They combine instrumental jazz with traditional gospel hymns for a unique, vibrant style. Shout bands, which have had a significant impact on gospel music, harken back to the big-band genre of the South. But the band is also accompanied by saxophones, cymbals, tambourines and a piano and organ. Keeping in step with Psalm 150, which encourages playing instruments in church, a shout band is a brass-heavy ensemble that includes a lead trombone and everything from the trumpets to a sousaphone.
Look to the Book of Psalms to find the true birthplace of the shout band, the musical ensemble that has become a staple at the United House of Prayer for Al l People. "I know it's going to be over $1,000," he said without flinching. The new trombone, he promises, will be top of the line. His son Lamont has the second trombone he ever owned, and Edward 3d has his original pawnshop horn hanging on the wall. He's on his third horn now, a $300 Bach trombone. Slipping into the doors of the White House was a point in my life to let me know that my plan and objectiveīabb is concentrating on using part of his fellowship to buy a new trombone. "I always knew that the music had to reach the people out of the House of Prayer. "It was an unspeakable joy" he said after playing for the likes of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and other dignitaries. The event was also the culmination of a lifelong dream for Babb. "Outside the House of Prayer, this is the first time I've been awarded anything in reference to my playing in the House of Prayer," he said. The $10,000 fellowship is NEA's most distinguished honor in the folk and traditional art. Babb's shout band played during the NEA's award ceremony for him and 10 other recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship this year.
But before he began playing the trombone, "nobody was playing anything.įor Babb, performing at the White House was the highlight of a five-day trip to the nation's capital organized by the National Endowment for the Arts. "I think it's in the blood now," quipped the senior Babb, a retired insurance salesman who now works as a supervisor at a security company when he's not playing at the church. The younger Edward, 29, plays the trombone in a shout band, and LaMont, 20, plays the tenor tuba. His two sons, Edward 3dIII and LaMont? lion, have followed in Babb's musical footsteps. Press him, and he'll admit that his true love is the piano. The snare drums, the baritonecq, the tuba you name it. Four years later, the same year the band was renamed the McCollough Sons of Thunder to honor an early House of Prayer leader, Babb took over the band.īabb, the last of the House of Prayer's original shout-band stars still living, has since learned to play just about every other instrument he has gotten his hands on. He joined the church's youth band, but like most young musicians at the House of Prayer, aspired to join the adult ensemble.īill Cohen, who led the adult group, then called the Heaven Band, made Babb wait until he turned 14 to join. House of Prayer at the time, got the horn from Albert Edgington, a band member.
No small feat for a man who can't read music, plays primarily in one key A flat and got his start by teaching himself to play a $25.īabb, who lived a few blocks from the 125th St. "They were doing what they do at the House of Prayer, standing up on their feet, patting their hands and clapping their feet," he said. And to hear him tell it, that's the same soul-stirring energy he and his 20-member band were able to drum up while playing at the White House on Tuesday. But with his orchestra backing him up this past Sunday the day before he went to Washington, D.Ĭ., to receive a prestigious national fellowship this genteel church elder whipped nearly everyone at the House of Prayer into a hand-clapping, body-swaying fervor.īabb had brothers bopping and a few sisters even dancing in the spirit as he pranced about the church, blaring out a Dixieland ditty. Babb, a 53-year-old Harlem native who now lives in Briarwood, Queens, is the leader of the House of Prayer's "shout band," a jazzy brass ensemble that originated with the congregation 73 years ago.īespectacled, gray-haired and standing 5-foot-8, he is not an imposing man.
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