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Don't Put Off Salvation Too Long
Traditional Old-time Gospel
ARTIST: From The Southland Ladies Quartette recorded c. 1930 in Richmond, Indiana, for the Starr Piano Company. Originally issued on Challenge 426. It appears with liner notes (below) on I’m On My Journey Home: New World Records 80549.
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CATEGORY: Traditional and Public Domain Gospel
DATE: probably late 1800s; Recorded 1930 Carson Brothers- Smith
RECORDING INFO: Don't Put Off Salvation Too Long
Southland Ladies Quartette. I'm On My Journey Home; Vocal Styles & Resources in Folk Music, New World NW 223, LP (1978), trk# B.05 [1930ca]
OTHER NAMES: "Don’t Put Off Salvation"
RELATED TO:
SOURCES: Folk Index; I’m On My Journey Home: New World Records 80549.
NOTES: "Don’t Put Off Salvation Too Long" is a traditional spiritual and old-time/bluegrass gospel song. This version is from The Southland Ladies Quartette recorded c. 1930 in Richmond, Indiana, for the Starr Piano Company. Originally issued on Challenge 426. It appears with liner notes (below) on I’m On My Journey Home: New World Records Track 17, 80549.
Liner notes: Don’t Put Off Salvation Too Long
One of the most potent modes of Anglo-American rural music in the twentieth century has been the gospel quartet. Though not folk music by the strictest definition (most gospel quartets sang from printed texts), white gospel music is solidly rooted in the nineteenth-century heritage of the singing convention, shape-note hymnody, and a well-worn vocabulary of commonplace phrases and images. The gospel-quartet singing style began to emerge in the early twentieth century as an outgrowth of the burgeoning gospel publishing industry.
Publishers were finding a lucrative market for their inexpensive books of newly written sacred songs modeled after the pop music of the day. To help promote their songs, some publishers hired quartets to go into rural America and demonstrate the songs by giving concerts. Gradually the quartets gained popularity in their own right, and by the thirties singing groups, like country singers, were struggling to professionalize and
commercialize their music.
Many rural Southern churches frowned on the use of instruments in church, and others could not afford instruments; thus the a-cappella style of the older forms was preserved in much quartet music and in religious music in general. (Indeed, white church music is about the only unaccompanied folk vocal style readily found
in the South today.) Most gospel quartets were either all male or consisted of two men and two women. In the former case the second tenor usually sang lead, the first tenor sang the alto part one octave up, and the baritone and bass filled in the rest. In mixed quartets the women usually sang the soprano and alto parts (with the soprano carrying the melody) while the men sang the tenor and bass parts. In this all-female quartet
the bass is apparently being sung an octave up.
Little is known about the Southland Ladies Quartette, they apparently recorded only two numbers, but their singing is obviously more formal than much of the other traditional singing on this album. Their pitch and their timing are strictly coordinated, and they make an effort to project "good diction." Nonetheless, there are some hints of traditional style in their performance, such as their scooping into pitches.
"Don't Put Off Salvation Too Long" is an invitational hymn, a call-to-the altar song designed to encourage reluctant churchgoers to step forward and make a "decision for Christ." A 1942 edition of Stamps-Baxter's Modern Favorite Songs gives authorship credit to J. R. Baxter Jr., and V. O. Fossett, but the song is certainly older than that and was probably purchased by Stamps-Baxter when they bought out the smaller Central Music Company during the Depression. The original owners were probably L. B. Leister and Ramsey. The song's saccharine nineteenth-century-style lyric is typical of material in convention songbooks.
Don’t Put Off Salvation Too Long- Southland Ladies Quartette
The Savior is tenderly calling,
Don't put off salvation too long;
The nightshades for you may be falling,
Don't put off salvation too long.
Chorus: Oh come to the Savior no longer delay,
Don't put off salvation too long;
Find pardon and favor with Jesus today,
Don't put off salvation too long.
While loved ones are earnestly praying,
Don't put off salvation too long;
The angels in Heaven are saying,
"Don't put off salvation too long."
(Chorus)
It may be too late if you tarry,
Don't put off salvation too long;
Your burdens to Jesus now carry,
Don't put off salvation too long.
(Chorus)
You may not be living tomorrow,
Don't put off salvation too long;
Just lay at His feet all your sorrow,
Don't put off salvation too long.
(Chorus)
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