Clara Ward

American gospel singer

• Born: April 21, 1924
• Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Died: January 16, 1973
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Ward was a popular gospel singer and composer known for her stirring vocals and dramatic phrasing. Her well-polished, all-female group brought show-business theatricality to their gospel performances.

Member of The Ward Singers; the Famous Ward Singers; the Clara Ward Singers

The Life

Clara Mae Ward grew up in Philadelphia, the daughter of George and Gertrude Ward. Clara and older sister Willarene (Willa) sang in their church choir and received piano instruction. In straitened circumstances, the Ward family was compelled to move twenty-four times in nineteen years. Clara dropped out of high school to pursue her musical career. At the age of seventeen, Ward married Richard Bowman. The Ward Singers, aggressively managed by mother Gertrude, became nationally popular with gospel music fans after a spectacular performance at the National Baptist Conference in 1943.

Shortly after suffering a miscarriage, Ward divorced Bowman and began to date women surreptitiously. In 1952, the Ward Singers became the first Gospel group to headline a show at the famous Apollo Theater. Gertrude dressed the group in flamboyant sequined gowns, a novelty for gospel singers. Ward was composing, recording, and performing nationally on a relentless schedule. In 1953, she opened Ward’s House of Music, a publishing company for gospel sheet music.

Ward had a long-term romantic relationship with the Reverend C. L. Franklin, a gospel singer and the father of Aretha Franklin, whose interest in singing Ward encouraged. Her success allowed her and Gertrude to move to an exclusive neighborhood in Los Angeles and purchase such luxuries as a purple, twelve-passenger 1957 Chrysler limousine. In the late 1950’s she began performing in nightclubs, such as New York’s Village Vanguard. In 1957, the Famous Ward Singers performed at the Newport Jazz Festival. In October, 1958, the National Clara Ward Fan Club was founded.

The 1958 departure of the talented Marion Williams, who shared lead singing with Ward, was a blow to the group. In 1962 Ward began performing at the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, an engagement that lasted five years. In 1963, she starred as Birdie Lee in the Broadway show, Tambourines to Glory. During this period, Ward had a fling with baseball great Roberto Clemente.

However, Clara was suffering under the strain of her relentless performance schedule, aggravated by her mother, who demanded more work, more money, and more shows. In the late 1960’s, she began performing for U.S. troops in Vietnam but also began to experience severe headaches, brought on to some extent by alcoholism. During a performance in 1967 in Miami, Ward collapsed from a stroke. Rushed to the hospital, she recovered in three weeks. Gertrude proclaimed her a “miracle girl” and arranged for her to resume her relentless performing schedule. On December 8, 1972, Ward suffered a second stroke. She died about a month later, not yet forty-nine years old. In 1998, the United States commemorated Ward on a postage stamp.

The Music

Clara Ward’s talents as a singer were noted early and brought the Ward sisters to prominence in the world of gospel music. Clara had a high-pitched alto voice, a sweet tone, and a nasal quality capable of producing a stirring legato at the end of her phrases. She was much influenced by gospel pioneer Mary Johnson Davis in the blues-inflected rhythms she brought to her delivery. In addition to Ward, her sister Willa, and mother Gertrude, other members of the Ward singers at various times included such talented singers as Williams, Henrietta Waddy, Kitty Parham, and Frances Stedman. The Ward Singers were variously known as Gertrude Ward and Daughters, the Consecrated Gospel Singers, the Clara Ward Singers, and, most popularly, the Famous Ward Sisters. With Ward’s success, the Famous Ward Sisters early on secured a multiyear contract with the Savoy Recording Company.

“Just One Moment.” Ward made her first recording, “Just One Moment,” in 1948. Her high-register singing, unique nasal tone, quivering moans, varied rhythms, and intense vocal delivery established her as an instant gospel music recording star.

“Surely God Is Able.” Ward was much taken with William Herbert Brewster’s composition “Our God Is Able,” and in 1949 she decided to record a new arrangement of the song, titled “Surely God Is Able.” Ward changed the tempo to three-quarter time, a waltz meter rare in gospel music, and added background refrains of “surely, surely,” in an infectious call-and-response. The Ward Singers’ release of “Surely God Is Able” in 1950 under the Gotham label became the first million-seller record by a gospel music group. The song begins with a five-note piano introduction from which the initial call-and-response springs. In a clarion voice, Ward calls out “surely” four times, with the chorus of background singers responding each time. As the piano lead is reinforced by an organ, Ward and the chorus repeat the phrase “God is able.” Midway through the song, Williams picks up the lead, repeating Ward’s phrases in her rougher, more earthy timbre. The lyric recounts the help God provides his chosen vessels, including Daniel, Ezekiel, Moses, Joshua, and Solomon. The Ward Singers often performed “Surely God Is Able,” notably in a historic concert in Carnegie Hall in October, 1950.

“How I Got Over.” Ward’s most popular song was her reworking of the spiritual “How I Got Over,” first recorded in 1951. Ward sings the lead throughout, her pulsing, high-register voice rising above the called responses of her background singers. Ward brings great drama to her singing, overcoming every obstacle she sings about with passionate, electrifying phrasing.

Musical Legacy

Clara Ward’s legacy is manifold. In popularity as a female gospel singer in the 1940’s and 1950’s, Ward was outshone only by Mahalia Jackson. Ward was also a talented arranger of gospel music. She and her singers were the first all-female gospel group organized on a permanent basis. Under Gertrude’s aggressive and demanding management, Ward and her singers pioneered numerous techniques. They excelled in a lead-switching style. They sang in perfect harmony and synchronization. Their songs featured a call and response that was one of the most exciting elements of their gospel style. Ward’s singing incorporated jazz and blues elements with gospel, and Gertrude had the singers abandon their church robes for elegant dresses, sequined gowns, beehive hairstyles, and coiffured wigs. Shocking to many religious fans, Ward and Gertrude brought their gospel singing to nightclubs, jazz spots, and even Las Vegas. Their theatricality was praised by some fans and considered tawdry by others.

Ward’s singing style remain her most important legacy. Her voice was high-pitched and nasal but pure-toned and capable of great agility in the higher registers. Equally important, Ward was able to instill a dramatic quality in all of her songs, characterized by blues-like inflections, stirring rhythms, rapid ascents and descents on the scale, and a moving sincerity. Although criticized in later years for commercialism, Ward and her group had a significant influence on gospel and popular singers, including notably Aretha Franklin, and helped transform gospel into a dominant mainstream genre.

Principal Recordings

albums (with various versions of the Ward Singers): Surely God Is Able, 1955; Lord Touch Me, 1956; Down by the Riverside, 1958; That Old Landmark, 1958; Hallelujah, 1960; Hang Your Tears Out to Dry, 1966.

Bibliography

Boyer, Horace Clarence. How Sweet the Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel. Washington, D.C.: Elliott and Clark, 1995. History of gospel music by a scholar and former gospel performer.

Cohn, Lawrence, ed. Nothing but the Blues: The Music and the Musicians. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993. A survey of blues history, brisk in tone. Includes discussion of Ward, emphasizing her theatricality.

Moore, Alan, ed. Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Analyzes Ward’s 1952 recording of “Precious Lord” as one of twelve key blues and gospel music recordings.

Ward-Royster, Willa, and Toni Rose. How I Got Over: Clara Ward and the World-Famous Ward Singers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. A revealing family biography by Clara’s sister. Includes a perceptive introduction by gospel music historian Horace Boyer and appendixes that list recordings, shows, and awards.