Oh Happy Day

Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get A Witness" and The Impressions' "People Get Ready" are among the songs with a gospel feel that made the pop charts in the '60s, but "Oh Happy Day" was the first pure gospel to cross over. Recorded in a church with a choir and church musicians, it is based on "Oh Happy Day, That Fixed My Choice," a Protestant hymn that dates from 1755 and is included in the standard Baptist hymnal.

Edwin Hawkins was a pianist at Ephesian Church of God in Christ in Berkeley, California when he came up with the popular Latin/soul version of this song that he recorded there in the summer of 1968. In an October 23, 2009 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, he explained that "Oh Happy Day" was one of eight arrangements he put together for his Northern California State Youth Choir, which was made up of 46 singers ages 17 to 25, and the plan was to sell an album of the songs to finance a trip to a church youth conference in Washington, D.C. The tracks were quickly recorded live in church on a two-track tape machine (industry standard at the time was eight-track), but the records weren't pressed in time for the trip. They did attend the conference, and the choir placed second in a singing competition, where they performed two of Hawkins' arrangements, but not "Oh Happy Day," which Hawkins said was "not our favorite song." Five hundred copies of the album were made, and one of them found its way to the popular DJ Abe "Voco" Kesh at KSAN-FM in San Francisco, who put it in rotation. Other stations followed, and Buddah Records signed Hawkins to a record deal, putting the album and the "Oh Happy Day" album in wide release.

The female lead is Dorothy Morrison, who had been singing at her church in Richmond, California when she joined Hawkins' choir. She also sang at some local R&B clubs, but kept that quiet because the church frowned on such activity. When "Oh Happy Day" became a hit, she signed her own deal with Buddah Records, which issued her album Brand New Day in 1970. Her solo career didn't last, but she became a popular backup singer, appearing on albums by Chicago, Boz Scaggs and Simon & Garfunkel. She later sang in a group called The Blues Broads.