The Zion Harmonizers

Founded in the late 1930s — New Orleans, Louisiana

The Zion Harmonizers are the city’s oldest and most-loved gospel group, nearly nine decades into a mission of quartet-style gospel rooted in a cappella, four-part harmonies. They are the anchors and curators of the Gospel Tent at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival — a tent their longtime leader Sherman Washington, the “Godfather of the Gospel Tent,” helped create.

Why We Love the Zion Harmonizers

Nobody carries the sound of the Black church in New Orleans quite like the Zion Harmonizers. For nearly ninety years — through wars, storms, and every change the music business could throw at them — they have kept the old-time quartet style alive: a cappella spirituals, traditional hymns, and house-rocking R&B-flavored praise tunes, delivered in ringing four-part harmony and bright matching suits. They turned the Jazz Fest Gospel Tent into an institution, spent 45 years on local radio, and still sing mostly in small churches within a hundred miles of home. When the Harmonizers sing, you don’t just hear gospel — you hear the whole history of it.

Biography

Nine Decades of Praise

The Zion Harmonizers were founded in the late 1930s in New Orleans’ Zion City neighborhood, when teenager Benjamin J. Maxon Jr. organized a group of friends to sing quartet-style gospel. Maxon had learned the craft under his aunt, Alberta French Johnson, a member of the esteemed Southern Harps, and the young group toured the state as the Harps’ opening act. In 1941, Maxon met Sherman Washington at the Higgins Shipyard; the two discovered a mutual love of gospel singing, and Washington joined the group — a partnership that would define New Orleans gospel for the next seventy years.

"We had a closeness as a bunch of men that many blood brothers did not have. I remember times when I would pawn my overcoat to get us bus fare for a program."

— Founder Benjamin J. Maxon Jr.

Washington took over leadership of the group and never really let go, becoming known as the “Godfather of the Gospel Tent.” The Harmonizers sang at the very first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in Congo Square in 1969, after which festival organizer Quint Davis asked Washington to put together a gospel tent — and the Gospel Tent has been a Jazz Fest institution ever since. Washington also kept the gospel scene thriving with a radio program on WYLD that ran for more than 45 years, beginning in 1956. He sang with the group until 2006 and died in 2011; today the Harmonizers are led and managed by Brazella Briscoe, who holds true to the a cappella basics while jazzing things up with R&B-inspired praise tunes.

"While blessed with a spiraling international reputation, the Zion Harmonizers remain a pillar of the New Orleans gospel community."

— Gospel historian Lynn Abbott

The group has recorded for a string of small local labels — Mardi Gras, Sound of New Orleans, Gospel Heritage among them — including The Best of New Orleans Gospel Vol. 2 (1995), Never Alone (1996), Thank You Lord (1996), God Promised Me (1997), and New Orleans Gospel Glory! (1999). Their 75th-anniversary album, Bringing in the Sheaves (2014), earned four of five stars from the Journal of Gospel Music for its blend of hymns, spirituals, and new gospel compositions. Nearly ninety years on, the Harmonizers remain what they have always been: New Orleans’ premier male gospel group, and a living link to the roots of the music.