How They Got Over
Gospel Quartets and the Road to Rock & Roll
How They Got Over tells the story of how Black gospel quartet music became a primary source for what we would call rock and roll, and in the process helped to break down racial walls in 1950s America. Beginning in the 1920s, Black singers across the country took to the highways as the new technology of radio and records made it possible to reach a wider audience. Intense competition brought new ways to entertain, first with guitars, later with full bands, then with a performance style that would inspire Mick Jagger and a host of other rock and rollers. Their music was infectious, wrecking many a house on the chitlin’ circuit, then graduating to the Apollo and other major auditoriums across the country. The success of gospel quartets inspired record labels to form doo-wop groups and enticed gospel singers like Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls and Wilson Pickett to cross over to greater fame.
How They Got Over features classic performance footage of the Soul Stirrers, Dixie Hummingbirds, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Blind Boys of Alabama and Mississippi, Sensational Nightingales, the Davis Sisters and many more. Some of the greatest names in quartet music are interviewed in the film, giving vivid accounts of how they “got over.”
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