble between them
• Hitler participated in a state visit to Mussolini in Rome
• Congress adopted the Naval Expansion Act providing funds for a ten-year program to build a two-ocean navy
• On October 30, 1938 Orson Welles broadcasted a radio play in New York titled `Invasion from Mars' that was so realistic it caused panic in many listeners
• The times:
• 1938-1945: World War II
• 1950-1953: Korean War
• 1957-1975: Vietnam War
• 1983: American invasion of Grenada
• 1991: Persian Gulf War
• Caesar's contemporaries:
• Janet Reno (1938-) U.S. attorney general
• Tina Turner (1938-) American R&B singer
• Peter Jennings (1938-) American news anchor
• Al Pacino (1940-) American actor
• Raul Julia (1940-1994) Puerto Rican actor
• Otis Redding (1941- 1967) American R&B singer
• Anne Rice (1941-) American writer
• Joan Baez (1941-) American folk singer
• Calvin Klein (1942-) American designer
• Selected world events:
• 1938: Benito Mussolini demanded France's colonies of Corsica and Tunisia in December
• 1940: Italy declared war on France and Britain June 10, 1940
• 1944: D-Day saw 176,000 Allied troops landing at Omaha Beach, Utah Beach and other Normandy beaches under the supreme command of Gen. Eisenhower
• 1950: The Mambo was introduced from Cuba to U.S. dance floors
• 1954: Veterans Day became a national holiday to replace Armistice Day
• 1961: The Supremes signed a contract with Berry Gordy's four-year-old Motown Corp. and cut their first record; they will make eight gold records in less than two years and have seven top records
• 1969: Man walked on the moon for the first time July 21, 1969
• 1977: Charlie Chaplin died at his Swiss estate December 25, 1977 at age 88
• 1981: AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) began taking a worldwide toll that will be compared to that of the Black Death in the fourteenth century
• 1993: A pre-dawn earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale rocked central India September 29, 1993, killing an estimated 20,000

Further Reading

• American Gospel, March/April 1992.
• Ebony, December 1988; March 1994; February 1996.
• Epic Center News: "http://www.epiccenter.com/EpicCenter/docs/artistbio.qry?artistid=235," July 17, 1997.
• Essence, October 1990.
• Jet, Jan. 8, 1990; Aug. 26, 1991; March 9, 1992.
• Journal of American Folklore, Summer 1991.
• People, November 9, 1987.

• Heilbut, Anthony, The Gospel Sound (1985).
• Cusic, Don, The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music, (1993).