Biography
Sister O.M. Terrell, born Ola Mae Terrell on August 18, 1911, in Atlanta, Georgia, came to music through a profound spiritual awakening at age eleven when she attended a Fire-Baptized Holiness Church tent revival on Atlanta's Decatur Street. She taught herself to play guitar and immediately put that skill to evangelistic use, singing original compositions on the very street corners of Decatur — a neighborhood notorious at the time for vice and street life. Her music fused the raw emotionalism of Delta blues with fervent Holiness gospel, and from the Depression years of the 1930s through the Eisenhower-era 1950s she lived the life of an itinerant evangelist, supporting herself entirely through her music and preaching.
Her recording career was brief but vivid: in 1953 she cut six sides for Columbia Records, including her own composition "The Bible's Right," delivering them with open-D slide guitar (a tuning also known as Vestapol) and a rawness that sat at the intersection of country blues and Holiness fervor. Columbia, however, filed her releases in its country music series rather than gospel or race categories, effectively rendering her invisible to the Black audiences who would have embraced her. By 1955 Columbia dropped her contract, and she never recorded commercially again. When the 1960s folk revival swept through America, bringing renewed attention to blues and gospel elders, Terrell's cultural isolation within the Holiness tradition kept her off the festival circuit entirely, and her work went largely unrecognized for decades.
Late in life, musicologist Bruce Nemerov — commissioned to locate Terrell and deliver royalties she was owed after "God's Little Birds" appeared in an off-Broadway production — tracked her to a nursing home in Conyers, Georgia, resulting in an NPR profile that introduced her to new listeners. A 2014 reissue on the Death Is Not The End label collected her key recordings and finally brought her the wider appreciation her work deserved. She passed away in 2006 at the age of 95, leaving behind a small but singular body of work recognized as some of the most searingly authentic country gospel and blues on record.
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Fun Facts
- Columbia Records filed her 1953 gospel recordings under the country music series rather than gospel or race categories, making them effectively invisible to the Black gospel audiences who would have been her natural listeners.
- She was tracked down late in life by musicologist Bruce Nemerov, who had been hired by a music publisher to deliver long-overdue royalties after her composition 'God's Little Birds' was used in an off-Broadway production.
- She played guitar in open-D tuning (also called Vestapol tuning) with a slide, giving her a sound that bridged Delta blues technique and Holiness church fire — earning her the posthumous title 'Bottleneck Evangelist.'
- Despite living to 95 and surviving long enough to see the folk revival of the 1960s and the roots-music renaissance of the 2000s, Terrell spent her final years in a nursing home in Conyers, Georgia, largely unknown outside a small circle of gospel and blues scholars.
Musical Connections
Mentors/Influences
- Fire-Baptized Holiness Church tradition - Terrell's entire musical and spiritual identity was shaped by the Holiness/Pentecostal tradition she entered at age 11; her performance style, repertoire, and open-air evangelism were all rooted in this community's practices. [1920s onward]
External Links
References
Heard on WWOZ
Sister O.M. Terrell has been played 2 times on WWOZ 90.7 FM, New Orleans' jazz and heritage station.