There are only a handful of people alive today who participated in the formation of modern gospel music in Chicago during the 1930s and 1940s. Fewer still worked directly with the genre’s founding mothers and fathers in those early days. Perhaps only one of them can claim to have also taught Aretha Franklin a hymn that became her first commercial single as a soloist.
Floriene Watson Willis is the one.
Turning 99 on Dec. 6, she never became a major star, but she nevertheless held a prominent position in the sanctuary as gospel music formed and flourished in Chicago some 90 years ago. “I wasn’t too worried about being popular,” she said during a recent video interview from her current home in Lakewood, Washington. “I just sang to the glory of God because it was down in me to sing God’s praises, and that’s what I did.”
Floriene O. Watson was born in 1926 in Chicago, the eighth of 10 children to Amos and Laura Watson, migrants from South Carolina. The family lived at 430 East 42nd Street. Floriene attended Wendell Phillips High School, where she played tuba in the school band. “A medium-sized tuba, not the big tuba,” she laughed.
It wasn’t surprising that she was in the band. The Watson Family had a particular passion for music. Amos, the patriarch, sang. Floriene’s sister Loretta played drums. Another sister, Sylvia Hoston, parlayed her piano proclivities into an accompanist position at Rev. Elijah Thurston’s Forty-Fourth Street Baptist Church (now New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church). “Sylvia could really play the piano,” Floriene said. “She had a style all of her own.”
There was even a family singing group. The Watson Family Singers consisted of Floriene, Loretta, Alice, Vivian, Romance, Irvin, and Sylvia, who accompanied on piano. According to Floriene, the family cut a record, “Jesus Gave Me Water,” sometime in the 1950s, “for a small-class label.”
The Watsons were steadfast members of All Nations Pentecostal Church, founded on the South Side on New Year’s Day 1918 by Elder Lucy Smith, one of the city’s first Black female pastors. Smith was also among the first Black ministers to harness the power of radio to spread their ministries to people who might never enter their churches. Floriene played an integral part in the weekly broadcast, called “The Glorious Church of the Air.” “When we would broadcast over the radio,” she said, “I would sing ‘Just Tell Jesus, Tell Him All,’ before the prayer.”
Radio exposure not only gained fans for Floriene, it also led to a marriage proposal. Upon hearing her sing over the All Nations broadcast, Emeal Willis, a World War II veteran who arrived in Chicago from Louisiana, couldn’t wait to meet the woman with the beautiful voice. The two married and had 11 children.
Floriene Watson Willis also sang with the Smith Trio, a gospel singing group organized by Elder Smith’s granddaughter, vocalist and pianist “Little Lucy” Smith. Besides Smith and Watson, the group included alto Gladys Beamon Gregory. The three sang on the All Nations radio broadcasts and on multi-artist gospel programs sponsored by area churches like Antioch Baptist, Tabernacle Baptist, and Metropolitan Community Church. “The Smith Trio was pretty popular,” Floriene remarked. “We were good!”
Over time, Floriene penned two gospel songs, “Hold on and Say Yes to the Lord” and “It’s Been a Long Tedious Journey.”
In a 2009 interview, Floriene’s brother Romance Watson (who died in 2022) recalled that in their youth, he and his sisters, including Willis, had the chance to sing with Sallie Martin and Thomas A. Dorsey, the celebrated Mother and Father of Gospel Music. “(Martin) would be teaching us various songs,” Romance recalled, “and before you know it, (Dorsey would) sneak up behind us with his accordion and scare the devil out of us! But (Elder Smith) put a stop to it. She told my parents that these children don’t need to be out there singing with these other folk, they need to be in their own church, and up here in the choir.” The Watsons dutifully complied.
As a member of the Smith Trio, Floriene began to rub shoulders with other leading lights of early gospel. She and the ladies appeared regularly on mid-1940s gospel programs featuring nationally-recognized artists like Mahalia Jackson and another Chicago-based female group, the Gay Sisters. The Smith Trio shared programs with the Roberta Martin Singers, a mixed-voice gospel ensemble formed in Chicago by singer, songwriter, and music publisher Roberta Martin. From time to time, the Smith Trio would travel as far as New York with the Martin Singers.
By 1948, Floriene departed the Smith Trio. “When I started having children, I couldn’t travel like I wanted to,” she said. Taking Floriene’s place was Catherine Campbell, another All Nations member. With the later addition of Sarah McKissick, the four women rebranded themselves as the “Little” Lucy Smith Singers and made a series of recordings in the mid-1950s for the local States Records.
Although she left the Smith Trio, Floriene remained active in the All Nations music ministry. At some point, probably in the early 1950s, All Nations invited the Rev. C. L. Franklin and his daughter Aretha to participate in their worship service. In her memoir, Aretha recalled learning the hymn “Never Grow Old” from the singing of Billy Kyles, a member of the Maceo Woods Singers, who recorded the song. Willis recalled it differently. She said she taught the young Aretha to sing the hymn, written by James C. Moore in 1914, as “Where We’ll Never Grow Old.” Regardless of how Aretha learned it, “Never Grow Old” became one of her signature gospel songs and the A-side of her first single, a 1956 release on Detroit’s J-V-B label. The Queen of Soul reprised the song on her highly successful 1972 gospel double album, “Amazing Grace.”
Romance Watson pursued his own gospel music career. The silky-voiced baritone auditioned successfully for a spot in the Roberta Martin Singers and cut his first recorded sides with them in January 1957. In 1959, he followed Sam Cooke’s lead and tried his hand at an R&B singing career. After recording some love songs for Coral Records, Romance returned to gospel.
Meanwhile, Floriene, inspired by Little Lucy’s keyboard talent, taught herself to play piano. She became sufficiently skilled that the Rev. Clay Evans of Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church invited her to join his music ministry. Despite the potential to be part of a much-admired music program, Floriene declined. “You know how they were back in that day,” she said, “by me being Holiness and him being Baptist, I didn’t play for him.” She added, “I sure regret it.”
Perhaps it was for the best. In 1962, Emeal Willis found more promising employment on the West Coast and moved the family to Redwood City, California. Floriene maintained her musical chops by playing piano at Elder O’Neal’s Little Flock Church of God in Christ until Emeal joined the ministry and became assistant pastor of Grace Temple Church of God in Christ. She and her musical talents followed Emeal when he founded his own church, Pioneer Pentecostal Church of God in Christ.
After Emeal died in 1996, Floriene remained in Redwood City until four years ago, when she relocated to Lakewood, Washington, to be closer to family. She attends New Jerusalem Church of God in Christ in nearby Tacoma. “My life has been beautiful,” she said. “I’ve been saved all of my life. Never smoke, never drank. I live for the Lord. I love serving the Lord.”
Robert Marovich is a freelance writer and is the founder and editor of the Journal of Gospel Music.