Tune: LEAD ME, GUIDE ME

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LEAD ME, GUIDE ME

Composer: Doris Akers
Published in 40 hymnals

Audio files: MIDI, Recording

Choral
	LEAD ME, GUIDE ME

Composer: Doris Akers

Doris Mae Akers USA 1923-1995. Born at Brookfield, MO, one of nine siblings, her (inter-racial) parents divorced when she was age three. She then lived with her mother, who remarried when she was age six. They lived in Kirksville, MO. Some of her brothers lived with her father after the divorce. The family attended the Bethel AME Church in Kirksville, where she learned to play piano by ear at age six. She wrote her first song at age 10. In the 1930s she formed a singing gospel group with siblings, Edward, Marian, and Donald, who went by the name ‘Dot and the Swingsters’. Early in her career (1938) she moved to Los Angeles, CA. There she became known for her work with the ‘Sky Pilot Choir’, an integrated group that made recordings… Go to person page >

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Tune Information

Title:	LEAD ME, GUIDE ME
Composer:	Doris Akers
Meter:	Irregular
Incipit:	32132 11222 66654
Key:	E♭ Major
Copyright:	© 1953, Doris M. Akers. All rights administered by Chappell & Co.

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Texts

Lead Me, Guide Me

All texts published with LEAD ME, GUIDE ME ^ top

Notes

LEAD ME is representative of the first generation of African American gospel music, a generation that began with Thomas Dorsey (PHH 493) and includes gospel artists such as Roberta Martin, Lucie Campbell, Kenneth Morris, Theodore Frye, and Doris M. Akers. The core of this style is improvisation. Thus the printed notes are intended only as guides to the creativity of singers and accompanists. The piano arrangement by Richard Smallwood (PHH 365) from Lift Every Voice and Sing (1981) suggests some additional chords and triplet rhythms, but further improvisation would certainly be appropriate.

The unison vocal setting could easily be sung by a congregation or, using a responsorial pattern, by a congregation on the refrain and one or several soloists on the stanzas.

--Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1988

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Timeline

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Choral

LEAD ME, GUIDE ME

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