Book Review: A double life on the Hallelujah chorus line: 'Got To Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel' - Jules Schwerin: Oxford University Press, 19.95

IF YOU like prima donnas, you'll love this biography. Mahalia Jackson was born in 1912 into New Orleans poverty, but with the priceless gift of a sublime voice. Her mother died when she was five, and for the next 12 years she was housed, neglected and beaten by her aunt. She worked her way through a painful adolescence as a laundress and nursemaid. Then, with a hundred dollars pinned inside her bra, she left. The next time she returned it was in a lavender Cadillac, with fifteen thousand bucks down her cleavage.

Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel, was pretty much Queen of everything around her. She had to be, if she wanted to achieve anything at all. Against a backdrop of almost overwhelming odds - such as being black and female in early 20th-century America, her rise to superstardom is an astonishing story.

Jackson's love of gospel singing was pure and genuine. She sang like an angel, and her explanation of the joy it could bring was simple: 'To this day,' she said, gospel 'shows the good-time spirit of the city. To cry at the incoming of a child and rejoice at the outgoing . . . You know, sometimes you feel like you're so far from God, and then you know those songs have special meaning. They bring back the communication between yourself and God.'

In Got To Tell It, Jules Schwerin's mixed feelings about the private and public Mahalia Jackson are well expressed. The 'powerful, public' Jackson was loved and admired not only for her singing but for what she represented to millions of black people. She sang for Martin Luther King at Lincoln's Memorial, and when she died, her funeral was a two-day national event.

The private Jackson, however, was a cruel, vain, grasping, arrogant woman, who survived by treating those who supported her like disposable tissues. She abandoned friends, fired loyal business associates, threw tantrums and was universally foul- mouthed. Only when she sang did she seem whole, real, and utterly forgivable. She was a gospel singer beyond compare.

Got To Tell It is good, and I enjoyed it. Schwerin's account of Jackson's life is colourful and detailed, but it is rather episodic. His film- making eye is revealed in a love of image rather than analysis, which is fine, but descriptions, monologues and comments are too rarely woven together in the prose, which is a pity.

Several important questions are either never asked or never answered. It is, of course, a matter of personal taste, but I would have liked to know more about the private Mahalia Jackson; about her need for a surrogate son, John; about her friendships; her inevitable isolation. Schwerin tells us very little about 'the other Mahalia, lonely in the condominium, hours on the phone with her second husband, even though they were divorced; and when John was there she complained of nightmares, would come looking for him at night, crawl into his bed, and they would talk about the good old days . . . the beginnings, the days of music and struggle for recognition.'

This sort of work brings into sharp focus the debate about how far we can judge the art by the artist. In this case, it is certainly best to separate the two, for, offstage, no amount of genius can make up for Jackson's appalling treatment of others, particularly Mildred Falls, her accompanist of 20 years. At a time when Jackson was earning dollars 3,000 a night, Falls was paid dollars 100 a week. When Falls plucked up the courage to ask for a rise, Jackson fired her and never spoke to her again.

In 1972 Jackson died a national hero; Queen of Gospel, civil rights activist, but with her face bleached white, and bitterness boring into her soul. Two years later, the estranged Mildred Falls was to join her; poor and uncelebrated, but a good musician, with her skin untouched, and her kindness intact.

Maybe in the end it wasn't the money that corrupted Jackson, but the American dream that went with it, which excluded blacks all the while. As Schwerin puts it: 'Such cruel, internalized injuries can never be computed.' Seen that way, perhaps Mildred Falls was lucky. Mahalia Jackson was not.