Emmanuel Taylor Gordon (1893-1971) entertained British audiences from 1927. He was closely associated with J[ohn] Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) whose brother James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was an author and political leader from the 1920s, which places Gordon on the edges of the Harlem Renaissance, the explosion in black talents which the Johnson brothers were primary influences. The brothers appeared on the London stage in 1905, and in that period they visited Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in Croydon. Rosamond and Coleridge-Taylor shared a deep interest in Spirituals, talking into the night about them according to Rosamond’s grand-daughter who spent much time with the veteran.

The brothers issued The Book of American Negro Spirituals in 1925 and in 1926 the Second Book of Negro Spirituals, which became primary resources for music lovers. No doubt they influenced Taylor Gordon, whose knowledge of these powerful songs originated with his mother – the only black family in White Sulphur Springs, Montana. Gordon wrote about his childhood in Born to Be, an autobiography in 1929.

The London show business weekly The Era of 6 July 1927 (page 8) noted of a Gordon-Johnson recital in London’s Wigmore Hall that there was ‘inevitably a good deal of sameness about the melodies and moods’ but which ‘The audiences warmly appreciate’. The pair were to sing ‘Gwine Up’, ‘My Los’ Sheep’, and ‘Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?’ on the relatively new radio (‘To-day’s Wireless Programmes’) at 8.45 pm on 4 July 1927, which notice appeared in many newspapers including Daily Chronicle, Daily Express, Northern Whig, Evening News, and the Dundee Courier of that date. They were again on the radio on 11 August; and appeared at a high society gathering at the Century Theatre, London of the ‘Rag Bag Club’ (Westminster Gazette, 18 July 1927, page 4).

Taylor Gordon had a role in the film The Emperor Jones in 1933, produced in America and featuring Paul Robeson – and the music of Rosamond Johnson. Robeson is the individual who immediately comes to mind when Spirituals and Britain in the 1930s are considered. Another black American singer of spirituals was John Payne (who settled in Britain in 1919 and died in Cornwall in 1952). Roland Hayes was a classic tenor who like Payne and Robeson made recordings. The Jamaican Louis Drysdale who was first in Britain in 1906, settled in Forest Hill in south-east London, where he taught singing techniques and died in 1933. He helped train some visiting American singers.

Whilst Robeson became famous and has a substantial fan club, Taylor Gordon, Payne and Drysdale have all but faded from the memories of black musical achievers in Britain.