ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the singing style of Willie Mae Ford Smith as a major influence upon gospel music performance practice. Willie Mae Ford Smith seems to have exerted both musical and philosophical influence on the lives of major gospel artists and groups that flowered during gospels golden age in the 1950s. Two songs closely associated with Willie Mae Ford Smith, 'Give Me Wings' and 'The Lifeboat Is Coming', provide respective examples of Smith's metered and non-metered singing. During the mid-1950s, Mother Smith joined and was ordained a minister in Lively Stone Apostolic Church in St. Louis, an affiliate of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, the largest of several Pentecostal-Apostolic denominations. St. Louis singer-songwriter Doris Fidmont Frazier remembers: he felt really lifted when Willie Mae Ford Smith or the O'Neal Twins were in services. The way she put the song over was special. For the researcher the legacy of Willie Mae Ford Smith is both a gift and awesome challenge.
