When Thomas A. Dorsey lost his first wife in childbirth in 1932 and his son a day later, he was so devastated that he questioned his faith. He found his way back to his God, and out of his pain came one of the most beautiful gospel songs ever: “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.”
A decade later, Dorsey found the second love of his life, a church-goer named Kathryn Mosley, with whom he fathered two children. For the “peace and devotion” she gave him – as he described their relationship years later – he wrote a gospel song for her on their 17th wedding anniversary in 1958.
- The sheet music for Thomas A. Dorsey “In The Scheme of Things,” written in honor of his second wife, Kathryn.
I found a copy of the sheet music for that song, “In The Scheme of Things,” among an eclectic stack of music books and sheet music at auction recently. At first, I thought it had been written for his first wife Nettie – not realizing that this song had been penned much later.
The cover of the sheet music named it “The Wedding Song,” a solo as sung by Christine Johnson Stewart, with words and music by Dorsey. It was published by his own publishing company in Chicago, where he lived, and copyrighted in 1958. At the bottom was a handwritten notation, presumably by Stewart:
“First presented to public by me – Artist Night, in Cleveland, Ohio, Aug. 1958.”
- The front cover of the sheet music for Thomas A. Dorsey’s “In The Scheme of Things.”
Artist Night was started at the 1936 National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses by Magnolia Butts, who like Dorsey was a co-founder of the organization and a member of Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago.
Dorsey was one of the most prolific of gospel music writers: He composed from 400 to 1,000 gospel songs – depending on who you read – along with hundreds of blues songs before he died in 1993. He began his musical life composing blues tunes, writing and playing for such performers as Ma Rainey. By the time he was 20 in 1919, he was mixing up the blues with spirituals and spawning a new genre called gospel music.
He began publishing his own music in 1923 after becoming dissatisfied with the treatment he was getting from white publishers who seemed uninterested in distributing his compositions. His “Dorsey House of Music” sold both his and the music of other gospel composers. Other black publishers soon followed his lead.
- Thomas A. Dorsey and his wife Kathryn. His photo is from the Georgia Music magazine website and hers from the Thomas A. Dorsey Foundation myspace site.
Dorsey was the musical director of Pilgrim Baptist from 1932 to the late 1970s. Kathryn Dorsey told a Chicago Sun Times reporter in 2007 that they met at church, but there was no indication if the church was Pilgrim.
“He said he was looking over the crowd and when he saw me, he said, ‘That’s my wife,'” she said. … “I was standing waiting for my bus, and he said ‘I’ll take you home.'” She knew who he was. “He was more famous then than he would be now.”
They were married in 1941 (some articles on the web set the year at 1940).
Kathryn Dorsey told the reporter that she was not a singer: “I couldn’t carry a note if they gave it to me.” … “He always said ‘if you can talk, you can sing.’ And I always said, ‘I haven’t learned to talk yet.'”
- The lyrics and music for “In The Scheme of Things.”
A photo accompanying a 1962 article in Ebony magazine showed him singing a melody to her, according to the caption. An aside: He told the reporter during the interview that he and the white bandleader Tommy Dorsey were performing in Chicago and he got a $34,000 check from Decca Records that was actually meant for the other Dorsey. Thomas A.’s check was $94.70. He had to hand over the bandleader’s check.
Here’s a YouTube interview with Kathryn Dorsey.
In the Ebony article, Thomas A. Dorsey acknowledged – seemingly after little nudging from the reporter – that he could have made more money had he been white, because those composers had more access to radio, television, record companies. But that didn’t seem to bother him too much, though.
Some performers had a hard time enjoying their fame and money because they were pushed to do more and more, he told Black World/Negro Digest in 1974. Not him, he said. “I’m content without trying to change the world in one lifetime. … I’m happy in my nice home, grateful to the peace and devotion my second wife, Kathryn, has given me over the years.”
Here are some of the lyrics to the love song to his wife:
“In the scheme of things you were meant for me, In the scheme of things
It was meant to be, you were made to love me only never to be sad or lonely,
In the scheme of things, you’re always in my heart.”
- A notation presumably by the singer Christine Johnson Stewart indicating when she first sang the song.
