Sallie Martin
Sallie Martin was an American gospel singer, arranger, and entrepreneur — a founding partner in Thomas Dorsey's National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses and co-founder of the Martin & Morris Publishing Company, one of the first Black-owned gospel-song publishing houses. Billed as the "Mother of Gospel Music," she led the trailblazing all-female Sallie Martin Singers through gospel's 1940s–50s golden age and mentored a generation of Chicago gospel singers, including Albertina Walker.
Martin left her Cleveland/Chicago church-choir singing in the late 1920s to become Thomas Dorsey's touring song demonstrator and bookkeeper, absorbing his blues-inflected gospel style directly from its source before striking out as a performer and publisher herself.
listen forA blues bend running under a hymn melody — the same harmonic DNA connects Dorsey's "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" to Martin's own plain-spoken gospel delivery.