In bringing the blues to the gospel, Dorsey reintroduced northern and urban black Baptist churches to the soulful and emotional form of worship that characterized the African American experience in the South. His songs and those of other black gospel singers helped recapture the longings of the Negro spiritual and the rhythms of Africa. As Dorsey’s principal biographer puts it, the music Nix inspired Dorsey to develop allowed black Baptists to “rejoin that part of themselves they had sacrificed for another religion.”
