Reviewed by Ian Boughton

50 years ago, in the southern American states, it was not unusual for an entire singing family to emerge from the mountains and backwoods as a kind of self-sufficient act. parents and kids would all be involved, and several of these families became notable gospel acts from the po' white sector. One was the Johnson Family of North Carolina and in his new book We Sang For Our Supper. Methodist minister Kenneth Johnson gives an entertaining account of his life as a 12 year old full time touring gospel singer. In the late '30s there were chances to work 'live' on local radio stations of which America has always had thousands, and the Johnson career was a long slog from this small town Americana right up to the Ed Sullivan Show. There aren't many writers left who can tell you about 'hobo jungles', the railroad camps of jobless men who illegally rode the freight trains around the old South; Kenneth Johnson offers such glimpses beside insights into both the playing and the business of old time gospel. Much of the business power was in the hands of the big song publishers who ran annual 'music schools'; the real aim of these was to teach artists their latest songs and groups like the Johnsons would then go out with boxes full of the publishers' songbooks to sell at their shows. This was important income - the radio station only paid the family $10 a show, so investing in 100 songbooks for $22 to re-sell at 35 cents each was worth the effort. It is fascinating to discover how those old songbooks were written, in not just standard music notation but "shape notes'. It may sound too showbiz to be true, but this was invented by two enemies in the civil war - one rescued the other, and later as friends they devised a scale in which tonic sol-fa is written as shapes: a "doh' is always a triangle, 'mi' is a diamond, and so on. According to Kenneth Johnson, it helps you work out a melody remarkably fast.

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