Bliss Tavern Music

Only a handful of people were present for the prayer meeting at Shooting Creek Baptist Church, at the bottom of the Great Smoky Mountain Range...Dad introduced us and said we would be glad to sing a couple of songs. We sang and then Dad told them we had a few books containing the songs, for 50 cents; we also had pictures for 15 cents. "Will someone with a couple of beds be willing to invite us home for the night?" he asked. Lee Penland raised his hand and invited us to his place, hoping our old Studebaker could make it up the mountain! We made it and the next morning Mrs. Penland cooked a delicious breakfast of country ham, eggs, grits, biscuits and homemade jelly. We thanked them, sang a song, and climbed in our car for the trip home. (From The Johnson Family Singers: We Sang for Our Supper, Jackson, MS: The University Press of MS, 1997, pp. 39-40)

Returning to Shooting Creek sixty-two years later, Kenneth drove across the bridge, turned right, went up the hill to the second house on the left, where people were sitting on the porch. There he met Marge Moss, who told him that as a 16-year-old she had attended the Prayer meeting in June, 1940, and remembered the family singing and the invitation by the Penlands for us to spend the night at their home, up the road from her house.

In these simple songs of faith, you may recall an era long forgotten - but not by millions of music lovers around the earth.

Let me share with you my singing family and some of the music we sang on records and radio, which began sixty-two years ago. These songs of Faith have sustained me throughout my life and it is my hope that you too will find this music to be uplifting. Do let me hear from you (betty@betty-johnson.com).

-Betty Johnson

"In the 1940s, Betty Johnson, her brothers and parents often traveled through the South singing in churches they visited, and supping at the table of members of the congregation. Betty recalls those days in a welcome collection of original Columbia recordings by the Johnson Family Singers. As I said on the program, Betty's voice is like the grace of angels on these titles. We heard "A Haven in Heaven," "Get On Your Knees, Sinner," one of the Johnson Family numbers inspired by the advent of the atomic bomb, and "Sunday Morning in Dixie." - Rob Bamberger - host of WAMU 88.5 FM's Hot Jazz Saturday Night