Funeral Music and the Transformation of Southern Musical and Religious Cultures, 1935-1945

McCusker discusses the funeral music and the transformation of Southern musical and religious cultures. The musical program performed at William Leonard Bivens's funeral was emblematic of fundamental changes in Southern funeral music: from 1935 (the beginning of the funeral home's records) to about 1943, customers who buried their kin from the National Funeral Home requested rural hymns, songs such as "Old Rugged Cross" and "Sunrise Tomorrow." But in 1943, a shift began that became far more pronounced in 1944 when the funeral home's organists began to perform western art music such as Johannes Brahms's "Lullaby," Frederic Chopin's famous death march from his Piano Sonata no. 2, and Jules Massenet's "Meditation" from Thais.