Born into grinding poverty in New Orleans, Mahalia Jackson forged an entirely new, indestructible musical alloy from three contrasting elements: the formal, structured Protestant hymns of her strict Baptist upbringing, the ecstatic, full-body Pentecostal "jubilees" she listened to outside next-door church doors, and the emotional, note-bending delivery of the secular blues she secretly played while scrubbing floors. Migrating north to Chicago in 1928, her physical, exuberant vocal style initially faced harsh rejection from northern, middle-class "society negroes" and vocal coaches who urged her to sanitize her performance to assimilate into white standards. Despite facing starvation during the Great Depression, Jackson maintained an ironclad covenant with God—made in exchange for her grandfather's survival from a stroke—promising she would never  ...