Editing Mahalia Jackson (section)

== Apollo Records and national recognition (1946–1953) ==

Each engagement Jackson took was farther from Chicago in a nonstop string of performances. In 1946 she appeared at the [[Golden Gate Ballroom]] in [[Harlem]]. In attendance was Art Freeman, a music scout for [[Apollo Records (1944)|Apollo Records]], a company catering to black artists and audiences concentrating mostly on jazz and blues. Apollo's chief executive [[Bess Berman]] was looking to broaden their representation to other genres, including gospel. Berman signed Jackson to a four-record session, allowing Jackson to pick the songs. Her first release on Apollo, "Wait 'til My Change Comes" backed with "I'm Going to Tell God All About it One of These Days" did not sell well. Neither did her second, "I Want to Rest" with "He Knows My Heart". Berman asked Jackson to record blues and she refused. Berman told Freeman to release Jackson from any more recordings but Freeman asked for one more session to record the song Jackson sang as a warmup at the Golden Gate Ballroom concert. "[[Move On Up a Little Higher]]" was recorded in two parts, one for each side of the 78 rpm record.<ref>Goreau, pp. 108–111.</ref><ref>Marovich, p. 190.</ref>

Meanwhile, Chicago radio host [[Studs Terkel|Louis "Studs" Terkel]] heard Jackson's records in a music shop and was transfixed. He bought and played them repeatedly on his show. Terkel introduced his mostly white listeners to gospel music and Jackson herself, interviewing her and asking her to sing live. "Move On Up a Little Higher" was released in 1947, selling 50,000 copies in Chicago and two million nationwide.<ref name="The Book of Golden Discs">{{cite book
| first= Joseph
| last= Murrells
| year= 1978
| title= The Book of Golden Discs
| edition= 2nd
| publisher= Barrie and Jenkins Ltd
| location= London
| page= [https://archive.org/details/bookofgoldendisc00murr/page/39 39]
| isbn= 0-214-20512-6
| url-access= registration
| url= https://archive.org/details/bookofgoldendisc00murr/page/39
}}</ref> It landed at the number two spot on the [[Billboard charts|''Billboard'' charts]] for two weeks, another first for gospel music.<ref>Whitburn, p. 225.</ref> The best any gospel artist could expect to sell was 100,000. Berman set Jackson up for another recording session, where she sang "Even Me" (one million sold), and "Dig a Little Deeper" (just under one million sold). Instantly Jackson was in high demand. A position as the official soloist of the National Baptist Convention was created for her, and her audiences multiplied to the tens of thousands. She participated in the [[Harry S. Truman 1948 presidential campaign]], earning her first invitation to the [[White House]]. Time constraints forced her to give up the choir director position at St. Luke Baptist Church and sell the beauty shop. True to her own rule, she turned down lucrative appearances in New York City at the [[Apollo Theater]] and [[Village Vanguard]], where she was promised $5,000 a week ({{Inflation|US|5000|1948|fmt=eq|r=-4}}).<ref name="goreau 113-123">Goreau, pp. 113–123.</ref>

The next year promoter Joe Bostic approached her to perform in a gospel music revue at [[Carnegie Hall]], a venue most often reserved for classical and well established artists such as [[Benny Goodman]] and [[Duke Ellington]]. Jackson was intimidated by this offer and dreaded the approaching date. Gospel had never been performed at Carnegie. Jackson was the final artist to appear that evening. After a shaky start, she gave multiple encores and received voluminous praise: Nora Holt, a music critic with the black newspaper ''[[The New York Amsterdam News]]'', wrote that Jackson's rendition of "City Called Heaven" was filled with "suffering ecstasy" and that Jackson was a "genius unspoiled".<ref>Goreau, p. 141.</ref> [[John Hammond (record producer)|John Hammond]], critic at the ''[[Daily Compass]]'', praised Jackson's powerful voice which "she used ... with reckless abandon".<ref>Goreau, p. 142.</ref> The revue was so successful it was made an annual event with Jackson headlining for years. The show that took place in 1951 broke attendance records set by Goodman and [[Arturo Toscanini]].<ref>Goreau, pp. 130–143.</ref><ref>Marovich, pp. 197–198.</ref>

By chance, a French jazz fan named [[Hugues Panassié]] visited the Apollo Records office in New York and discovered Jackson's music in the waiting room. He bought her records, took them home and played them on [[Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française|French public radio]]. The [[Académie Charles Cros]] awarded Jackson their [[Grand Prix du Disque]] for "I Can Put My Trust in Jesus"; Jackson was the first gospel singer to receive this award.<ref>Goreau, pp. 123–129.</ref> During the same time, Jackson and blues guitarist [[John Lee Hooker]] were invited to a ten-day symposium hosted by jazz historian [[Marshall Stearns]] who gathered participants to discuss how to define jazz. Jackson was accompanied by her pianist Mildred Falls, together performing 21 songs with question and answer sessions from the audience, mostly filled with writers and intellectuals. As Jackson's singing was often considered jazz or blues with religious lyrics, she fielded questions about the nature of gospel blues and how she developed her singing style. Toward the end, a participant asked Jackson what parts of gospel music come from jazz, and she replied, "Baby, don't you know the Devil stole the beat from the ''Lord?''"<ref>Goreau, p. 150.</ref> Those in the audience wrote about Jackson in several publications. Her records were sent to the UK, traded there among jazz fans, earning Jackson a cult following on both sides of the Atlantic, and she was invited to tour Europe.<ref name="wise men">Burford, Mark, "Mahalia Jackson Meets the Wise Men: Defining Jazz at the Music Inn", ''The Musical Quarterly'' (Fall 2014), Vol. 97, No. 3, pp. 429–486.</ref>

Jackson had her first television appearance on ''Toast of the Town'' with [[Ed Sullivan]] in 1952. As she prepared to embark on her first tour of Europe, she began having difficulty breathing during and after performances and had severe abdominal cramping. She continued with her plans for the tour where she was very warmly received. In jazz magazine ''[[DownBeat]]'', Mason Sargent called the tour "one of the most remarkable, in terms of audience reaction, ever undertaken by an American artist".<ref>Burford 2020, p. 49.</ref> Her appearance at the [[Royal Albert Hall]] in London made her the first gospel singer to perform there since the [[Fisk Jubilee Singers]] in 1872, and she pre-sold 20,000 copies of "[[Silent Night]]" in Copenhagen.<ref name="Broughton, p. 54">Broughton, p. 54.</ref> She played numerous shows while in pain, sometimes collapsing backstage. She lost a significant amount of weight during the tour, finally having to cancel. When she returned to the U.S., she had a [[hysterectomy]] and doctors found numerous [[granuloma]]s in her abdomen. She was diagnosed with [[sarcoidosis]], a systemic inflammatory disease caused by immune cells forming lumps in organs throughout the body. Sarcoidosis is not curable, though it can be treated, and following the surgery, Jackson's doctors were cautiously optimistic that with treatment she could carry on as normal.<ref>Goreau, pp. 158–177.</ref><ref>[https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/sarcoidosis "Sarcoidosis"], [[U.S. Department of Health and Human Services]] website. Retrieved October 2020.</ref>