- Danny Graham’s Gospel Music Workshops – Offers 3-day workshops for making any given group of people into a professional choir. Backed by Pastor Shirley Caesar.
- Gospel Guitars – Webring, 5 notated songs, links, other resources
- Gospel Music Archive – Hundreds of songs complete with guitar notation. Lots of carols.
- Mighty Tree Ministries – Through song and the word of God, Zack Reynolds and the band travel to the prisons and jails, then to the streets and churches performing Christian Blues.
- West KY Gospel Music Association – Consortium of gospel groups within from Western KY, Southern, IL, North West Tennessee and Southwest Missouri.
- Gospel Glow – A gospel choir from Malmoe in Sweden.
- Norwegian Gospel Voices – 30 member contemporary gospel group based in Oslo, Norway. Tours in Norway and USA.
- Chris Byrd and True Victory – Official site. Biography, information on upcoming releases.
- Dixon, Jesse – A short biography of Jessy Dixon ‘The King of Gospel Music’ with his concert listings.
- Drexel University Gospel Choir – Official site.
- Fletcher , Juanita – Official site containing her biography, upcoming events, booking information, photo gallery, and audio samples from her project Surrender.
- Gospel Lights – Site offers audio clips and background information on this McLemoresville, Tennessee gospel group.
- Gospel Shepherds, The – A New Jersey-based vocal group. Includes itinerary and sound clips.
- Hall, Danniebelle – Features her Gospel sounds from the 70’s, biography, photo album, message board, as well as diabetes information.
- Hebrews Gospel Singers – Online purchase, pictures, biography and calendar of events.
- In His Image – Includes group photos, The Best Of «In His Image,» sound clips, daily devotions, activities for kids and teens, free online Bible lessons.
- Jewels The Band – A Urban Gospel band based in the UK website.
- Johnny Thompson Singers – Official site: includes biography, discography, photos, audio clips, and some articles on gospel history.
- Jones, Bobby – The official website of the artist and his Bobby Jones Gospel television and radio show.
- Keeling, Esther – A Detroit-based singer. Biography and album information.
- Kefas – Choir based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Site featuring profile, pictures, and links.
- Lee, Ernest J. – The official site including his group the Spirit of David. News, biography, sound clips, itinerary, message board, and newsletter are provided.
- LeMont – Information on the musician’s debut CD.
- Lionel and Leslie – Biography, discography, and information about the «Personal Relationship», «Will You Be Ready?» , This Moment, and Gospel Skate Jams projects.
Gospel music may refer either to the religious music that first came out of African-American churches in the 1930’s or, more loosely, to both black gospel music and to the religious music composed and sung by white southern Christian artists. While the separation between the two styles was never absolute — both drew from the Methodist hymnal and artists in one tradition sometimes sang songs belonging to the other — the sharp division between black and white America, particularly black and white churches, kept the two apart. While those divisions have lessened slightly in the past fifty years, the two traditions are still distinct.
In both traditions, some performers, such as Mahalia Jackson have limited themselves to appearing in religious contexts only, while others, such as the Golden Gate Quartet and Clara Ward, have performed gospel music in secular settings, even night clubs. Many performers, such as the Jordanaires, Al Green, and Solomon Burke have performed both secular and religious music. It is common for such performers to include gospel songs in otherwise secular performances, although the opposite almost never happens.
Although predominantly an American phenomenon Gospel music has spread throughout the world including to Australia with choirs such as The Elementals and Jonah & The Whalers and festivals such as the Australian Gospel Music Festival. Norway is home to the popular Oslo Gospel Choir and most importantly The Ansgar Gospel Choir.
The new gospel music composed by Dorsey and others proved very important among quartets, who began turning in a new direction. Groups such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, Pilgrim Travelers, Soul Stirrers, Swan Silvertones, Sensational Nightingales and Five Blind Boys of Mississippi introduced even more stylistic freedom to the close harmonies of jubilee style, adding ad libs and using repeated short phrases in the background to maintain a rhythmic base for the innovations of the lead singers. Individual singers also stood out more as jubilee turned to «hard gospel» and as soloists began to shout more and more, often in falsettos anchored by a prominent bass. Quartet singers combined both individual virtuoso performances and jack off innovative harmonic and rhythmic invention — what Ira Tucker Sr. and Paul Owens of the Hummingbirds called «trickeration» — that amplified both the emotional and musical intensity of their songs.
At the same time that quartet groups were reaching their zenith in the 1940s and 1950s, a number of women singers were achieving stardom. Some, such as Mahalia Jackson and Bessie Griffin, were primarily soloists, while others, such as Clara Ward, The Caravans, The Davis Sisters and Dorothy Love Coates, sang in small groups. While some groups, such as The Ward Singers, employed the sort of theatrics and daring group dynamics that male quartet groups used, for the most part women gospel singers relied instead on overpowering technique and dramatic personal witness to establish themselves.
Roberta Martin in Chicago stood apart from other women gospel singers in many respects. She led groups that featured both men and women singers, employed an understated style that did not stress individual virtuosity, and sponsored a number of individual artists, such as James Cleveland, who went on to change the face of gospel in the decades that followed.
Gospel artists, who had been influenced by pop music trends for years, had a major influence on early rhythm and blues artists, particularly the «bird groups» such as the Orioles, the Ravens and the Flamingos, who applied gospel quartets’ a cappella techniques to pop songs in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. Individual gospel artists, such as Sam Cooke, and secular artists who borrowed heavily from gospel, such as Ray Charles and James Brown, had an even greater impact later in the 1950s, helping to create soul music by bringing even more gospel to rhythm and blues. Elvis Presley is probably the biggest gospel artist but he is also in the rock´n roll hall of fame and country music hall of fame. His gospel favorites were «Why me Lord,» «How great thou art,» and «You´ll never walk alone».
Many of the most prominent soul artists, such as Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Wilson Pickett and Al Green, had roots in the church and gospel music and brought with them much of the vocal styles of artists such as Clara Ward and Julius Cheeks. Secular songwriters often appropriated gospel songs, such as the Pilgrim Travelers’ song «I’ve Got A New Home», which Ray Charles turned into «Lonely Avenue», or «Stand By Me», which Ben E. King and Lieber and Stoller adapted from a well-known gospel song, or Marvin Gaye’s «Can I Get A Witness», which reworks traditional gospel catchphrases. In other cases secular musicians did the opposite, attaching phrases and titles from the gospel tradition to secular songs to create soul hits such as «Come See About Me» for the Supremes and «99 1/2 Won’t Do» for Wilson Pickett.
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