Pilgrim Travelers
Formed in the 1930s and based in Los Angeles from 1947, the Pilgrim Travelers were dubbed "gospel's first showmen" for a dynamic, aisle-running stage act built on top of a driving "walking rhythm" vocal style. Manager J.W. Alexander pushed the group's showmanship toward the secular soul stage that would follow, and the group toured for months alongside the Soul Stirrers after winning a talent contest.
In their early years the Pilgrim Travelers explicitly "mimicked the style of the Golden Gates' jubilee" — the rhythmic, syncopated close-harmony sound the Golden Gate Quartet had made the dominant jubilee style of the prewar era.
listen forThe swung, train-rhythm vocal interplay of the Golden Gate Quartet's "Golden Gate Gospel Train" is the same rhythmic engine under the Travelers' own driving "Mother Bowed."
The Travelers also modeled themselves on "the Soul Stirrers' gospel," and after winning a talent contest were invited by R.H. Harris to join the Soul Stirrers on a forty-two-week national tour — a direct, sustained apprenticeship in the group's hard-gospel lead style.
listen forThe ad-libbed, emotionally pushed lead vocal R.H. Harris pioneered on "By and By" resurfaces in the loose, conversational lead of the Travelers' "Jesus Met the Woman at the Well."