- Christian Music Place: Artists by Genre – About two dozen musical genres including blues, a capella, dance/techno, and Southern gospel, with as many as several hundred links to Christian music artists in each.
- Urban-Blues – explains the relationship between blues and hip-hop, jazz, rock, R&B, soul and gospel.
- Flint Music – North Carolina Blues, Bluegrass, Gospel, and Christian music label. Home of Little Creek and Flint. Discography, label information, and pictures.
- Great Recordings – Blues, gospel, and R&B recordings.
- King, Shelley – The soulfulness of a gospel singer overtaken by the fire of the blues within the sensibilities of roots music.
- Lucille’s Rockin’ Radio – Music of the 1950s and early 60s, including doo wop, rockabilly, R&B, gospel, and blues.
- Passions of Patchy – Experience Streaming Oldies, Blues and Gospel from the «Passionate One».
- Cybro Radio – Non-commercial internet radio station broadcasting rhythm and blues, jazz, big band, swing, Cajun and gospel music for listening with the Destiny Player, Media Player or RealPlayer.
- Delta Cultural Center – Museum in the Arkansas Delta offering a look at the culture of a unique region through its music, people and traditions. The Delta Cultural Center’s Delta Music Documentation Project is an active project focusing on Blues and Gospels deep roots in the Delta.
- B.B. King Blues Club & Grill – Find suggested artists, tickets, online entertainment and enjoy the Gospel brunch.
- Bailey, Philip – Jazz, gospel, and rhythm and blues.
- Ellis, Sydney – Blues, classic jazz, gospel and spirituals available on CD.
What most people would identify today as » — gospel —» began very differently eighty years ago. The gospel music that Thomas A. Dorsey, Sallie Martin, Dr. Mattie Moss Clark, Willie Mae Ford Smith and other pioneers popularized had its roots in the more freewheeling forms of religious devotion of «Sanctified» or «Holiness» churches — sometimes called «holy rollers» by other denominations — who encouraged individual church members to «testify,» speaking or singing spontaneously about their faith and experience of the Holy Ghost and Getting Happy, sometimes while dancing in celebration. In the 1920s Sanctified artists, such as Arizona Dranes, many of whom were also traveling preachers, started making records in a style that melded traditional religious themes with barrelhouse, blues and boogie woogie techniques and brought jazz instruments, such as drums and horns, into the church. It is also important to note that gospel music is not just a form of music. It is an intricate part of the religious experience for many church-goers.
Dorsey, who, as jonny g, had once composed for and played piano behind blues giants Tampa Red, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, worked hard to develop this new music, organizing an annual convention for gospel artists, touring with Martin to sell sheet music and gradually overcoming the resistance of more conservative churches to what many of them considered sinful, worldly music. Combining the sixteen bar structure and blues modes and rhythms with religious lyrics, Dorsey’s compositions opened up possibilities for innovative singers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe to apply their very individual talents to his songs, while inspiring church members to «shout» — either to call out catch phrases or to add musical lines of their own in response to the singers.
This free-er style affected other black religious musical styles as well. The most popular groups in the 1930s were male quartets or small groups such as The Golden Gate Quartet, who sang, usually unaccompanied, in jubilee style, mixing careful harmonies, melodious singing, playful syncopation and sophisticated arrangements to produce a fresh, experimental style far removed from the more somber hymn-singing. These groups also absorbed popular sounds from pop groups such as The Mills Brothers and produced songs that mixed conventional religious themes, humor and social and political commentary. They began to show more and more influence from gospel as they incorporated the new music into their repertoire.
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