I’m copying and pasting a response I made to a recent Doug Harrison post. Doug ran across the “too good not to pass along” YouTube video of Wentley Wintley Phipps explaining the history of “Amazing Grace.” The source is one of the Carnegie Hall videos put out by Gaither & Co. Doug wrote: “I have no idea how solid his music history or musicology is, but it’s a great story.”
It IS a sensational story. Unfortunately, it doesn’t check out when you do a shred of research. Here’s the response I posted to Doug’s blog:
John Newton was converted to Christianity in 1748, when he gave up his slave trading. The lyrics to “Amazing Grace” were written in 1772, 24 years later. John Newton died in 1807. The tune (New Brittain) was first associated with the lyrics to “Amazing Grace” in the 1830s in an American tune book.
For more info, see:
http://www.markrhoads.com/amazingsite/TunePages/NewBritain.htm
When you consider that short of using a time machine, John Newton wasn’t alive to hear his lyrics sung to the tune we now associate with “Amazing Grace,” it’s pretty obvious that there is no history to back up Phipps’ yarn. At best, Phipps himself was duped and passed the story along out of ignorance. At worst, he made it up whole cloth and tried to dupe the rest of us. He tells a good story, but it’s the sort of story that belongs on Snopes.com.
As a matter of fact, there is an “Amazing Grace” article on Snopes.com with some good background information, though it doesn’t address the Phipps fable directly.
http://www.snopes.com/religion/amazing.asp
Another aspect of Phipps’ tale that is humorous is his attempt to associate a single race with the pentatonic scale. How convenient that on the piano the notes happen to be black! The fact of the matter is that the pentatonic scale is commonly used in many forms of folk music, be it Asian, white or black based folk music. It’s a universally accepted musical scale.
UPDATE (April 21): I should correct one error above. Newton was converted to Christianity in 1748, but continued to work as a slave trader for several years after the fact. I should also add…Newton was noted for joining William Wilberforce in the fight against slavary in England, but this didn’t happen until much later in his life. If you saw the film titled Amazing Grace that came out a few years ago, you got the idea…though that film also associated the tune New Britain with the lyric.
DBM, I have a book on the tune “Amazing Grace” that goes into the tune’s history in depth and concludes that the song may well have come from slave roots.
Disparaging comments on his lack of research would perhaps be more meaningful if you had cared enough to research Mr. Phipps enough to at least get his name correct. Or, were you possibly “duped and passed on the story out of ignorance”?
Daniel,
That’s entirely possible. The origin of the tune has never been pinned down. Some people think it’s Scottish, but that’s primarily because there was a popular bagpipe version of the tune recorded in the 1960s.
The point is that the tune and the lyric were joined in the 1830s in America.
Phipps’ error laden story is that Newton heard the tune sung by slaves sometime prior to 1748, kept it in the back of his mind for decades, and wrote the lyrics to fit the tune. He backs up his story with a claim that, after all, it’s based on a slave scale, which is, in reality, the very common pentatonic scale. “Yankee Doodle” uses the same scale, by the way.
Phipps also makes an error when he tries to draw a racial distinction between the “do re mi” scale and the pentatoni scale. “Somebody else wrote that scale,” he says.
The fact is that the pentatonic scale is completely contained within the “do re mi” scale (the scale musicians commonly call “major”). The major scale merely fills in a couple of gaps in the pentatonic scale by adding two more notes.
Here’s why the video clip is so convincing to anyone who fails to look beneath the surface:
Phipps first plays on natural prejudice (“somebody else wrote that scale”) and stereotypes (the ever wise Southern black woman) to juice up his yarn. He then “proves” his hypothesis that the black notes equal this “slave scale” by playing a couple of spirituals on the black notes. By this point, he has musical luminaries like Bill Gaither, Larnelle Harris, and a Carnegie Hall crowd nodding along.
He can then toss the chronology of history completely out the window and say the lyrics were inspired by the tune. The way he sets up and delivers his yarn is so inspiring, it’s impossible to consider that it may not hold an ounce of truth.
By the way, another side point: For whatever it’s worth, he didn’t originate the story. The book I read on the history of the song tracked that story being told by various (mostly black) performers over the last several decades, with most of the same spins.
Onlooker,
Your point is acknowledged and corrected.
Meanwhile, Phipps’ yarn lives on.
We love to hear romanticized and often fabricated stories of how hymns and tunes came into being. Mr. Phipps’ “yarn†fits this description precisely. Yarns about origins make us feel good, but our greatest source of genuine feeling should the words of this hymn which contain the truth of the Gospel.
In reality the origin of most hymns and tunes is rather mundane. “Amazing Grace†was one of hundreds of hymns (he only wrote the words) Newton wrote and published in Olney Hymns 1779. It was barely known in England until the mid 20th century. From the early 19th and well into the 20th century American revivalists found it useful and sang it to a number of different tunes until we finally settle on the now familiar tune called NEW BRITAIN. David has referred to my website which documents some of the story. Here’s the home page
http://markrhoads.com/amazingsite/index.htm
What next? Are you going to scour Wendy Bagwell’s itineraries from the 70’s to prove that he was never scheduled to sing in a church that practiced snake handling or booked on the same program with a blind group? Go to the Akron area and look at the sales records of every pet shop to see if Van Payne ever bought a parrot? Interview Glen Payne’s insurance agent to see if Mrs. Payne ever drove a car into their swimming pool? Bring out the Nielsen ratings for 1966 and show Jeff Steele that “Andy Griffith” was not the top rated show 30 years before he wrote “We Want America Back”?
Coming soon…”No, Virginia, there is NOT a Santa Claus”. (This will appear in the Singing News. Subscribe, you freeloaders!)
Stop spoiling our fun and let the artists tell their little stories.
NOTE: The preceding was not written with a straight face.
Grigs,
Do you ever write anything with a straight face? :o)
D. Mount twice mentions the “book” he read about Amazing Grace, but never tells us the name of the book. Is he afraid that someone will read it and contradict him?
Also, does anyone know the history and origin of the song “New Britain”?
OMGosh, lighten up folks! Wintley Phipps did not claim all assertions to be fact, but rather what he believes to be probable, and in particular, how he chooses to envision the song’s delivery. This is called “literary license”. When taken within its proper context, any reasonable person soon realizes, he is delivering his message as an artist and not as a scholar. It is a given fact that the tune cannot be traced, as he asserts after having discovered for himself, within the walls of the Library of Congress. Beliefs aside, here are the facts for which he was “spot on”: Most African songs depend on short melodic phrases in which a leader sings first and the group repeats the phrase in a slightly different way. Although the phrases are short, they lend themselves to many forms of rhythmic and melodic variations. The “African pentatonic” or five-tone scale, gives the music its unique sound, and in early America were referred to as the “slave scale”. They build the power and pathos of the negro spirituals with their unique West African sorrow chant sound. The pentatonic scales are very common and found all over the world, but widely accepted as having West African origins. It is true that John Newton was a writer of hymns – poetry chanted by rote throughout many a congregation. However, this is not to negate the elusive possibility that he wrote to well beloved tunes familiar to him.
There is no record of the tune and the lyric appearing together until years after John Newton died. That’s the whole point on which Phipps’ story hangs.
As for the pentatonic scale being called “commonly called” the “slave scale,” do a Google search on the term. What do you find? You find dozens of references to Phipps and this particular tale along with some non-music related links.
If the terms “pentatonic” and “slave scale” have been considered to be synonymous for as long as you claim, there should be a wealth of references to tunes other than New Britain that demonstrate the same connection. That isn’t the case.
You are correct that the scale is common all over the world. It’s as popular in Chinese and Celtic tradition as it is in American or African tradition.
You said,
“When taken within its proper context, any reasonable person soon realizes, he is delivering his message as an artist and not as a scholar.”
Yes, he’s giving a performance, but he’s speaking as one who has authority in the subject. There’s a distinct difference between this performance and him reading a passage from _God’s Trombones_ by James Weldon Johnson.
He’s taken a peculiarity of a European instrument…the black notes of the piano…which have absolutely nothing to do with race. Then he’s taken a lyric written in England and a tune of folk origin that was paired with the lyric only years later.
He’s then associated it all with the African race, when there’s not a shred of evidence to support any of it.
People buy it, because he’s a gifted communicator.
I don’t know if Mr. Phipps story is factually true. But we live in a day when everything that seems to be Christian is being questioned.
At this writing I am 70 years old and I have experienced and seen many things in my life.
I realize that when The Rattlesnake Story came out by Wendy Bagwell that most people would laugh it off.
Though I remember that as a child in the 60s, I had the experience of being in a snake handling church service. We lived in Birmingham, Alabama and my father was a Holiness preacher and he would go to many Holiness churches around the Birmingham area and I remember many things about those churches. Though we were only in one snake handling service that I know of. My dad did not go back to that church.
Wendy Bagwell’s tale of being in a snake-handling church, though obviously embellished, is based on reality. A select few congregations do/did handle snakes as a form of “worship.”
Phipps’ version of how “Amazing Grace” came to be is just complete fiction, and the problem with that is how Phipps presents it as though it’s a history lesson.
That’s why we should embrace Bagwell’s story for the comedy value it has while dismissing Phipps’ made-up tale.
Isn’t it bad enough that John Newton started out as a completely evil person who purchased and sold human beings? Someone that evil certainly wasn’t above taking a melody they sang and setting words to it, except for that pesky fact that there’s zero evidence Newton ever HEARD his lyric sung with that melody.
Credit where it’s due; I admire Phipp’s gift for spinning a yarn and playing on emotions and deep-seated prejudices. I’m just disappointed to see that even 15 years later, most people won’t even entertain the idea that it might be false.