The gospel from to Alice
Dayter divines words from above



BERNE — During President Bill Clinton’s sex scandal, Alice Dayter wrote him a poem.
"The truth is the truth," said Dayter, this week, summing up the poem.
The act itself didn’t offend her so much, and she voted for Clinton twice, but, she said, "He didn’t handle it the right way."
That was her first poem; she wrote it while working the night shift as a home health aid. "I have to stay awake," she said. "And the words would come to me."

Next came gospel music.

Raised as a Baptist in North Carolina, Dayter moved to Brooklyn at 14 and lost her religion along the way. In 1990, though, she moved to Albany and was born again.

Tina, as Dayter is known to her 12 siblings, joined two of her seven brothers in New York’s capital city. As a child, she was small, Dayter said, Teeny, in fact. Over the years, her nickname morphed from Teeny to Tina, she said, and it belonged to herself alone, unlike her given name — she was named after her mother.

Both of her parents sang when she was growing up, Dayter said, but she remembers her father, especially, finger picking his guitar on the front porch and singing with friends.
"I remember saying, ‘One day I’m going to sing like him,’" she said, adding, "Here I am, 50 years later."

Things came together for Dayter one day back in March, when she took her songs to the Holiday Inn for a seminar on getting music produced. There, she met Eddy Harris, and, by July, she had put together an album of her own gospel, with a handful of her 37 grandchildren singing the chorus.

Dayter’s voice doesn’t come from the surface, but from somewhere deep inside. When she lets it out, it stays low, like a coat of molasses — thick and rich. On her album, she’s put a rap track next to R&B and she includes more traditional gospel singing in an effort to reach the younger generations.
She and her husband, Jim, have 11 children between them, and 15 years of wedded bliss. They live in a cozy little trailer, the windows hung with lace, kept as neat as a pin, in Berne. When they first met, Mr. Dayter said, "She wouldn’t give me her number, so I gave her three of mine."

Now, the pair holds a street ministry downtown on the corner of Eagle Street and Morton Avenue, where Mr. Dayter preaches and Mrs. Dayter sings. She carries a CD with her when she performs, Dayter said; it provides the background for her songs.
"The seed is being planted," Dayter said of the spirituality her music is bringing to young people. "We’re gonna pray that God takes me and my songs to the top."