NewsletterRethinking the Rhapsody
by Richard Crawford
New Music Notes
by Carol J. Oja
Time to Remember Zez Confrey by Artis Wodehouse
Behind the Beat
with Mark Tucker
Widening the Lens II
by Daniel Kingman
Reviews
A Centenary Moment?
by Stephen Banfield
Gershwin on Disc
by Edward A. Berlin
Country and Gospel Notes
by Charles Wolfe
Country and Gospel Notes
by Charles Wolfe
The high water mark of southern gospel music’s influence on mainstream pop culture probably came in the early 1950s. It was a time when Eisenhower’s America was full of the revival spirit of young Billy Graham, when the smooth quartet vocal style of classic gospel was not far removed from pre-rock-and-roll pop music, and when gospel music was not ghettoized. The Blackwood Brothers appeared on Arthur Godfrey’s national television show, and other quartets were signed to major record labels. Songs like “How Great Thou Art” and “I Believe,” pop gospel tunes labeled by Billboard as “religioso” songs, were reaching the charts. Mahalia Jackson was signed to Columbia and then paired with Mitch Miller to create slick singles. Things were so good for the two premier southern gospel quartets, the Statesmen and the Blackwood Brothers, that they started their own record labels and bought out several of the old shape-note publishers like James D. Vaughan.
During the turbulent 1960s, southern gospel slipped back into a niche music and its high profile slowly receded. Assailed by “Contemporary Christian” music from California–the pop styles of singers like Cynthia Clawson, the folk-flavored introspection of singers like Amy Grant, and even gospel rock bands like Petra–the classic southern styles and repertoires languished. Then, starting in 1991, a fascinating revival occurred. Its leader was an unlikely, middle-aged song-writer and promoter named Bill Gaither, who came not from Mississippi or Georgia but Anderson, Indiana. In the last decade, he has stimulated a renewed interest in the older styles and singers, and has shown the entire industry new ways to market and promote the music.
Bill Gaither (not to be confused with the blues singer of the same name) grew up listening to the 1950s gospel quartets that were as popular in the Midwest as in the South. He married in 1963, began performing locally on keyboards with his own trio, and started writing songs with his wife Gloria. Here he found his greatest early success. His “I, John” was recorded by Elvis Presley in 1966, and other songs, including “He Touched Me,” “Because He Lives,” and “The King is Coming,” quickly became church standards. He formed his own singing group, the Bill Gaither Trio, which enjoyed hit recordings of its own. The Trio’s label, the venerable Nashville firm of Benson, learned how to market his albums through the flourishing Christian book stores, and sold 250,000 copies in 1968–an astounding figure in a field in which LP sales of 5,000 were considered successful. During the next two decades Bill and Gloria Gaither made dozens of additional LPs and became leaders in the gospel industry. In 1968 Bill Gaither encouraged the Gospel Music Organization to sponsor an annual awards ceremony that eventually became The Dove Awards–gospel’s own in-house version of the Country Music Foundation or Blues Foundation award.
Gaither’s career took a new direction on 19 February 1991, at a Nashville studio. Following a trend in country music, he asked guest artists to join his new group, the Gaither Vocal Band, in recording the familiar standard “Where Could I Go.” These guests included James Blackwood, of the legendary Blackwood Brothers; Jake Hess, formerly of the Statesmen and Imperials and the model for much of Elvis’s style; members of the Speer Family; Howard and Vestal Goodman of the Happy Goodman Family, the most popular gospel group of the 1960s; and Elvis’s favorite back-up group, J.D. Sumner and the Stamps. A gospel version of a jam session evolved, with a wide variety of informal singing, storytelling, and reminiscing. It was all videotaped, and later issued as Homecoming Video Album (Star Song SSV8726).
The video was a major commercial success. Fans from around the country jumped at the chance to see in a new setting the southern gospel heroes they had known since childhood. It was followed by two more nostalgia-tinged home videos, Reunion and Turn Your Radio On, and sales continued to surge. Cable television helped promote them, and the Christian bookstore network began to stock them. Finding the market could absorb even more, from 1991 to the present Gaither issued as many as four videos a year. The twenty-seven released titles, ranging from All Day Singin’ to Homecoming Texas Style, include almost every major southern gospel singer and composer. The Homecoming series was a revolutionary format, and re-energized southern gospel.
Gaither and his colleagues wasted no time in further developing this new video market. He leased a number of old television shows from the 1960s, including the well-known syndicated “Gospel Jubilee,” and created anthologies of clips by individual artists such as The Statesmen, The Rambos, and the Blackwood Brothers. Songbooks of “Homecoming Favorites” and background music tracks for the same songs are in the new catalogue, as well as a new CD series that reissues vintage RCA 1950s recordings by the Speer Family, the Blackwood Brothers, and the Statesmen.
Now a printed chronicle of all this has emerged: Homecoming: The Story of Southern Gospel Music Through the Eyes of Its Best-Loved Performers (Zondervan Publishing, 1997; $29.99), by Bill Gaither with Jerry Jenkins. It is not really a history of the genre, though its does sport fine vintage photos and interesting anecdotes. It is probably more valuable as a documentation of Gaither and the Homecoming phenomenon, and of the complex interaction between generations and groups on the contemporary gospel scene. Along with the current “Gaither Collection” catalogue, the book brings to today’s multi-faceted gospel scene a sense of scope and direction.