Thomas Andrew Dorsey (July 1, 1899 – January 23, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and Christian evangelist influential in the development of early blues and 20th-century gospel music.

[1] Born in rural Georgia, Dorsey grew up in a religious family but gained most of his musical experience playing blues piano at barrelhouses and parties in Atlanta.

He gained fame accompanying blues belter Ma Rainey on tour and, billed as "Georgia Tom", joined with guitarist Tampa Red in a successful recording career.

Villa Rica's rural location allowed Dorsey to hear slave spirituals, and "moaning" – a style of singing marked by elongated notes and embellishments widespread among Southern black people – alongside the Protestant hymns his father favored.

The adjustment for the entire family was difficult, culminating in Thomas being isolated, held back at school, and eventually dropping out after the fourth grade when he was twelve years old.

Soon he began selling concessions there, and aspiring to join the theater band, honed his musical skills on his family's organ and a relative's piano, picking out melodies that he had heard and practicing long hours.

Encountering more competition for jobs and with his concentration primarily on blues, Dorsey turned to composing, copyrighting his first song in 1920, titled "If You Don't Believe I'm Leaving, You Can Count the Days I'm Gone".

Dorsey found appeal in the freedom and potential that came with improvising within established hymns, allowing singers and musicians to infuse more emotion – particularly joy and elation – into their performances to move congregations.

[5][7] Two of his secular songs were recorded by Monette Moore and another by Joe "King" Oliver, ensuring Dorsey a place as one of Chicago's top blues composers.

In 1923, he became the pianist and leader of the Wild Cats Jazz Band accompanying Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, a charismatic and bawdy blues shouter who sang about lost love and hard times.

[8] Dorsey worked with Rainey and her band for two years, wherein he composed and arranged her music in the blues style he was accustomed to, as well as vaudeville and jazz to please audiences' tastes.

[9] Rainey enjoyed enormous popularity touring with a hectic schedule, but beginning in 1926 Dorsey was plagued by a two-year period of deep depression, even contemplating suicide.

Many churches sought prestige in their musical offerings, which were often ornate and sophisticated liturgical compositions by classical European composers, such as Handel's Messiah (1742) and Mozart's Alleluia (1773).

[13][14][d] Unsure if gospel music could sustain him, Dorsey was nonetheless pleased to discover that he made an impression at the National Baptist Convention in 1930 when, unknown to him, Willie Mae Ford Smith sang "If You See My Savior" during a morning meeting.

[15] In between recording sessions with Tampa Red, and inspired by the compliments he received, he formed a choir at Ebenezer Baptist Church at the request of the pastor, Reverend James Smith, who had an affinity for Negro spirituals and indigenous singing styles.

Dorsey and Ebenezer's music director Theodore Frye trained the new chorus to deliver his songs with a gospel blues sound: lively, joyous theatrical performances with embellished and elongated notes accentuated with rhythmic clapping and shouts.

At their debut, Frye strutted up and down the aisles and sang back and forth with the chorus, and at one point Dorsey jumped up from the piano stool in excitement and stood as he played.

[16] This new style began to catch on in Chicago, and Dorsey's musical partners Theodore Frye, Magnolia Lewis Butts, and Henry Carruthers urged him to organize a convention where musicians could learn gospel blues.

An unintended consequence of his sales strategy helped spread gospel blues, as he worked with numerous musicians who assisted in selling his sheet music traveling to churches in and around Chicago.

[20] He also mentored many young musicians, including training a teenage Mahalia Jackson when she first arrived in Chicago, although he said she did not entirely accept his instruction: "She said I was trying to make a stereotyped singer out of her.

"[21][22] In addition to the high spirited choir performances, Dorsey began introducing uptempo Negro spirituals, what he referred to as "jubilees", alongside published hymns in worship services.

[25] Others took offense to such lively music overshadowing the minister's spoken word, or women delivering spiritual messages through song, taking the place of the preacher who was typically male.

Hundreds of thousands of newly arrived migrants from the South, with an appreciation of blues, began to outnumber an older guard of ministers and parishioners who favored classical European music in services.

Services were thus altered in multiple ways to welcome the influx of migrants, for spiritual and pragmatic reasons: attracting and keeping new members helped reconcile many churches' debts.

[18][h] Throughout his career, Dorsey composed more than 1,000 gospel and 2,000 blues songs, an achievement Mahalia Jackson considered equal to Irving Berlin's body of work.

Lyrically, according to Boyer, Dorsey was "skilled at writing songs that not only captured the hopes, fears, and aspirations of the poor and disenfranchised African Americans but also spoke to all people".

[44] I think about all these blue-collar people who had to deal with Jim Crow, meager salaries, and yet the maid who cleaned up somebody else's house all week long, the porter, the chauffeur, the gardener, the cook, were nobody.

His song "Peace in the Valley", written in 1937 originally for Mahalia Jackson, was recorded by, among others, Red Foley in 1951, and Elvis Presley in 1957, selling more than a million copies each.

[33][24] Notably, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" was the favorite song of Martin Luther King Jr., who asked Dorsey to play it for him on the eve of his assassination.

Anthony Heilbut writes that "the few days following his death, 'Precious Lord' seemed the truest song in America, the last poignant cry of nonviolence before a night of storm that shows no sign of ending".