A Final Amen at Amen Corner

Moore eventually would obtain signatures of every British Open winner from 1892, when the event went to 72 holes, to the present. The project, which took about 15 years, is the cornerstone of a private museum in Moore's home in Spring Island, S.C. It was his desire to add an Amen Corner exhibit in 2003 that sent him on a quest to obtain the record Wind said inspired the name. He hoped to display it along with a copy of Wind's 1958 Sports Illustrated story, a photograph of the 12th hole and autographs from Palmer, Venturi and Wind.

Moore contacted jazz specialists across the country in an attempt to get the Mezzrow recording of the song, written by Andy Razaf and Danny Smalls in 1933. (Razaf was the most prolific black lyricist of the 20th century, best known for co-writing "Ain't Misbehavin'.") There was just one problem: The experts couldn't find a Mezzrow recording of "Shoutin'."

"They said it didn't exist, that it never did exist," Moore says.

The sheet music to "Shoutin'" (top); jazz singer Mildred Bailey peformed the song with the Dorsey Brothers, one of three versions done of the song in the 1930s.
Bailey: Chris Stanford; Sheet Music Courtesy of University of South Florida

Moore then contacted Yale University and obtained copies of jazz reviews Wind wrote for The Yale Record as an undergraduate from 1933-'37. Among Wind's 31 "On The Wax" articles is a Jan. 15, 1936, review that includes Mezzrow's "35th and Calumet." The flip side, however, is "Old Fashioned Love," not, as Wind had remembered, the "Southern shout" titled "Shoutin' in That Amen Corner."

Mezzrow never recorded the song.

Among the artists Wind reviewed in college was Mildred Bailey, a quite popular jazz singer of the time -- but he never wrote about her version of "Shoutin' " with the Dorsey Brothers, which is one of three recordings done in the 1930s of the "rhythmic sermon" (the others by the Spirits of Rhythm and the Williams Washboard Band). The song's lyrics admonish vocal but insincere churchgoers populating the pews:

You can shout with all your might,
But if you ain't livin' right,
There's no use shoutin' in that Amen Corner

If your name ain't on that roll,
All that noise won't save your soul,
So stop your shoutin' in that Amen Corner

AUDIO: Play a clip from the song, "Shoutin' in That Amen Corner."

"Amen Corner is a common church term in the South," says Bisher, who grew up in tiny Denton, N.C. "In our church the old men sat there and said 'Amen' after the preacher said something they liked."

The term actually dates to pre-Reformation England, because the spot where "Amen" was said during a clergy procession became "Amen Corner." In the late 1800s in New York City, the street where preachers gathered outside a hub of bible manufacturers took on the same name, as did a location in New York's Fifth Avenue Hotel, where journalists and politicians discussed current events. "The Amen Corner" was the title of James Baldwin's 1965 Broadway play.

When Moore discovered Wind's Mezzrow recollection wasn't right, he was reluctant to tell anyone. "I didn't know what to do because I was contradicting Herb Wind," says Moore. Former Sports Illustrated writer E.M. Swift told Moore he ought to report the facts, and after Moore read a repeat of Wind's version by New York Times sports columnist George Vecsey during the 2007 Masters, he was certain he should go public. Moore sent his research to John Strege, who reported Moore's findings in Golf World's April 13, 2007, issue.

"It's a hard thing to come to grips with, how this gentleman knowing jazz as well as he did, how this happened," says Moore. "All along I was reluctant to come forward, because I admire Herb Wind and didn't want to say that he made a mistake. How he didn't remember the Mildred Bailey recording with the Dorsey brothers, I don't know. I just think he made a mistake."

As much of a gentleman as he was, Wind could be iron-fisted when it came to his copy. "He was always willing to put himself out for other people," Macdonald says. "Only about his writing was he tough as nails. He was brutally hard to deal with when it came to criticism and editing."

The meticulousness that defined his work means Wind no doubt wouldn't be pleased at his error of recall. If anyone is entitled to bogeying a memory, though, it is Wind. As long as there is a Masters, golfers will sweat and spectators will gather at Amen Corner.

"I do think a lot has gone out of the game and a lot of bad things have come in," Wind told a reporter in 1995. "There's more to golf than business and money and low scores."

Amen to that.