MAKING HISTORY: Doris Akers, Miss Gospel Music
Doris Akers
MAKING HISTORY: Doris Akers, “Miss Gospel Music”
Linn County has more entertainment royalty than one might realize. We all know of Walt Disney’s connection to the county, and earlier we discussed Marian Ainslee, the woman who wrote the title cards for more than 200 feature films, but did you know Linn County is also home to one of the greatest Gospel singers in the country? Brookfield needs to have a yearly celebration of their Gospel superstar.
Doris Akers (May 21, 1923 – July 26, 1995) was a biracial gospel music composer, arranger and singer. According to Bil Carpenter, author of Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia, Doris was “one of the most underrated gospel composers of the 20th century [who] wrote more than 500 songs.” So influential was she in Gospel music that she became known as “Miss Gospel Music”.
Growing Up
Doris Akers was born in Brookfield on 21 May 1923. Her parents, Floyd and Pearl, an interracial marriage, were married in 1909, nearly 60 years before Loving v. Virginia. She had nine siblings. Floyd and Pearl divorced about three years after Doris was born. Doris and some of her siblings went with her mom and her new husband and lived in Kirksville for a while. According to Christian Broadcast News’ “Honored by the Smithsonian: “Sweet, Sweet Spirit”, Doris “learned to play the piano by ear at age six and by age ten had composed her first song. By the time she was twelve, she had organized a five-piece band that played music of the 1930s.” According to the Kirksville Daily Express and Kirksville Daily News, she even performed in her Lincoln School Minstrel Show 1932.
Early career
When Doris was only 22, she moved to Los Angeles, where she encountered a thriving gospel music community. According to CBN, a year after moving to Los Angeles, she joined the Sallie Martin Singers as pianist and singer. Two years later, she partnered with Dorothy Vemell Simmons to form the Simmons–Akers Singers. At the young age of 25, Doris also launched the Akers Music House publishing firm.
According to ASCAP documentation and the California Eagle, in 1958, along with her friend Mahalia Jackson, Doris co-wrote the song, “Lord, Don’t Move the Mountain”, which sold over a million records.
In the same year, Doris became director of the Sky Pilot Choir, a racially integrated choir. The choir was often featured on recordings, television shows, and radio broadcasts across the country. Her modern arrangements of traditional Negro spirituals drew large crowds, and she was credited with the boom in church attendance.
In 1961, the California Eagle announced that Doris won the Gospel Composer of the Year award.
After leaving the Sky Pilot Choir in 1965, Doris recorded for RCA Victor into the mid-sixties, cutting popular albums like “Forever Faithful” (1963), the The Statesmen Quartet collaboration “Sing for You” (1964), and “Highway to Heaven” (1965).
She moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1970 but continued touring and recording.
So beloved was Doris that “Doris Akers Day” was held in Kirksville, Missouri in July of 1976. She was the headline act of the city’s American Bicentennial celebration. Estimates put the crown attending the concert at about 20,000.
Incredibly, during the 1980s, Doris issued a new gospel album every year on a regional Midwest label. In order to let buyers know they had the current album, she covered each new one with a new color photograph of the artist.
In the United States she began recording for the Gaither label and appeared at some of their concerts and in TV productions. In the early 1990s she was featured in Bill Gaither’s gospel videos Old Friends, Turn Your Radio On, and Precious Memories (Hymnology Archives).
In 1992, Akers was honored by the Smithsonian Institution as “the foremost black gospel songwriter in the United States.”
She became known as “Miss Gospel Music” because of her long, storied career and the fact she had mastered every aspect of gospel music including vocals, keyboards, choir directing, arranging, composing and publishing. Throughout her career she worked with many of the pioneers of the Golden Age of Gospel Music, authored many standard gospel compositions, and moved freely and successfully in all spheres of gospel music. Many of her compositions sold millions for other gospel artists and evangelists (Hymnology Archive).
Prior to her death, she had won five Grammy’s for gospel singing, one more that her friend Mahalia Jackson.
Her Final Years
According to multiple sources, Doris lived out the final years in Minneapolis, Minnesota, serving as Minister of Music at Grace Temple Deliverance Center. She had traveled all over Canada and the United States and has been credited with over 500 songs. Sadly, spinal cancer was discovered when she visited the doctor after breaking her ankle. She died nearly a year later, on July 26, 1995, in Edina, Minnesota.
She was posthumously inducted to the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2011 Doris Akers was inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
In the end, Miss Gospel Music proved to be a powerhouse in Gospel music. Her life deserves to be honored more than it is now. It would be incredible to see Kirksville bring back Doris Akers Day or for her hometown of Brookfield to take up that mantle.
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