Ellen Barksdale, pianist, gospel musician

Arnett and Ellen Barksdale

Ellen “Mom” Barksdale celebrated her ninety-second birthday in late March, 2009 and she fooled everyone who can’t believe her age. She was a faithful member of congregation that has supported Shiloh Baptist Church since 1869. She was also one of my links to the music teachers of the last century.

She began taking piano lessons in 1924 at age nine and her longtime teacher was Helen Carter Moses, who had a studio in her home on Columbus’ Hilltop. Ellen remembers that Black families lived on Highland or Wheatland in those days and Mrs. Moses owned and drove a Ford Model T.

Mom Barksdale says that she not only studied with Mrs. Moses until she was twenty, but she became her chief instructor when the Carter School of Music relocated to Spring Street and Hamilton Ave. Each Sunday morning Mrs. Moses aimed the Ford towards Shiloh, where she was not only organist but director of the gospel choir. She also founded, with E. L. Rockhold, The Music Lovers Guild, a fifty-two member chorus founded in 1934.

In time Mom Barksdale took over leadership of the choir and continued for thirty years. She remembered some of the other piano teachers who taught the children of Columbus. In 1920 J. Cleveland Lemons taught and founded the Columbus Chapter of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM), who presented opera singer Marian Anderson in 1924.

Another noted teacher was Mamie Artist, who was a member of Parker’s Popular Players and founder of the Columbus Choral Club in 1922. Other outstanding instructors were Margarite Coleman and Ara Warren Arnold.

Mom Barksdale and I started playing piano and trumpet duets together during the 1980s, at the invitation of Rev. Harold Pinkston, pastor of Good Shepard Baptist Church, Columbus. We have performed together at church services, community concerts, birthday celebrations, anniversary parties. For several years we made regular visit to her good friend Helen Ramsuer at Lutheran Village, entertaining the luncheon audience with religious favorites. We have also recorded a number of songs together that have appeared on two of my compact discs, as well as two compact disc featuring her.

Mom Barksdale was inducted into the Columbus Senior Musicians Hall of Fame in 1999. She completed the cycle of life in June, 2009.