Spirituals Go to War

In the North Carolina sharecropper's shanty where Glenn Settle grew up, his mother used to sing the old Negro spirituals to him. Between songs, she told him: "If white and colored folks just got to know each other better, everything would work out all right."

Using the old Southern spirituals as his tools, sturdy, mild-mannered Glenn T. Settle, now 48, has made a career out of his mother's advice. This week, his famed all-Negro choir of mixed voices, the "Wings Over Jordan" chorus, is headed for a 26-week battlefront tour--the first religious musical group to be given a U.S.O. booking.

For the past eight years the Rev. Mr. Settle has combined his choir work with the pastorate of Cleveland's Gethsemane Baptist Church. In over 1500 concerts in 45 States and 374 consecutive Sunday radio broadcasts, he has proved that there is no U.S. color line when it comes to the old Negro hymns (Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child, etc.). For the past year, service men and their chaplains have bombarded the Rev. Mr. Settle with requests to bring "Wings Over Jordan" overseas. Good-humored preacher-director Settle is convinced that U.S. servicemen are turning to religion more & more, and he offers as proof the two songs most popular with overseas fans of his broadcasts: He'll Understand and Say Well Done and Just a Closer Walk With Thee.

In his warm, musical voice, the Rev. Mr. Settle usually introduces the choir's songs with a bit of sermonizing. While he and his 21 -voice troop are traveling and singing abroad, he suspects that the fighting men "may also get a bit of sermon and Bible-reading now and then."

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