‎Per Oldaeus    NEW ORLEANS MUSIC - FOR ALL GENRES FROM THAT CITY

Ingemar Wågerman Reverend Alvin Kershaw (1919-2001) was a colorful and popular pastor who in 1947 entered the service in Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Oxford, Ohio. He had a passionate interest in jazz, and became renowned in 1956 when he won 23,000 dollars in a TV quiz about jazz. He answered the question correctly on the first example of scat-singing and could also list the names of the band members, i.e. Armstrong’s Hot Five.

Kershaw was a controversial person, who decided that a portion of the profits from the quiz would go to “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People”, NAACP, a civil rights organization. When this was revealed, Kershaw was refused to participate in a conference at the University of Mississippi (”Ole Miss”), where he was invited to lecture. The result was that some radical representatives of the university left their posts in protest.

Three years earlier, Kershaw did something hitherto unthinkable: he invited George Lewis to his church, and the band played there in 1953, 1954. There are recordings from the first two years. According to the liner notes of AMCD 12 the band also visited the church in 1955. Apparently they recorded a few numbers, but the takes were cancelled. If the piano had not been so out of tune, there had perhaps been another religious Oxford record! (From my planned book about Alton Purnell!)