Psalms: Transcript

African-American gospel
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My name is Allen Bell, and I’m a member of the group Psalms. My sister is part of the group; her name is Sharilyn Bell. I have an older sister who is part of the group; her name is Sandra Reed. I have a cousin who is part of the group; his name is Paul Tillman, and a lifelong good friend, Michael Cole. And also, we have our director, arranger, Ron Teague. [music]

I think I speak for all of us, I think, when I say we all started at a very young age—church, primarily. But we come from a family that was very musical in a sense that-- my mother and my aunt, who is Paul’s mother, and another famous aunt, whose name is Doris Acres, they all sang together, many, many years ago. And so we were always exposed to music, probably every day of our lives. I personally can remember waking up in the morning, and the one thing that I remember above the smell of bacon and coffee, was the sound of my mother’s voice singing, as she cooked.

[Sandy] Our family were originally from the Kirksville, Brooksville, Missouri, northeast Missouri area. And they migrated to Cedar Rapids a little bit at a time during the, World War II. We weren’t around then, but our uncles and aunts and mothers and fathers did. My father was personally in the service at the time. And our mother came up with her mother, and from then on that’s where the, where Cedar Rapids, kind of became the home ground.

[Michael] My mom and dad were born in Louisiana. And my dad could not stand the South. And he left at an early age and went to Virginia with his brother and ended up going to the Korean War, and met my mother in Detroit, where I was born. My grandmother was in Cedar Rapids; my mother’s mother was in Cedar Rapids. So, she talked them in, she talked them into coming to Cedar Rapids from Detroit to, you know, because there was work there. And that’s where we ended up, in Cedar Rapids. I was six at the time. So, I call Cedar Rapids home. [music]

In Cedar Rapids, back in that time, most of African-American people lived on, in an area called Oak Hill. And that’s just where we hung out, Oak Hill. And everyone knew everyone, pretty much at that time. So, yeah, Oak Hill we got together, went to the same elementary school, junior high school, high school, fought each other, went to church together, camped together. So, you know, it was kind of a natural, natural growth, I guess you could say. You made the best of it because everyone was going to be there whether you liked it or not. [music]

[Sandy] My Aunt Marion had what they called the children’s choir, and it started out—

[Michael] Angel choir, angel choir.

[Sandy] Yeah, and ended up called the angel choir. And then we progressed into what we call junior choir. There wasn’t that much difference in age then. So we all sang together, kind of starting then.

[Sharilyn] And what really prompted Psalms, Psalms to come together—that was my baby. I wanted to be like Aunt Doris, basically, so I started teaching myself piano. And I wrote a couple of little numbers. And originally, it was myself, Sandy, and Paul’s sister, Mona. And all we did was sing in the living room. They were “We’re not going to go out in front of people. We’re not gonna—.” We had three deaths like every two months from the grandmother, the baby boy out of ten, and the oldest boy out of ten. And I told them, either we sing, you know, because people were dying around us; we got to try it. Allen came over in town one day, and I said, “He’s got a voice.” We got him in it. Paul just defaulted, and Michael, too. I said this is it. And then when we went out one time, we met Ron. And Ron then took over the piano playing, thank God. [music]