Podcasts about national quartet convention

Join us, Melody and Candi, as we take a stroll down memory lane, celebrating our shared love for Southern Gospel music. With 17 years of concerts, events, and countless memories, we reflect on the times we followed artists like Signature Sound and Michael English, and attended massive gatherings like the National Quartet Convention and Singing in the Sun. Listen in as we recount the hilarious moment we unwittingly found ourselves on the red carpet at Dollywood, decked out in our finest—save for the Crocs and sandals on our feet.In this heartfelt conversation, we also explore the unique atmosphere of Southern Gospel events and how they serve as the ultimate setting for people-watching, surpassing even the likes of Walmart for entertainment value. Plus, we touch on Aaron Wilburn's humorous take on Southern Gospel fandom in his book, "You Might Be a Southern Gospel Music Fan If." Whether you're a die-hard fan or just looking for a laugh, our anecdotes are sure to bring a smile to your face and maybe even a bit of nostalgia for the sights and sounds of Southern Gospel music.

Rick has the distinct honor of sitting down with Clarke Beasley, the head man at The National Quartet Convention and The Pigeon Forge Bluegrass Convention!

Join us, Melody and Candi, as we take a stroll down memory lane, celebrating our shared love for Southern Gospel music. With 17 years of concerts, events, and countless memories, we reflect on the times we followed artists like Signature Sound and Michael English, and attended massive gatherings like the National Quartet Convention and Singing in the Sun. Listen in as we recount the hilarious moment we unwittingly found ourselves on the red carpet at Dollywood, decked out in our finest—save for the Crocs and sandals on our feet.In this heartfelt conversation, we also explore the unique atmosphere of Southern Gospel events and how they serve as the ultimate setting for people-watching, surpassing even the likes of Walmart for entertainment value. Plus, we touch on Aaron Wilburn's humorous take on Southern Gospel fandom in his book, "You Might Be a Southern Gospel Music Fan If." Whether you're a die-hard fan or just looking for a laugh, our anecdotes are sure to bring a smile to your face and maybe even a bit of nostalgia for the sights and sounds of Southern Gospel music.

The Wilbanks:Terry & Rene' WilbanksJason & Monica MathewsThey are in their 20th year of full-time touring, ministering through theirmusic in churches, at conferences, and at special events.They have been privileged to sing on the Main Stage at the National Quartet Convention several times since 2013.The Wilbanks music is currently being played nationwide on various radio stations,on Sirius/XM Enlighten, and they have also been featured on the Gaither Homecoming Radio Program.Their songs have been in the top Gospel radio charts for over 7 yearswith most songs in the top 40, top 30 and a recent song at #18.The Wilbanks endeavor to reach all cultures through a wide variety of music styles,while exalting our Creator and sovereign God through every song.Connect with Us: https://thecrossrds.comStreaming License # CCLI: CSPL043706

The Wilbanks:Terry & Rene' WilbanksJason & Monica MathewsThey are in their 20th year of full-time touring, ministering through theirmusic in churches, at conferences, and at special events.They have been privileged to sing on the Main Stage at the National Quartet Convention several times since 2013.The Wilbanks music is currently being played nationwide on various radio stations,on Sirius/XM Enlighten, and they have also been featured on the Gaither Homecoming Radio Program.Their songs have been in the top Gospel radio charts for over 7 yearswith most songs in the top 40, top 30 and a recent song at #18.The Wilbanks endeavor to reach all cultures through a wide variety of music styles,while exalting our Creator and sovereign God through every song.Connect with Us: https://thecrossrds.comStreaming License # CCLI: CSPL043706

The National Quartet Convention is coming to the LeConte Center in Pigeon Forge TN. Visit their website: https://natqc.com/ for more into.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Melody Boys Quartet was a Southern gospel music group based in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The Melody Boys Quartet officially disbanded on December 31, 2012, at the end of the group's “Exit 63” tour, celebrating sixty-three years together. In 1949, Foshee died from a heart attack and was replaced by the sixteen-year-old Gerald Williams, who was also the bass singer for the quartet. The group also ceased to be associated with Stamps-Baxter at this time. Joe Roper took over the group, and they renamed themselves Smilin' Joe Roper and the Melody Boys. The quartet began to gain popularity throughout the 1950s. In addition to performing every weeknight as well as at different churches and music conventions every weekend, they began doing a radio broadcast program on the Little Rock station KARK-AM (now KARN) three times a day. The program consistently opened with the group's most popular song, “Give the World a Smile.” The Melody Boys later became the first Southern gospel music group from Arkansas to have a television program; they began performing live on KARK TV in 1954. The Melody Boys also performed at the first National Quartet Convention in 1957 in Memphis, Tennessee.

One of Gospel Music's greats, Duane Nicholson, has so much more to offer than just his stellar tenor voice and singing with the internationally known group, The Couriers. He's also known to have great wit, great stories and an arsenal of beloved friends and fans world-wide. Jeff and Sue Duffield sit down with their lifelong friend, and chat on some of the crazy but important things in Duane's life and ministry.  www.daveduaneandneil.com www.sueduffield.com

Come enjoy a chat with Clarke Beasley, president of National Quartet Convention, as we talk with him about where it started and what's coming up.

The Collingsworth Family (2000-present), Portsmith, Ohio, will be the featured artists this week on The Gospel Jubilee.Here are all of the ways you can listen to the Gospel Jubilee…On your Echo device say, Alexa, play the Gospel Jubilee on Apple podcast.A direct download: https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/49103506/download.mp3Ocean Waves Radio ... every Wednesday at 12 noon Eastern time., www.OceanWavesRadio.comThursday afternoons at 4:00 PM and Sunday mornings at 9:30 AM EST on Southern Branch Bluegrass Radio, www.sbbradio.orgSaturday evenings at 7:00 and Wednesday afternoons at 4:00 CST on Radio For Life, www.RadioForLife.orgAbout The Collingsworth FamilyExcitement, spiritual anointing, family-emphasis, and musical excellence are what you can expect to find when you step across the threshold of the auditorium for an Evening of Family Worship and Praise with The Collingsworth Family. Since their first engagement together as musicians for a church camp in Petersburg, Michigan in August, 1986 until now, the ministry God has given Phil & Kim has expanded and flourished until it is a full-time livelihood that involves their entire family.Their boundaries of influence have expanded until they have sung and played all over the United States (as well as internationally) into their 36th year of ministry.Phil & Kim's actual base of ministry began during their college days. Phil is a 1986 graduate of God's Bible School & College, Cincinnati, OH. This is the famous, 100+ year old college that is well-known within Christian education ranks for having been the American college where Oswald Chambers (“My Utmost For His Highest”) taught.Phil also completed professional trumpet studies at College Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati and earned a Bachelor of Sacred Music degree with a double major in trumpet performance and music education.Kim attended Union Bible College, Westfield, IN where she was very instrumental in arranging most of the music that was performed by the college's traveling music groups. Since that time, many ministry opportunities have come across their pathway. They have always maintained a public performance ministry, which for the first fourteen years included doing music presentations for church camps and extended-length revival campaigns.They have also held the positions of Ministers of Music, Hobe Sound Bible Church, Hobe Sound, FL; Director, Music Division, Union Bible College, Westfield, IN; and Phil was Dean of Enrollment Management at his Alma Mater, God's Bible School & College, Cincinnati, OH. In January, 2000, Phil & Kim transitioned to a new, all-concert ministry. They began recording professionally and currently utilize America's top-selling choral arranger, Bradley Knight (Dallas, TX) as their primary producer.This new emphasis began to expand their boundaries rapidly. Their home has seen the addition of four children across the years and the children are now very actively involved in the ministry.Their two oldest daughters are quite proficient on the violin and play at each of their concerts. Their entire family sings together in an ensemble.Kim is well-known for her phenomenal mastery of the piano and the extraordinary talent God has given her is a part of each concert, as well as trumpet solos from Phil. On February 1, 2019, they signed an exclusive booking agreement with JEFF ROBERTS & ASSOCIATES of Hendersonville, TN, which now represents them in all personal appearances. Then, on April 12, 2021, The Collingsworth Family signed a recording agreement with Gaither Music Group, Nashville, TN which now markets their recordings internationally, both digitally and physically, via GMG's agreement with UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP/CAPITOL CHRISTIAN as exclusive distributor.This new agreement also added The Collingsworth Family to appear regularly on the GAITHER GOSPEL HOUR's internationally syndicated television shows, distributed to more than a dozen commercial television networks.Their ministry is featured regularly on the nation's largest gospel music syndicated radio program, The Gospel Greats with Rodney Baucom. Their music is also regularly featured on XM/Sirius Satellite Radio's Enlighten Channel 65, GMT (Gospel Music Television), The DayStar Television Network, INSP, and is featured each year, at Christmas, in prime-time specials on the Trinity Broadcasting Television Network.The Collingsworth Family has appeared on many of the Gaither's Homecoming Series live concert events around the nation, making appearances with the Gaithers in some of their largest venues in the US and Canada, as well as taping many of their filming events at the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, TN; The Billy Graham Library, Charlotte, NC; and at their hometown studio, Alexandria, IN.The CFam Personal Appearance Schedule shows the broad appeal their family emphasis has, performing in all types of venues across the US, the Cayman Islands, Sweden, Norway, Canada, etc. They annually make appearances at The Brooklyn Tabernacle, Brooklyn NY; The Billy Graham Training Center, Asheville, NC; Shadow Mountain Community Church, El Cajon, CA; and at many festivals and celebrations such as The Great Smokies PraiseFest, Sevierville, TN; Branson PraiseFest, Branson, MO; The National Quartet Convention, Pigeon Forge, TN; Gaither's Family Fest, Gatlinburg, TN; etc.The rapid expansion they have seen occur with the transition to an all-concert ministry is a direct result of the emphasis they have placed on the power of prayer. Each Tuesday evening, they hold a private prayer meeting in their home for the specific purpose of praying for the salvation of their children and the expansion of their ministry.Since the beginning of these weekly prayer meetings in 2000, the doors of opportunity for ministry have opened to them, crossing all evangelical denominational boundaries. Phil & Kim's entire purpose is to give the talent God has loaned them back to their Creator as a sacrifice of praise. The Collingsworth Family: Phil and Kim Collingsworth, children, Brooklyn Collingsworth Blair, the oldest sibling, Courtney Collingsworth-Metz, the second-oldest of the four siblings, Phil Collingsworth jr., the third oldest of the four kids, Olivia Collingsworth, the youngest sibling. Don't miss a single minute of the next edition of the Gospel Jubilee.Playlist: Artists | Song Title | Album01. The Collingsworth family - I've come here to tell you that the Lord is good - "The Lord Is Good"02. The Collingsworth family - Bottom of the barrel - "The Answer"03. The Collingsworth Family - I know - "The Answer"04. The Collingsworth family - What the Bible says - "That Day Is Coming"05. the Collingsworth Family - We will serve the Lord - "The Lord Is Good"06,. The Collingsworth Family - Light from heaven - "God Is Faithful"07. The Collingsworth Family - Living in love with the Lord - "The Lord Is Good"08. The Collingsworth Family - If He hung the moon - "The Lord Is Good"09. The Collingsworth Family - Fear not tomorrow - "The Answer"10. The Collingsworth Family - It matters to the Master - "The Lord Is Good"11. The Collingsworth Family - How great His love for me - "The Lord Is Good"12. The Collingsworth Family - He loves me - "God Is Faithful"13. The Collingsworth Family - I could never out love the Lord - "The Lord Is Good"14. The Collingsworth Family - I love living in love with Jesus - "That Day Is Coming"15. The Collingsworth Family - Tell the mountain - "Part Of The Family"16. The Collingsworth Family - You're about to climb - "That Day Is Coming"17. The Collingsworth Family - Gotta get to Jesus - "That Day Is Coming"18. The Collingsworth Family - Ever gentle, ever sweet - "The Answer"19. The Collingsworth Family - It runs in the family - "Mercy & Love"20. The Collingsworth Family - Mercy and love - "Mercy & Love"21. The Collingsworth Family - That day is coming - "That Day Is Coming"Send your requests to:request@gatewayfortheblind.com

The BibleTones, 1957 - present, lumberton, MS, will be the featured artists this week on The Gospel Jubilee.Listen to the Gospel Jubilee on your Echo device by saying, Alexa, play the Gospel Jubilee on Apple podcast.Or go to: https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/48390534/download.mp3The BibleTones Quartet was formed in 1957 by Mr. and Mrs. Ward Hurt, in Lumberton, Mississippi. Hurt was born and raised in North Alabama and actively sang in quartets, including the group, the Sand Mountain Quartet.In the late 1940's, Hurt and his wife moved to south Mississippi, where he established the BibleTones, with the vision to create a singing ministry group. In addition to his work with the quartet, Hurt also served as mayor of Lumberton, Mississippi and manufactured furniture.In the early 1980's, Hurt retired from the BibleTones and the leadership went to Howard Rutland and Paul Vinson, members of the group. Paul Vinson left the group in the mid 80's to sing with the Dixie Echoes (his son-in-law is Randy Shelnut).The BibleTones have achieved many accomplishments during its existence including the recordings of more than forty projects, such as videos, television programs and a weekly show in Tampa, hosted by singer, songwriter and minister, The Late Vep Ellis. The group has appeared on the Gospel Singing Jubilee, Grand Ole Opry (Sunday night), The National Quartet Convention, as well as promoted gospel concerts in South Mississippi.(Several concerts were promoted together with the “Old Gospel Man,” the late, J. G. Whitfield).In the last 52 years, the BibleTones have hosted more than 75 members, each one of them performing with unique talent. Some of the earlier members include: Paul Vinson (Dixie Echoes), Mark Flaker (Florida Boys), Tommy Atwood (Florida Boys), Billy Todd (Florida Boys), William Pippen (Naomi & the Segos), Craig Pippin (Dixie Echoes), Vaughn Thacker (Dixie Echoes), Pete Pitts (Naomi & the Segos), Tommy Randall (Plainsmen) Mark Lanier (Poet Voices), and Chris Bryant (The Kingsmen).The BibleTones Quartet performs primarily in the Southeastern U.S., with occasional dates in the Midwest and Northeast. “The Lord has blessed this ministry and allowed it to grow for the past 59 years. They hope and pray that their group will continue for another 50 years."Their MissionTo spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Ministry of Singing. The Gospel Jubilee with Chip and Denny is proud to announce that their program can now be heard on Ocean Waves Radio ... every Wednesday at 12 noon Eastern time.Go to: www.OceanWavesRadio.comYou can also catch The Gospel Jubilee Thursday afternoons at 4:00 PM and Sunday mornings at 9:30 AM EST on Southern Branch Bluegrass RadioGo to www.sbbradio.orgYou can also catch The Gospel Jubilee Saturday evenings at 7:00 and Wednesday afternoons at 4:00 CST on Radio For Life.Go to: www.RadioForLife.orgDon't miss a single minute of the next edition of the Gospel Jubilee.Playlist: Artists | Song Title | Album01. The Bibletones - Shout and shine - "Subject To Change"02. Legacy Five - He is to me - "Great Day"03. Mercy's Well - So good so God - "There's a Song for That"04. The Bibletones - Subject to change - "Subject To Change"05. The Bibletones - I've got an old time religion - "Subject To Change"06. Austin & Ethan Whisnant - I lean on you Lord - "Live for You Today"07. The Booth Brothers - Testify - "Requested"08. The Talleys - Give me Jesus - "Give Me Jesus - Single"09. Chronicle - He has a way of turning the tide - "Can't Lose For Winning"10. The Gaither Vocal - Band - This is the place - "Good Things Take Time"11. Ernie Haase & Signature Sound - Not that far behind you - "Keeping On"12. The Bibletones - We miss home - "Subject To Change"13. The Bibletones - Maybe one more day - "Subject To Change"14. The Bibletones - Won't that be glory - "Subject To Change"15. Exodus Southern Gospel - Open invitation - "Happy"16. The Hinsons - The lighthouse - "The Hinsons Hits"17. Randy Travis - That's Jesus - "Rise and Shine"18. Mark Bishop - Driving to school - "You're Happy When You're Laughing"19. Mark Bishop - Things are gettin' mighty weird - "Faith, Family, and Friends"20. Carroll Roberson - A mighty rich man - "Celebrating 30 years"21. The Inspirations - Surely I come quickly - "Pray for Me"22. The 3 Heath Brothers - We choose life - "Who We Are"23. The down East Boys - A reason to sing - "Ransomed"24. The Perrys - his name was John - "Life Of Love"Send your request to:request@gatewayfortheblind.com

This week we welcome Doug Gabriel and Trey Wilson! Doug Gabriel's #1 Hits Tribute Show is everything the name implies and so much more! One of Branson's longest running and most successful entertainers, Doug Gabriel gives you everything he's got on songs that everyone knows and loves! Hits from today's artists, yesterday's hit-makers. Doug started singing at the age of two, and began using his God-given talent professionally at the age of twelve. Several years later he began touring and opening for many other stars like Marie Osmond, Roy Clark, Tony Orlando, Tanya Tucker, Bobby Vinton, Mel Tillis, The Gatlins, Moe Bandy, Ronnie McDowell This is an example of a man who never lost sight of making his professional dreams come true. Doug’s talent, consistency, and his persistence made a diamond in the rough, a shining star. As a long-time favorite in Branson, it wasn’t a stretch that in 1994 his own show was created, “The Branson Morning Show, starring Doug Gabriel.” His talent has made him Branson’s Most Awarded Performer, and soon he began performing at night to the same ovations he got during the day. He remains very passionate about music and entertaining Branson audiences but, more than anything, he's passionate about family. Plus, Doug plays his World Famous Mufftar, a guitar made out of a 1969 Thunderbird muffler! He, and his family, are the 8th longest running act in the Branson area. This is due to his seemingly effortless talent, the quality of his show, and the altering of his show each year to keep things fresh. His talent and personal appeal will keep you coming back every time you are in Branson. Doug performs his show at The Branson Famous Theatre! For more information, or to order tickets call the Branson Famous BoxOffice: 417-231-4999 or visit DougGabriel.com. Trey started his singing career in a small Baptist church at the age of three and hasn't stopped since. He has shared the stage with artists such as The Cathedrals, The Kinsmen Quartet, The Happy Goodmans, The Gaither Homecoming Tour, the late Dottie Rambo and traveled for nearly three years with the Plainsmen Quartet. Born and raised in the Lone Star State, Trey was a senior in High School when he joined Grand Country in 2003. Trey was performing at the National Quartet Convention where Mike Patrick first met him. Mike was so impressed with Trey that he flew him to Branson for an audition and hired him on the spot. At the young age of 17, Trey packed up and moved to Branson to start the job, finishing high school by correspondence. During his 10 years with us, Trey was such an important part of the Grand Jubilee, New South Gospel, and Branson Country USA. His contributions went far beyond just being the New South lead singer. He was involved in vocal arrangements for both the stage and recording projects, in addition to assisting with many of the production elements of our shows. Trey left the group in August 2013 to pursue a career back in his home state of Texas. He took a marketing and sales job with GSD Companies based in Houston. GSD is a global scrap business which has also expanded into industrial demolition services for the petrochemical industry across the United States, and marine construction and dredging along the US Gulf Coast.

This past week, the world lost an amazing man. His name was Carman. Yes, the Carman that ministered through music that told a story. After a weird year of 2020, imagine the surprise of our tiny church when we were asked to host this legend in our sanctuary! We questioned our ability to make it happen, even had questions on it being wise during the current events. Yet, there we were. Our church has seen the congregation dwindle over the years but my dad's sermons continue to be exactly what we need to hear. We go live on Facebook every Sunday morning. Come be encouraged: Metro Christian CenterThe Carman event happened. To see our sanctuary full again. To watch my parents clap and smile as they listened. To look around and watch as hands were raised, lives were saved, hope was poured out like an ocean of refreshing water on everyone there. It's a time I hope I can always hold onto. Even as someone who wasn't close to him, it was such a heartbreaking moment to hear about his passing. I hurt for his crew. They were his family. I hurt for the small churches who were like us and preparing to welcome him. I hurt for the people who had already been inviting their loved ones to upcoming shows in hopes of bringing them closer to the Lord. I hurt for the ripple effect.Yet, you know what I'm glad about? I'm glad the Lord saw our family and church worthy to host him back in October. I'm glad for the friendships we made and wouldn't have otherwise had. I'm glad for the friends that attended and we hadn't seen in years. I'm glad my children were able to meet him. I'm glad that because of that moment, we were able to sponsor 2 children from the Child Fund . If you are looking for a sign to do the same: Child FundI find it so interesting to see when God is gonna show up. He sure never does it on our time, does he?When I was a teenager, I loved – and still do – a gospel singer named Michael English. Sigh. I thought he was so handsome but the way his vocals just glided along in a song is something I am convinced the angels sound like! As everyone else on this earth, though, he made some mistakes. One was significant enough that he left the gospel music world for several years. I remember reading such hate from Christians. Harsh judgements. And these weren't judgments out of caring about a fellow brother in Christ. Through the story of redemption, I had an answer to a long-time prayer that happened at the National Quartet Convention. It wasn't the place or time I thought it would be, and at the time I was doubting my prayers were even being heard, much less answered. I was wrong. I find that I can get so caught up in life. What's going on with so-and-so, which current event is causing mass chaos, fear, and division, engulfed in the worries of not just myself but even people I don't know! I cry out asking God to listen to my heart. I still struggle with questioning my abilities to be a good mom, a good wife, a good friend. I feel like such a failure in many areas of life.Is there something you're going through right now that you're not sure how it's going to turn out? Maybe you're a parent and you are worried about your kids. You're worried about their school situation. Something they seem to be having a difficult time with. Maybe you are afraid for them growing up in the world that you are raising them in.Are you concerned about a health issue? Have you been praying for what seems like eternity about a situation? Are you looking at your life and just at the point of feeling exhausted with it all? He knows your name. He knows your heart. And I am sure He has a plan that is better than anything you could imagine. Take a breath.Keep praying.This WILL be okay.I am needing your help to reach more people. If this podcast has touched you in any way, would you mind going ahead and sharing it with someone? If you'd like to leave a ratiing or review, that would be great, too! Podcasts get traffic by word of mouth. I'd appreciate the ability to connect with you as well as those you love and care about.Find me on Facebook, Instagram, or send me a quick hello at imperfectlypollyanna.com.

In our second episode on the newly rebooted podcast, we feature the Artists of Chapel Valley Studios in Sharps Chapel, TN. Also, if you listen to our radio show, we recently played a portion of an interview with Jim Yeary and Greg Bentley from Crossroads Studios while at the National Quartet Convention in 2019, so we play that interview in its entirety. http://www.chapelvalleymusic.com https://crossroadslabelgroup.com https://www.livinforgivin.com https://troyburnsfamily.com https://www.westwardroad.com Please check out James' new favorite coffee at www.cafecampesino.com also, James mentions his French Press given to him by Missionary Jody Hodnett and his new Vacuum Coffee Maker at www.bodum.com. Be sure to listen to the full radio show on these stations: SBB Radio Network & 91.7 Clinton  Sundays @ 10:00 p.m. Blue Grass Planet Radio Sunday's @ 4:00 p.m. **APP Available** Praise 107.1 Sunday's @ 6:00 p.m. and Thursday's @ 7:00 p.m. Good News Southern Gospel Radio Wednesday's @ 2:00 CST  **APP Available** Gospel Hour Radio Monday's and Thursday's @ 8:30 a.m. & 5:00 p.m. Pure Gospel Radio Friday's @12:00 p.m.   **APP Available** SOGR Radio Tuesday's @ 2:00 p.m. **APP Available** As always, you can check out our previous shows at www.southerngospelpov.com/archives. Check out our blog too. The weekly article written by James Burke is found at https://www.americustimesrecorder.com PJs3E3pwC5x4DJzbOieg --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sogopov/message

The loss of her father, caring for her mother, cancer ...Sheri Easter has walked challenging roads. But she keeps singing. Sheri called the show to share thoughts about her journey, her faith, and her contagious love of life! “When we perform, we want people to leave a little different than when they came in,” Sheri explains. “We want them to have a great time smiling, laughing, crying and healing. We want them to know God loves them and that He is in control.” @JeffandSheriEaster Jeff & Sheri Easter (www.jeffandsherieaster.com) have been nominated for numerous Dove Awards and won 7. They’ve also received two career Grammy nominations, and Sheri has been named the Singing News Favorite Alto eleven times and the Singing News Female Vocalist four times. In 2012 Sheri received Alto of the Year by the National Quartet Convention's first annual awards.  Jeff & Sheri’s wall of awards also include three Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music Association Awards, two International Country Gospel Music Association, nine Voice Awards for Female Artist, five Voice Awards for Song/Single of the Year, two Voice Awards for Christian Country Group, four SGM Fan Fair/USGN awards, seven SGN Scoops Diamond Awards, four Hearts Aflame Awards, and three Cash Box awards. They have also participated in the Gaither Homecoming Video Series since 1993, which has sold over 15 million units. HOPE FOR THE CAREGIVER is the family caregiver outreach of:         

Episode sixty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Little Darlin'” by The Gladiolas. Also, an announcement — the book version of the first fifty episodes is now available for purchase. See the show notes, or the previous mini-episode announcing this, for details.  —-more—- Resources The Mixcloud is slightly delayed this week. I’ll update the post tonight with the link. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick’s work, it’s an essential book if you’re even slightly interested in the subject. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke’s music for the beginner. A note on spelling: Sam Cooke was born Sam Cook, the rest of his family all kept the surname Cook, and he only added the “e” from the release of “You Send Me”, so for almost all the time covered in this episode he was Cook. I didn’t feel the need to mention this in the podcast, as the two names are pronounced identically. I’ve spelled him as Cooke and everyone else as Cook throughout. Book of the Podcast Remember that there’s a book available based on the first fifty episodes of the podcast. You can buy it at this link, which will take you to your preferred online bookstore. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We’ve talked before about how the music that became known as soul had its roots in gospel music, but today we’re going to have a look at the first big star of that music to get his start as a professional gospel singer, rather than as a rhythm and blues singer who included a little bit of gospel feeling. Sam Cooke was, in many ways, the most important black musician of the late fifties and early sixties, and without him it’s doubtful whether we would have the genre of soul as we know it today. But when he started out, he was someone who worked exclusively in the gospel field, and within that field he was something of a superstar. He was also someone who, as admirable as he was as a singer, was far less admirable in his behaviour towards other people, especially the women in his life, and while that’s something that will come up more in future episodes, it’s worth noting here. Cooke started out as a teenager in the 1940s, performing in gospel groups around Chicago, which as we’ve talked about before was the city where a whole new form of gospel music was being created at that point, spearheaded by Thomas Dorsey. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were all living and performing in the city during young Sam’s formative years, but the biggest influence on him was a group called the Soul Stirrers. The Soul Stirrers had started out in 1926 as a group in what was called the “jubilee” style — the style that black singers of spiritual music sang in the period before Thomas Dorsey revolutionised gospel music. There are no recordings of the Soul Stirrers in that style, but this is probably the most famous jubilee recording: [Excerpt: The Fisk Jubilee Singers, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”] But as Thomas Dorsey and the musicians around him started to create the music we now think of as gospel, the Soul Stirrers switched styles, and became one of the first — and best — gospel quartets in the new style. In the late forties, the Soul Stirrers signed to Specialty Records, one of the first acts to sign to the label, and recorded a series of classic singles led by R.H. Harris, who was regarded by many as the greatest gospel singer of the age: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers feat. R.H. Harris, “In That Awful Hour”] Sam Cooke was one of seven children, the son of Reverend Charles Cook and his wife Annie Mae, and from a very early age the Reverend Cook had been training them as singers — five of them would perform regularly around churches in the area, under the name The Singing Children. Young Sam was taught religion by his father, but he was also taught that there was no prohibition in the Bible against worldly success. Indeed the Reverend Cook taught him two things that would matter in his life even more than his religion would. The first was that whatever it is you do in life, you try to do it the best you can — you never do anything by halves, and if a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing properly. And the second was that you do whatever is necessary to give yourself the best possible life, and don’t worry about who you step on to do it. After spending some time with his family group, Cooke joined a newly-formed gospel group, who had heard him singing the Ink Spots song “If I Didn’t Care” to a girl. That group was called the Highway QCs, and a version of the group still exists to this day. Sam Cooke only stayed with them a couple of years, and never recorded with them, but they replaced him with a soundalike singer, Johnnie Taylor, and listening to Taylor’s recordings with the group you can get some idea of what they sounded like when Sam was a member: [Excerpt: Johnnie Taylor and the Highway QCs, “I Dreamed That Heaven Was Like This”] The rest of the group were decent singers, but Sam Cooke was absolutely unquestionably the star of the Highway QCs. Creadell Copeland, one of the group’s members, later said “All we had to do was stand behind Sam. Our claim to fame was that Sam’s voice was so captivating we didn’t have to do anything else.” The group didn’t make a huge amount of money, and they kept talking about going in a pop direction, rather than just singing gospel songs, and Sam was certainly singing a lot of secular music in his own time — he loved gospel music as much as anyone, but he was also learning from people like Gene Autry or Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and he was slowly developing into a singer who could do absolutely anything with his voice. But his biggest influence was still R.H. Harris of the Soul Stirrers, who was the most important person in the gospel quartet field. This wasn’t just because he was the most talented of all the quartet singers — though he was, and that was certainly part of it — but because he was the joint leader of a movement to professionalise the gospel quartet movement. (Just as a quick explanation — in both black gospel, and in the white gospel music euphemistically called “Southern Gospel”, the term “quartet” is used for groups which might have five, six, or even more people in them. I’ll generally refer to all of these as “groups”, because I’m not from the gospel world, but I’ll use the term “quartet” when talking about things like the National Quartet Convention, and I may slip between the two interchangeably at times. Just know that if I mention quartets, I’m not just talking about groups with exactly four people in them). Harris worked with a less well known singer called Abraham Battle, and with Charlie Bridges, of another popular group, the Famous Blue Jays: [Excerpt: The Famous Blue Jay Singers, “Praising Jesus Evermore”] Together they founded the National Quartet Convention, which existed to try to take all the young gospel quartets who were springing up all over the place, and most of whom had casual attitudes to their music and their onstage appearance, and teach them how to comport themselves in a manner that the organisation’s leaders considered appropriate for a gospel singer. The Highway QCs joined the Convention, of course, and they considered themselves to be disciples, in a sense, of the Soul Stirrers, who they simultaneously considered to be their mentors and thought were jealous of the QCs. It was normal at the time for gospel groups to turn up at each other’s shows, and if they were popular enough they would be invited up to sing, and sometimes even take over the show. When the Highway QCs turned up at Soul Stirrers shows, though, the Soul Stirrers would act as if they didn’t know them, and would only invite them on to the stage if the audience absolutely insisted, and would then limit their performance to a single song. From the Highway QCs’ point of view, the only possible explanation was that the Soul Stirrers were terrified of the competition. A more likely explanation is probably that they were just more interested in putting on their own show than in giving space to some young kids who thought they were the next big thing. On the other hand, to all the younger kids around Chicago, the Highway QCs were clearly the group to beat — and people like a young singer named Lou Rawls looked up to them as something to aspire to. And soon the QCs found themselves being mentored by R.B. Robinson, one of the Soul Stirrers. Robinson would train them, and help them get better gigs, and the QCs became convinced that they were headed for the big time. But it turned out that behind the scenes, there had been trouble in the Soul Stirrers. Harris had, more and more, come to think of himself as the real star of the group, and quit to go solo. It had looked likely for a while that he would do so, and when Robinson had appeared to be mentoring the QCs, what he was actually doing was training their lead singer, so that when R.H. Harris eventually quit, they would have someone to take his place. The other Highway QCs were heartbroken, but Sam took the advice of his father, the Reverend Cook, who told him “Anytime you can make a step higher, you go higher. Don’t worry about the other fellow. You hold up for other folks, and they’ll take advantage of you.” And so, in March 1951, Sam Cooke went into the studio with the Soul Stirrers for his first ever recording session, three months after joining the group. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, was not at all impressed that the group had got a new singer without telling him. Rupe had to admit that Cooke could sing, but his performance on the first few songs, while impressive, was no R.H. Harris: [Excerpt: the Soul Stirrers, “Come, Let Us Go Back to God”] But towards the end of the session, the Soul Stirrers insisted that they should record “Jesus Gave Me Water”, a song that had always been a highlight of the Highway QCs’ set. Rupe thought that this was ridiculous — the Pilgrim Travellers had just had a hit with the song, on Specialty, not six months earlier. What could Specialty possibly do with another version of the song so soon afterwards? But the group insisted, and the result was absolutely majestic: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, “Jesus Gave Me Water”] Rupe lost his misgivings, both about the song and about the singer — that was clearly going to be the group’s next single. The group themselves were still not completely sure about Cooke as their singer — he was younger than the rest of them, and he didn’t have Harris’ assurance and professionalism, yet. But they knew they had something with that song, which was released with “Peace in the Valley” on the B-side. That song had been written by Thomas Dorsey fourteen years earlier, but this was the first time it had been released on a record, at least by anyone of any prominence. “Jesus Gave Me Water” was a hit, but the follow-ups were less successful, and meanwhile Art Rupe was starting to see the commercial potential in black styles of music other than gospel. Even though Rupe loved gospel music, he realised when “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” became the biggest hit Specialty had ever had to that point that maybe he should refocus the label away from gospel and towards more secular styles of music. “Jesus Gave Me Water” had consolidated Sam as the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, but while he was singing gospel, he wasn’t living a very godly life. He got married in 1953, but he’d already had at least one child with another woman, who he left with the baby, and he was sleeping around constantly while on the road, and more than once the women involved became pregnant. But Cooke treated women the same way he treated the groups he was in – use them for as long as they’ve got something you want, and then immediately cast them aside once it became inconvenient. For the next few years, the Soul Stirrers would have one recording session every year, and the group continued touring, but they didn’t have any breakout success, even as other Specialty acts like Lloyd Price, Jesse Belvin, and Guitar Slim were all selling hand over fist. The Soul Stirrers were more popular as a live act than as a recording act, and hearing the live recording of them that Bumps Blackwell produced in 1955, it’s easy to see why: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Nearer to Thee”] Bumps Blackwell was convinced that Cooke needed to go solo and become a pop singer, and he was more convinced than ever when he produced the Soul Stirrers in the studio for the first time. The reason, actually, was to do with Cooke’s laziness. They’d gone into the studio, and it turned out that Cooke hadn’t written a song, and they needed one. The rest of the group were upset with him, and he just told them to hand him a Bible. He started flipping through, skimming to find something, and then he said “I got one”. He told the guitarist to play a couple of chords, and he started singing — and the song that came out, improvised off the top of his head, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”, was perfect just as it was, and the group quickly cut it: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”] Blackwell knew then that Cooke was a very, very special talent, and he and the rest of the people at Specialty became more and more insistent as 1956 went on that Sam Cooke should become a secular solo performer, rather than performing in a gospel group. The Soul Stirrers were only selling in the low tens of thousands — a reasonable amount for a gospel group, but hardly the kind of numbers that would make anyone rich. Meanwhile, gospel-inspired performers were having massive hits with gospel songs with a couple of words changed. There’s an episode of South Park where they make fun of contemporary Christian music, saying you just have to take a normal song and change the word “Baby” to “Jesus”. In the mid-fifties things seemed to be the other way — people were having hits by taking Gospel songs and changing the word “Jesus” to “baby”, or near as damnit. Most famously and blatantly, there was Ray Charles, who did things like take “This Little Light of Mine”: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine”] and turn it into “This Little Girl of Mine: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “This Little Girl of Mine”] But there were a number of other acts doing things that weren’t that much less blatant. And so Sam Cooke travelled to New Orleans, to record in Cosimo Matassa’s studio with the same musicians who had been responsible for so many rock and roll hits. Or, rather, Dale Cook did. Sam was still a member of the Soul Stirrers at the time, and while he wanted to make himself into a star, he was also concerned that if he recorded secular music under his own name, he would damage his career as a gospel singer, without necessarily getting a better career to replace it. So the decision was made to put the single out under the name “Dale Cook”, and maintain a small amount of plausible deniability. If necessary, they could say that Dale was Sam’s brother, because it was fairly well known that Sam came from a singing family, and indeed Sam’s brother L.C. (whose name was just the initials L.C.) later went on to have some minor success as a singer himself, in a style very like Sam’s. As his first secular recording, they decided to record a new version of a gospel song that Cooke had recorded with the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”] One quick rewrite later, and that song became, instead, “Lovable”: [Excerpt: Dale Cook, “Lovable”] Around the time of the Dale Cook recording session, Sam’s brother L.C. went to Memphis, with his own group, where they appeared at the bottom of the bill for a charity Christmas show in aid of impoverished black youth. The lineup of the show was almost entirely black – people like Ray Charles, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, and so on – but Elvis Presley turned up briefly to come out on stage and wave to the crowd and say a few words – the Colonel wouldn’t allow him to perform without getting paid, but did allow him to make an appearance, and he wanted to support the black community in Memphis. Backstage, Elvis was happy to meet all the acts, but when he found out that L.C. was Sam’s brother, he spent a full twenty minutes talking to L.C. about how great Sam was, and how much he admired his singing with the Soul Stirrers. Sam was such a distinctive voice that while the single came out as by “Dale Cook”, the DJs playing it would often introduce it as being by “Dale Sam Cook”, and the Soul Stirrers started to be asked if they were going to sing “Lovable” in their shows. Sam started to have doubts as to whether this move towards a pop style was really a good idea, and remained with the Soul Stirrers for the moment, though it’s noticeable that songs like “Mean Old World” could easily be refigured into being secular songs, and have only a minimal amount of religious content: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Mean Old World”] But barely a week after the session that produced “Mean Old World”, Sam was sending Bumps Blackwell demos of new pop songs he’d written, which he thought Blackwell would be interested in producing. Sam Cooke was going to treat the Soul Stirrers the same way he’d treated the Highway QCs. Cooke flew to LA, to meet with Blackwell and with Clifton White, a musician who had been for a long time the guitarist for the Mills Brothers, but who had recently left the band and started working with Blackwell as a session player. White was very unimpressed with Cooke – he thought that the new song Cooke sang to them, “You Send Me”, was just him repeating the same thing over and over again. Art Rupe helped them whittle the song choices down to four. Rupe had very particular ideas about what made for a commercial record – for example, that a record had to be exactly two minutes and twenty seconds long – and the final choices for the session were made with Rupe’s criteria in mind. The songs chosen were “Summertime”, “You Send Me”, another song Sam had written called “You Were Made For Me”, and “Things You Do to Me”, which was written by a young man Bumps Blackwell had just taken on as his assistant, named Sonny Bono. The recording session should have been completely straightforward. Blackwell supervised it, and while the session was in LA, almost everyone there was a veteran New Orleans player – along with Clif White on guitar there was René Hall, a guitarist from New Orleans who had recently quit Billy Ward and the Dominoes, and acted as instrumental arranger; Harold Battiste, a New Orleans saxophone player who Bumps had taken under his wing, and who wasn’t playing on the session but ended up writing the vocal arrangements for the backing singers; Earl Palmer, who had just moved to LA from New Orleans and was starting to make a name for himself as a session player there after his years of playing with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Fats Domino in Cosimo Matassa’s studio, and Ted Brinson, the only LA native, on bass — Brinson was a regular player on Specialty sessions, and also had connections with almost every LA R&B act, to the extent that it was his garage that “Earth Angel” by the Penguins had been recorded in. And on backing vocals were the Lee Gotch singers, a white vocal group who were among the most in-demand vocalists in LA. So this should have been a straightforward session, and it was, until Art Rupe turned up just after they’d recorded “You Send Me”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Rupe was horrified that Bumps and Battiste had put white backing vocalists behind Cooke’s vocals. They were, in Rupe’s view, trying to make Sam Cooke sound like Billy Ward and his Dominoes at best, and like a symphony orchestra at worst. The Billy Ward reference was because René Hall had recently arranged a version of “Stardust” for the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “Stardust”] And the new version of “Summertime” had some of the same feel: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “Summertime”] If Sam Cooke was going to record for Specialty, he wasn’t going to have *white* vocalists backing him. Rupe wanted black music, not something trying to be white — and the fact that he, a white man, was telling a room full of black musicians what counted as black music, was not lost on Bumps Blackwell. Even worse than the whiteness of the singers, though, was that some of them were women. Rupe and Blackwell had already had one massive falling-out, over “Rip it Up” by Little Richard. When they’d agreed to record that, Blackwell had worked out an arrangement beforehand that Rupe was happy with — one that was based around piano triplets. But then, when he’d been on the plane to the session, Blackwell had hit upon another idea — to base the song around a particular drum pattern: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Rip it Up”] Rupe had nearly fired Blackwell over that, and only relented when the record became a massive hit. Now that instead of putting a male black gospel group behind Cooke, as agreed, Blackwell had disobeyed him a second time and put white vocalists, including women, behind him, Rupe decided it was the last straw. Blackwell had to go. He was also convinced that Sam Cooke was only after money, because once Cooke discovered that his solo contract only paid him a third of the royalties that the Soul Stirrers had been getting as a group, he started pushing for a greater share of the money. Rupe didn’t like that kind of greed from his artists — why *should* he pay the artist more than one cent per record sold? But he still owed Blackwell a great deal of money. They eventually came to an agreement — Blackwell would leave Specialty, and take Sam Cooke, and Cooke’s existing recordings with him, since he was so convinced that they were going to be a hit. Rupe would keep the publishing rights to any songs Sam wrote, and would have an option on eight further Sam Cooke recordings in the future, but Cooke and Blackwell were free to take “You Send Me”, “Summertime”, and the rest to a new label that wanted them for its first release, Keen. While they waited around for Keen to get itself set up, Sam made himself firmly a part of the Central Avenue music scene, hanging around with Gaynel Hodge, Jesse Belvin, Dootsie Williams, Googie Rene, John Dolphin, and everyone else who was part of the LA R&B community. Meanwhile, the Soul Stirrers got Johnnie Taylor, the man who had replaced Sam in the Highway QCs, to replace him in the Stirrers. While Sam was out of the group, for the next few years he would be regularly involved with them, helping them out in recording sessions, producing them, and more. When the single came out, everyone thought that “Summertime” would be the hit, but “You Send Me” quickly found itself all over the airwaves and became massive: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Several cover versions came out almost immediately. Sam and Bumps didn’t mind the versions by Jesse Belvin: [Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, “You Send Me”] Or Cornell Gunter: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, “You Send Me”] They were friends and colleagues, and good luck to them if they had a hit with the song — and anyway, they knew that Sam’s version was better. What they did object to was the white cover version by Teresa Brewer: [Excerpt: Teresa Brewer, “You Send Me”] Even though her version was less of a soundalike than the other LA R&B versions, it was more offensive to them — she was even copying Sam’s “whoa-oh”s. She was nothing more than a thief, Blackwell argued — and her version was charting, and made the top ten. Fortunately for them, Sam’s version went to number one, on both the R&B and pop charts, despite a catastrophic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which accidentally cut him off half way through a song. But there was still trouble with Art Rupe. Sam was still signed to Rupe’s company as a songwriter, and so he’d put “You Send Me” in the name of his brother L.C., so Rupe wouldn’t get any royalties. Rupe started legal action against him, and meanwhile, he took a demo Sam had recorded, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”, and got René Hall and the Lee Gotch singers, the very people whose work on “You Send Me” and “Summertime” he’d despised so much, to record overdubs to make it sound as much like “You Send Me” as possible: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”] And in retaliation for *that* being released, Bumps Blackwell took a song that he’d recorded months earlier with Little Richard, but which still hadn’t been released, and got the Specialty duo Don and Dewey to provide instrumental backing for a vocal group called the Valiants, and put it out on Keen: [Excerpt: The Valiants, “Good Golly Miss Molly”] Specialty had to rush-release Little Richard’s version to make sure it became the hit — a blow for them, given that they were trying to dripfeed the public what few Little Richard recordings they had left. As 1957 drew to a close, Sam Cooke was on top of the world. But the seeds of his downfall were already in place. He was upsetting all the right people with his desire to have control of his own career, but he was also hurting a lot of other people along the way — people who had helped him, like the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, and especially women. He was about to divorce his first wife, and he had fathered a string of children with different women, all of whom he refused to acknowledge or support. He was taking his father’s maxims about only looking after yourself, and applying them to every aspect of life, with no regard to who it hurt. But such was his talent and charm, that even the people he hurt ended up defending him. Over the next couple of times we see Sam Cooke, we’ll see him rising to ever greater artistic heights, but we’ll also see the damage he caused to himself and to others. Because the story of Sam Cooke gets very, very unpleasant.

Episode sixty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Little Darlin'” by The Gladiolas. Also, an announcement — the book version of the first fifty episodes is now available for purchase. See the show notes, or the previous mini-episode announcing this, for details.  —-more—- Resources The Mixcloud is slightly delayed this week. I’ll update the post tonight with the link. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick’s work, it’s an essential book if you’re even slightly interested in the subject. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke’s music for the beginner. A note on spelling: Sam Cooke was born Sam Cook, the rest of his family all kept the surname Cook, and he only added the “e” from the release of “You Send Me”, so for almost all the time covered in this episode he was Cook. I didn’t feel the need to mention this in the podcast, as the two names are pronounced identically. I’ve spelled him as Cooke and everyone else as Cook throughout. Book of the Podcast Remember that there’s a book available based on the first fifty episodes of the podcast. You can buy it at this link, which will take you to your preferred online bookstore. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We’ve talked before about how the music that became known as soul had its roots in gospel music, but today we’re going to have a look at the first big star of that music to get his start as a professional gospel singer, rather than as a rhythm and blues singer who included a little bit of gospel feeling. Sam Cooke was, in many ways, the most important black musician of the late fifties and early sixties, and without him it’s doubtful whether we would have the genre of soul as we know it today. But when he started out, he was someone who worked exclusively in the gospel field, and within that field he was something of a superstar. He was also someone who, as admirable as he was as a singer, was far less admirable in his behaviour towards other people, especially the women in his life, and while that’s something that will come up more in future episodes, it’s worth noting here. Cooke started out as a teenager in the 1940s, performing in gospel groups around Chicago, which as we’ve talked about before was the city where a whole new form of gospel music was being created at that point, spearheaded by Thomas Dorsey. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were all living and performing in the city during young Sam’s formative years, but the biggest influence on him was a group called the Soul Stirrers. The Soul Stirrers had started out in 1926 as a group in what was called the “jubilee” style — the style that black singers of spiritual music sang in the period before Thomas Dorsey revolutionised gospel music. There are no recordings of the Soul Stirrers in that style, but this is probably the most famous jubilee recording: [Excerpt: The Fisk Jubilee Singers, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”] But as Thomas Dorsey and the musicians around him started to create the music we now think of as gospel, the Soul Stirrers switched styles, and became one of the first — and best — gospel quartets in the new style. In the late forties, the Soul Stirrers signed to Specialty Records, one of the first acts to sign to the label, and recorded a series of classic singles led by R.H. Harris, who was regarded by many as the greatest gospel singer of the age: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers feat. R.H. Harris, “In That Awful Hour”] Sam Cooke was one of seven children, the son of Reverend Charles Cook and his wife Annie Mae, and from a very early age the Reverend Cook had been training them as singers — five of them would perform regularly around churches in the area, under the name The Singing Children. Young Sam was taught religion by his father, but he was also taught that there was no prohibition in the Bible against worldly success. Indeed the Reverend Cook taught him two things that would matter in his life even more than his religion would. The first was that whatever it is you do in life, you try to do it the best you can — you never do anything by halves, and if a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing properly. And the second was that you do whatever is necessary to give yourself the best possible life, and don’t worry about who you step on to do it. After spending some time with his family group, Cooke joined a newly-formed gospel group, who had heard him singing the Ink Spots song “If I Didn’t Care” to a girl. That group was called the Highway QCs, and a version of the group still exists to this day. Sam Cooke only stayed with them a couple of years, and never recorded with them, but they replaced him with a soundalike singer, Johnnie Taylor, and listening to Taylor’s recordings with the group you can get some idea of what they sounded like when Sam was a member: [Excerpt: Johnnie Taylor and the Highway QCs, “I Dreamed That Heaven Was Like This”] The rest of the group were decent singers, but Sam Cooke was absolutely unquestionably the star of the Highway QCs. Creadell Copeland, one of the group’s members, later said “All we had to do was stand behind Sam. Our claim to fame was that Sam’s voice was so captivating we didn’t have to do anything else.” The group didn’t make a huge amount of money, and they kept talking about going in a pop direction, rather than just singing gospel songs, and Sam was certainly singing a lot of secular music in his own time — he loved gospel music as much as anyone, but he was also learning from people like Gene Autry or Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and he was slowly developing into a singer who could do absolutely anything with his voice. But his biggest influence was still R.H. Harris of the Soul Stirrers, who was the most important person in the gospel quartet field. This wasn’t just because he was the most talented of all the quartet singers — though he was, and that was certainly part of it — but because he was the joint leader of a movement to professionalise the gospel quartet movement. (Just as a quick explanation — in both black gospel, and in the white gospel music euphemistically called “Southern Gospel”, the term “quartet” is used for groups which might have five, six, or even more people in them. I’ll generally refer to all of these as “groups”, because I’m not from the gospel world, but I’ll use the term “quartet” when talking about things like the National Quartet Convention, and I may slip between the two interchangeably at times. Just know that if I mention quartets, I’m not just talking about groups with exactly four people in them). Harris worked with a less well known singer called Abraham Battle, and with Charlie Bridges, of another popular group, the Famous Blue Jays: [Excerpt: The Famous Blue Jay Singers, “Praising Jesus Evermore”] Together they founded the National Quartet Convention, which existed to try to take all the young gospel quartets who were springing up all over the place, and most of whom had casual attitudes to their music and their onstage appearance, and teach them how to comport themselves in a manner that the organisation’s leaders considered appropriate for a gospel singer. The Highway QCs joined the Convention, of course, and they considered themselves to be disciples, in a sense, of the Soul Stirrers, who they simultaneously considered to be their mentors and thought were jealous of the QCs. It was normal at the time for gospel groups to turn up at each other’s shows, and if they were popular enough they would be invited up to sing, and sometimes even take over the show. When the Highway QCs turned up at Soul Stirrers shows, though, the Soul Stirrers would act as if they didn’t know them, and would only invite them on to the stage if the audience absolutely insisted, and would then limit their performance to a single song. From the Highway QCs’ point of view, the only possible explanation was that the Soul Stirrers were terrified of the competition. A more likely explanation is probably that they were just more interested in putting on their own show than in giving space to some young kids who thought they were the next big thing. On the other hand, to all the younger kids around Chicago, the Highway QCs were clearly the group to beat — and people like a young singer named Lou Rawls looked up to them as something to aspire to. And soon the QCs found themselves being mentored by R.B. Robinson, one of the Soul Stirrers. Robinson would train them, and help them get better gigs, and the QCs became convinced that they were headed for the big time. But it turned out that behind the scenes, there had been trouble in the Soul Stirrers. Harris had, more and more, come to think of himself as the real star of the group, and quit to go solo. It had looked likely for a while that he would do so, and when Robinson had appeared to be mentoring the QCs, what he was actually doing was training their lead singer, so that when R.H. Harris eventually quit, they would have someone to take his place. The other Highway QCs were heartbroken, but Sam took the advice of his father, the Reverend Cook, who told him “Anytime you can make a step higher, you go higher. Don’t worry about the other fellow. You hold up for other folks, and they’ll take advantage of you.” And so, in March 1951, Sam Cooke went into the studio with the Soul Stirrers for his first ever recording session, three months after joining the group. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, was not at all impressed that the group had got a new singer without telling him. Rupe had to admit that Cooke could sing, but his performance on the first few songs, while impressive, was no R.H. Harris: [Excerpt: the Soul Stirrers, “Come, Let Us Go Back to God”] But towards the end of the session, the Soul Stirrers insisted that they should record “Jesus Gave Me Water”, a song that had always been a highlight of the Highway QCs’ set. Rupe thought that this was ridiculous — the Pilgrim Travellers had just had a hit with the song, on Specialty, not six months earlier. What could Specialty possibly do with another version of the song so soon afterwards? But the group insisted, and the result was absolutely majestic: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, “Jesus Gave Me Water”] Rupe lost his misgivings, both about the song and about the singer — that was clearly going to be the group’s next single. The group themselves were still not completely sure about Cooke as their singer — he was younger than the rest of them, and he didn’t have Harris’ assurance and professionalism, yet. But they knew they had something with that song, which was released with “Peace in the Valley” on the B-side. That song had been written by Thomas Dorsey fourteen years earlier, but this was the first time it had been released on a record, at least by anyone of any prominence. “Jesus Gave Me Water” was a hit, but the follow-ups were less successful, and meanwhile Art Rupe was starting to see the commercial potential in black styles of music other than gospel. Even though Rupe loved gospel music, he realised when “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” became the biggest hit Specialty had ever had to that point that maybe he should refocus the label away from gospel and towards more secular styles of music. “Jesus Gave Me Water” had consolidated Sam as the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, but while he was singing gospel, he wasn’t living a very godly life. He got married in 1953, but he’d already had at least one child with another woman, who he left with the baby, and he was sleeping around constantly while on the road, and more than once the women involved became pregnant. But Cooke treated women the same way he treated the groups he was in – use them for as long as they’ve got something you want, and then immediately cast them aside once it became inconvenient. For the next few years, the Soul Stirrers would have one recording session every year, and the group continued touring, but they didn’t have any breakout success, even as other Specialty acts like Lloyd Price, Jesse Belvin, and Guitar Slim were all selling hand over fist. The Soul Stirrers were more popular as a live act than as a recording act, and hearing the live recording of them that Bumps Blackwell produced in 1955, it’s easy to see why: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Nearer to Thee”] Bumps Blackwell was convinced that Cooke needed to go solo and become a pop singer, and he was more convinced than ever when he produced the Soul Stirrers in the studio for the first time. The reason, actually, was to do with Cooke’s laziness. They’d gone into the studio, and it turned out that Cooke hadn’t written a song, and they needed one. The rest of the group were upset with him, and he just told them to hand him a Bible. He started flipping through, skimming to find something, and then he said “I got one”. He told the guitarist to play a couple of chords, and he started singing — and the song that came out, improvised off the top of his head, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”, was perfect just as it was, and the group quickly cut it: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Touch the Hem of His Garment”] Blackwell knew then that Cooke was a very, very special talent, and he and the rest of the people at Specialty became more and more insistent as 1956 went on that Sam Cooke should become a secular solo performer, rather than performing in a gospel group. The Soul Stirrers were only selling in the low tens of thousands — a reasonable amount for a gospel group, but hardly the kind of numbers that would make anyone rich. Meanwhile, gospel-inspired performers were having massive hits with gospel songs with a couple of words changed. There’s an episode of South Park where they make fun of contemporary Christian music, saying you just have to take a normal song and change the word “Baby” to “Jesus”. In the mid-fifties things seemed to be the other way — people were having hits by taking Gospel songs and changing the word “Jesus” to “baby”, or near as damnit. Most famously and blatantly, there was Ray Charles, who did things like take “This Little Light of Mine”: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine”] and turn it into “This Little Girl of Mine: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “This Little Girl of Mine”] But there were a number of other acts doing things that weren’t that much less blatant. And so Sam Cooke travelled to New Orleans, to record in Cosimo Matassa’s studio with the same musicians who had been responsible for so many rock and roll hits. Or, rather, Dale Cook did. Sam was still a member of the Soul Stirrers at the time, and while he wanted to make himself into a star, he was also concerned that if he recorded secular music under his own name, he would damage his career as a gospel singer, without necessarily getting a better career to replace it. So the decision was made to put the single out under the name “Dale Cook”, and maintain a small amount of plausible deniability. If necessary, they could say that Dale was Sam’s brother, because it was fairly well known that Sam came from a singing family, and indeed Sam’s brother L.C. (whose name was just the initials L.C.) later went on to have some minor success as a singer himself, in a style very like Sam’s. As his first secular recording, they decided to record a new version of a gospel song that Cooke had recorded with the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Wonderful”] One quick rewrite later, and that song became, instead, “Lovable”: [Excerpt: Dale Cook, “Lovable”] Around the time of the Dale Cook recording session, Sam’s brother L.C. went to Memphis, with his own group, where they appeared at the bottom of the bill for a charity Christmas show in aid of impoverished black youth. The lineup of the show was almost entirely black – people like Ray Charles, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, and so on – but Elvis Presley turned up briefly to come out on stage and wave to the crowd and say a few words – the Colonel wouldn’t allow him to perform without getting paid, but did allow him to make an appearance, and he wanted to support the black community in Memphis. Backstage, Elvis was happy to meet all the acts, but when he found out that L.C. was Sam’s brother, he spent a full twenty minutes talking to L.C. about how great Sam was, and how much he admired his singing with the Soul Stirrers. Sam was such a distinctive voice that while the single came out as by “Dale Cook”, the DJs playing it would often introduce it as being by “Dale Sam Cook”, and the Soul Stirrers started to be asked if they were going to sing “Lovable” in their shows. Sam started to have doubts as to whether this move towards a pop style was really a good idea, and remained with the Soul Stirrers for the moment, though it’s noticeable that songs like “Mean Old World” could easily be refigured into being secular songs, and have only a minimal amount of religious content: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, “Mean Old World”] But barely a week after the session that produced “Mean Old World”, Sam was sending Bumps Blackwell demos of new pop songs he’d written, which he thought Blackwell would be interested in producing. Sam Cooke was going to treat the Soul Stirrers the same way he’d treated the Highway QCs. Cooke flew to LA, to meet with Blackwell and with Clifton White, a musician who had been for a long time the guitarist for the Mills Brothers, but who had recently left the band and started working with Blackwell as a session player. White was very unimpressed with Cooke – he thought that the new song Cooke sang to them, “You Send Me”, was just him repeating the same thing over and over again. Art Rupe helped them whittle the song choices down to four. Rupe had very particular ideas about what made for a commercial record – for example, that a record had to be exactly two minutes and twenty seconds long – and the final choices for the session were made with Rupe’s criteria in mind. The songs chosen were “Summertime”, “You Send Me”, another song Sam had written called “You Were Made For Me”, and “Things You Do to Me”, which was written by a young man Bumps Blackwell had just taken on as his assistant, named Sonny Bono. The recording session should have been completely straightforward. Blackwell supervised it, and while the session was in LA, almost everyone there was a veteran New Orleans player – along with Clif White on guitar there was René Hall, a guitarist from New Orleans who had recently quit Billy Ward and the Dominoes, and acted as instrumental arranger; Harold Battiste, a New Orleans saxophone player who Bumps had taken under his wing, and who wasn’t playing on the session but ended up writing the vocal arrangements for the backing singers; Earl Palmer, who had just moved to LA from New Orleans and was starting to make a name for himself as a session player there after his years of playing with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Fats Domino in Cosimo Matassa’s studio, and Ted Brinson, the only LA native, on bass — Brinson was a regular player on Specialty sessions, and also had connections with almost every LA R&B act, to the extent that it was his garage that “Earth Angel” by the Penguins had been recorded in. And on backing vocals were the Lee Gotch singers, a white vocal group who were among the most in-demand vocalists in LA. So this should have been a straightforward session, and it was, until Art Rupe turned up just after they’d recorded “You Send Me”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Rupe was horrified that Bumps and Battiste had put white backing vocalists behind Cooke’s vocals. They were, in Rupe’s view, trying to make Sam Cooke sound like Billy Ward and his Dominoes at best, and like a symphony orchestra at worst. The Billy Ward reference was because René Hall had recently arranged a version of “Stardust” for the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, “Stardust”] And the new version of “Summertime” had some of the same feel: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “Summertime”] If Sam Cooke was going to record for Specialty, he wasn’t going to have *white* vocalists backing him. Rupe wanted black music, not something trying to be white — and the fact that he, a white man, was telling a room full of black musicians what counted as black music, was not lost on Bumps Blackwell. Even worse than the whiteness of the singers, though, was that some of them were women. Rupe and Blackwell had already had one massive falling-out, over “Rip it Up” by Little Richard. When they’d agreed to record that, Blackwell had worked out an arrangement beforehand that Rupe was happy with — one that was based around piano triplets. But then, when he’d been on the plane to the session, Blackwell had hit upon another idea — to base the song around a particular drum pattern: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Rip it Up”] Rupe had nearly fired Blackwell over that, and only relented when the record became a massive hit. Now that instead of putting a male black gospel group behind Cooke, as agreed, Blackwell had disobeyed him a second time and put white vocalists, including women, behind him, Rupe decided it was the last straw. Blackwell had to go. He was also convinced that Sam Cooke was only after money, because once Cooke discovered that his solo contract only paid him a third of the royalties that the Soul Stirrers had been getting as a group, he started pushing for a greater share of the money. Rupe didn’t like that kind of greed from his artists — why *should* he pay the artist more than one cent per record sold? But he still owed Blackwell a great deal of money. They eventually came to an agreement — Blackwell would leave Specialty, and take Sam Cooke, and Cooke’s existing recordings with him, since he was so convinced that they were going to be a hit. Rupe would keep the publishing rights to any songs Sam wrote, and would have an option on eight further Sam Cooke recordings in the future, but Cooke and Blackwell were free to take “You Send Me”, “Summertime”, and the rest to a new label that wanted them for its first release, Keen. While they waited around for Keen to get itself set up, Sam made himself firmly a part of the Central Avenue music scene, hanging around with Gaynel Hodge, Jesse Belvin, Dootsie Williams, Googie Rene, John Dolphin, and everyone else who was part of the LA R&B community. Meanwhile, the Soul Stirrers got Johnnie Taylor, the man who had replaced Sam in the Highway QCs, to replace him in the Stirrers. While Sam was out of the group, for the next few years he would be regularly involved with them, helping them out in recording sessions, producing them, and more. When the single came out, everyone thought that “Summertime” would be the hit, but “You Send Me” quickly found itself all over the airwaves and became massive: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “You Send Me”] Several cover versions came out almost immediately. Sam and Bumps didn’t mind the versions by Jesse Belvin: [Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, “You Send Me”] Or Cornell Gunter: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, “You Send Me”] They were friends and colleagues, and good luck to them if they had a hit with the song — and anyway, they knew that Sam’s version was better. What they did object to was the white cover version by Teresa Brewer: [Excerpt: Teresa Brewer, “You Send Me”] Even though her version was less of a soundalike than the other LA R&B versions, it was more offensive to them — she was even copying Sam’s “whoa-oh”s. She was nothing more than a thief, Blackwell argued — and her version was charting, and made the top ten. Fortunately for them, Sam’s version went to number one, on both the R&B and pop charts, despite a catastrophic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which accidentally cut him off half way through a song. But there was still trouble with Art Rupe. Sam was still signed to Rupe’s company as a songwriter, and so he’d put “You Send Me” in the name of his brother L.C., so Rupe wouldn’t get any royalties. Rupe started legal action against him, and meanwhile, he took a demo Sam had recorded, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”, and got René Hall and the Lee Gotch singers, the very people whose work on “You Send Me” and “Summertime” he’d despised so much, to record overdubs to make it sound as much like “You Send Me” as possible: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, “I’ll Come Running Back To You”] And in retaliation for *that* being released, Bumps Blackwell took a song that he’d recorded months earlier with Little Richard, but which still hadn’t been released, and got the Specialty duo Don and Dewey to provide instrumental backing for a vocal group called the Valiants, and put it out on Keen: [Excerpt: The Valiants, “Good Golly Miss Molly”] Specialty had to rush-release Little Richard’s version to make sure it became the hit — a blow for them, given that they were trying to dripfeed the public what few Little Richard recordings they had left. As 1957 drew to a close, Sam Cooke was on top of the world. But the seeds of his downfall were already in place. He was upsetting all the right people with his desire to have control of his own career, but he was also hurting a lot of other people along the way — people who had helped him, like the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, and especially women. He was about to divorce his first wife, and he had fathered a string of children with different women, all of whom he refused to acknowledge or support. He was taking his father’s maxims about only looking after yourself, and applying them to every aspect of life, with no regard to who it hurt. But such was his talent and charm, that even the people he hurt ended up defending him. Over the next couple of times we see Sam Cooke, we’ll see him rising to ever greater artistic heights, but we’ll also see the damage he caused to himself and to others. Because the story of Sam Cooke gets very, very unpleasant.

Episode sixty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "You Send Me" by Sam Cooke Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Little Darlin'" by The Gladiolas. Also, an announcement -- the book version of the first fifty episodes is now available for purchase. See the show notes, or the previous mini-episode announcing this, for details.  ----more---- Resources The Mixcloud is slightly delayed this week. I'll update the post tonight with the link. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick's work, it's an essential book if you're even slightly interested in the subject. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke's music for the beginner. A note on spelling: Sam Cooke was born Sam Cook, the rest of his family all kept the surname Cook, and he only added the "e" from the release of "You Send Me", so for almost all the time covered in this episode he was Cook. I didn't feel the need to mention this in the podcast, as the two names are pronounced identically. I've spelled him as Cooke and everyone else as Cook throughout. Book of the Podcast Remember that there's a book available based on the first fifty episodes of the podcast. You can buy it at this link, which will take you to your preferred online bookstore. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We've talked before about how the music that became known as soul had its roots in gospel music, but today we're going to have a look at the first big star of that music to get his start as a professional gospel singer, rather than as a rhythm and blues singer who included a little bit of gospel feeling. Sam Cooke was, in many ways, the most important black musician of the late fifties and early sixties, and without him it's doubtful whether we would have the genre of soul as we know it today. But when he started out, he was someone who worked exclusively in the gospel field, and within that field he was something of a superstar. He was also someone who, as admirable as he was as a singer, was far less admirable in his behaviour towards other people, especially the women in his life, and while that's something that will come up more in future episodes, it's worth noting here. Cooke started out as a teenager in the 1940s, performing in gospel groups around Chicago, which as we've talked about before was the city where a whole new form of gospel music was being created at that point, spearheaded by Thomas Dorsey. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe were all living and performing in the city during young Sam's formative years, but the biggest influence on him was a group called the Soul Stirrers. The Soul Stirrers had started out in 1926 as a group in what was called the "jubilee" style -- the style that black singers of spiritual music sang in the period before Thomas Dorsey revolutionised gospel music. There are no recordings of the Soul Stirrers in that style, but this is probably the most famous jubilee recording: [Excerpt: The Fisk Jubilee Singers, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"] But as Thomas Dorsey and the musicians around him started to create the music we now think of as gospel, the Soul Stirrers switched styles, and became one of the first -- and best -- gospel quartets in the new style. In the late forties, the Soul Stirrers signed to Specialty Records, one of the first acts to sign to the label, and recorded a series of classic singles led by R.H. Harris, who was regarded by many as the greatest gospel singer of the age: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers feat. R.H. Harris, "In That Awful Hour"] Sam Cooke was one of seven children, the son of Reverend Charles Cook and his wife Annie Mae, and from a very early age the Reverend Cook had been training them as singers -- five of them would perform regularly around churches in the area, under the name The Singing Children. Young Sam was taught religion by his father, but he was also taught that there was no prohibition in the Bible against worldly success. Indeed the Reverend Cook taught him two things that would matter in his life even more than his religion would. The first was that whatever it is you do in life, you try to do it the best you can -- you never do anything by halves, and if a thing's worth doing it's worth doing properly. And the second was that you do whatever is necessary to give yourself the best possible life, and don't worry about who you step on to do it. After spending some time with his family group, Cooke joined a newly-formed gospel group, who had heard him singing the Ink Spots song "If I Didn't Care" to a girl. That group was called the Highway QCs, and a version of the group still exists to this day. Sam Cooke only stayed with them a couple of years, and never recorded with them, but they replaced him with a soundalike singer, Johnnie Taylor, and listening to Taylor's recordings with the group you can get some idea of what they sounded like when Sam was a member: [Excerpt: Johnnie Taylor and the Highway QCs, "I Dreamed That Heaven Was Like This"] The rest of the group were decent singers, but Sam Cooke was absolutely unquestionably the star of the Highway QCs. Creadell Copeland, one of the group's members, later said “All we had to do was stand behind Sam. Our claim to fame was that Sam’s voice was so captivating we didn’t have to do anything else.” The group didn't make a huge amount of money, and they kept talking about going in a pop direction, rather than just singing gospel songs, and Sam was certainly singing a lot of secular music in his own time -- he loved gospel music as much as anyone, but he was also learning from people like Gene Autry or Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, and he was slowly developing into a singer who could do absolutely anything with his voice. But his biggest influence was still R.H. Harris of the Soul Stirrers, who was the most important person in the gospel quartet field. This wasn't just because he was the most talented of all the quartet singers -- though he was, and that was certainly part of it -- but because he was the joint leader of a movement to professionalise the gospel quartet movement. (Just as a quick explanation -- in both black gospel, and in the white gospel music euphemistically called "Southern Gospel", the term "quartet" is used for groups which might have five, six, or even more people in them. I'll generally refer to all of these as "groups", because I'm not from the gospel world, but I'll use the term "quartet" when talking about things like the National Quartet Convention, and I may slip between the two interchangeably at times. Just know that if I mention quartets, I'm not just talking about groups with exactly four people in them). Harris worked with a less well known singer called Abraham Battle, and with Charlie Bridges, of another popular group, the Famous Blue Jays: [Excerpt: The Famous Blue Jay Singers, “Praising Jesus Evermore”] Together they founded the National Quartet Convention, which existed to try to take all the young gospel quartets who were springing up all over the place, and most of whom had casual attitudes to their music and their onstage appearance, and teach them how to comport themselves in a manner that the organisation's leaders considered appropriate for a gospel singer. The Highway QCs joined the Convention, of course, and they considered themselves to be disciples, in a sense, of the Soul Stirrers, who they simultaneously considered to be their mentors and thought were jealous of the QCs. It was normal at the time for gospel groups to turn up at each other's shows, and if they were popular enough they would be invited up to sing, and sometimes even take over the show. When the Highway QCs turned up at Soul Stirrers shows, though, the Soul Stirrers would act as if they didn't know them, and would only invite them on to the stage if the audience absolutely insisted, and would then limit their performance to a single song. From the Highway QCs' point of view, the only possible explanation was that the Soul Stirrers were terrified of the competition. A more likely explanation is probably that they were just more interested in putting on their own show than in giving space to some young kids who thought they were the next big thing. On the other hand, to all the younger kids around Chicago, the Highway QCs were clearly the group to beat -- and people like a young singer named Lou Rawls looked up to them as something to aspire to. And soon the QCs found themselves being mentored by R.B. Robinson, one of the Soul Stirrers. Robinson would train them, and help them get better gigs, and the QCs became convinced that they were headed for the big time. But it turned out that behind the scenes, there had been trouble in the Soul Stirrers. Harris had, more and more, come to think of himself as the real star of the group, and quit to go solo. It had looked likely for a while that he would do so, and when Robinson had appeared to be mentoring the QCs, what he was actually doing was training their lead singer, so that when R.H. Harris eventually quit, they would have someone to take his place. The other Highway QCs were heartbroken, but Sam took the advice of his father, the Reverend Cook, who told him "Anytime you can make a step higher, you go higher. Don’t worry about the other fellow. You hold up for other folks, and they’ll take advantage of you." And so, in March 1951, Sam Cooke went into the studio with the Soul Stirrers for his first ever recording session, three months after joining the group. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, was not at all impressed that the group had got a new singer without telling him. Rupe had to admit that Cooke could sing, but his performance on the first few songs, while impressive, was no R.H. Harris: [Excerpt: the Soul Stirrers, "Come, Let Us Go Back to God"] But towards the end of the session, the Soul Stirrers insisted that they should record "Jesus Gave Me Water", a song that had always been a highlight of the Highway QCs' set. Rupe thought that this was ridiculous -- the Pilgrim Travellers had just had a hit with the song, on Specialty, not six months earlier. What could Specialty possibly do with another version of the song so soon afterwards? But the group insisted, and the result was absolutely majestic: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Jesus Gave Me Water"] Rupe lost his misgivings, both about the song and about the singer -- that was clearly going to be the group's next single. The group themselves were still not completely sure about Cooke as their singer -- he was younger than the rest of them, and he didn't have Harris' assurance and professionalism, yet. But they knew they had something with that song, which was released with "Peace in the Valley" on the B-side. That song had been written by Thomas Dorsey fourteen years earlier, but this was the first time it had been released on a record, at least by anyone of any prominence. "Jesus Gave Me Water" was a hit, but the follow-ups were less successful, and meanwhile Art Rupe was starting to see the commercial potential in black styles of music other than gospel. Even though Rupe loved gospel music, he realised when "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" became the biggest hit Specialty had ever had to that point that maybe he should refocus the label away from gospel and towards more secular styles of music. “Jesus Gave Me Water” had consolidated Sam as the lead singer of the Soul Stirrers, but while he was singing gospel, he wasn't living a very godly life. He got married in 1953, but he'd already had at least one child with another woman, who he left with the baby, and he was sleeping around constantly while on the road, and more than once the women involved became pregnant. But Cooke treated women the same way he treated the groups he was in – use them for as long as they've got something you want, and then immediately cast them aside once it became inconvenient. For the next few years, the Soul Stirrers would have one recording session every year, and the group continued touring, but they didn't have any breakout success, even as other Specialty acts like Lloyd Price, Jesse Belvin, and Guitar Slim were all selling hand over fist. The Soul Stirrers were more popular as a live act than as a recording act, and hearing the live recording of them that Bumps Blackwell produced in 1955, it's easy to see why: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Nearer to Thee"] Bumps Blackwell was convinced that Cooke needed to go solo and become a pop singer, and he was more convinced than ever when he produced the Soul Stirrers in the studio for the first time. The reason, actually, was to do with Cooke's laziness. They'd gone into the studio, and it turned out that Cooke hadn't written a song, and they needed one. The rest of the group were upset with him, and he just told them to hand him a Bible. He started flipping through, skimming to find something, and then he said "I got one". He told the guitarist to play a couple of chords, and he started singing -- and the song that came out, improvised off the top of his head, "Touch the Hem of His Garment", was perfect just as it was, and the group quickly cut it: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Touch the Hem of His Garment"] Blackwell knew then that Cooke was a very, very special talent, and he and the rest of the people at Specialty became more and more insistent as 1956 went on that Sam Cooke should become a secular solo performer, rather than performing in a gospel group. The Soul Stirrers were only selling in the low tens of thousands -- a reasonable amount for a gospel group, but hardly the kind of numbers that would make anyone rich. Meanwhile, gospel-inspired performers were having massive hits with gospel songs with a couple of words changed. There's an episode of South Park where they make fun of contemporary Christian music, saying you just have to take a normal song and change the word "Baby" to "Jesus". In the mid-fifties things seemed to be the other way -- people were having hits by taking Gospel songs and changing the word "Jesus" to "baby", or near as damnit. Most famously and blatantly, there was Ray Charles, who did things like take "This Little Light of Mine": [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "This Little Light of Mine"] and turn it into "This Little Girl of Mine: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "This Little Girl of Mine"] But there were a number of other acts doing things that weren't that much less blatant. And so Sam Cooke travelled to New Orleans, to record in Cosimo Matassa's studio with the same musicians who had been responsible for so many rock and roll hits. Or, rather, Dale Cook did. Sam was still a member of the Soul Stirrers at the time, and while he wanted to make himself into a star, he was also concerned that if he recorded secular music under his own name, he would damage his career as a gospel singer, without necessarily getting a better career to replace it. So the decision was made to put the single out under the name "Dale Cook", and maintain a small amount of plausible deniability. If necessary, they could say that Dale was Sam's brother, because it was fairly well known that Sam came from a singing family, and indeed Sam's brother L.C. (whose name was just the initials L.C.) later went on to have some minor success as a singer himself, in a style very like Sam's. As his first secular recording, they decided to record a new version of a gospel song that Cooke had recorded with the Soul Stirrers, "Wonderful": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Wonderful"] One quick rewrite later, and that song became, instead, "Lovable": [Excerpt: Dale Cook, "Lovable"] Around the time of the Dale Cook recording session, Sam's brother L.C. went to Memphis, with his own group, where they appeared at the bottom of the bill for a charity Christmas show in aid of impoverished black youth. The lineup of the show was almost entirely black – people like Ray Charles, B.B. King, Rufus Thomas, and so on – but Elvis Presley turned up briefly to come out on stage and wave to the crowd and say a few words – the Colonel wouldn't allow him to perform without getting paid, but did allow him to make an appearance, and he wanted to support the black community in Memphis. Backstage, Elvis was happy to meet all the acts, but when he found out that L.C. was Sam's brother, he spent a full twenty minutes talking to L.C. about how great Sam was, and how much he admired his singing with the Soul Stirrers. Sam was such a distinctive voice that while the single came out as by "Dale Cook", the DJs playing it would often introduce it as being by "Dale Sam Cook", and the Soul Stirrers started to be asked if they were going to sing "Lovable" in their shows. Sam started to have doubts as to whether this move towards a pop style was really a good idea, and remained with the Soul Stirrers for the moment, though it's noticeable that songs like "Mean Old World" could easily be refigured into being secular songs, and have only a minimal amount of religious content: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, "Mean Old World"] But barely a week after the session that produced “Mean Old World”, Sam was sending Bumps Blackwell demos of new pop songs he'd written, which he thought Blackwell would be interested in producing. Sam Cooke was going to treat the Soul Stirrers the same way he'd treated the Highway QCs. Cooke flew to LA, to meet with Blackwell and with Clifton White, a musician who had been for a long time the guitarist for the Mills Brothers, but who had recently left the band and started working with Blackwell as a session player. White was very unimpressed with Cooke – he thought that the new song Cooke sang to them, "You Send Me", was just him repeating the same thing over and over again. Art Rupe helped them whittle the song choices down to four. Rupe had very particular ideas about what made for a commercial record – for example, that a record had to be exactly two minutes and twenty seconds long – and the final choices for the session were made with Rupe's criteria in mind. The songs chosen were "Summertime", "You Send Me", another song Sam had written called "You Were Made For Me", and "Things You Do to Me", which was written by a young man Bumps Blackwell had just taken on as his assistant, named Sonny Bono. The recording session should have been completely straightforward. Blackwell supervised it, and while the session was in LA, almost everyone there was a veteran New Orleans player – along with Clif White on guitar there was René Hall, a guitarist from New Orleans who had recently quit Billy Ward and the Dominoes, and acted as instrumental arranger; Harold Battiste, a New Orleans saxophone player who Bumps had taken under his wing, and who wasn't playing on the session but ended up writing the vocal arrangements for the backing singers; Earl Palmer, who had just moved to LA from New Orleans and was starting to make a name for himself as a session player there after his years of playing with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, and Fats Domino in Cosimo Matassa's studio, and Ted Brinson, the only LA native, on bass -- Brinson was a regular player on Specialty sessions, and also had connections with almost every LA R&B act, to the extent that it was his garage that "Earth Angel" by the Penguins had been recorded in. And on backing vocals were the Lee Gotch singers, a white vocal group who were among the most in-demand vocalists in LA. So this should have been a straightforward session, and it was, until Art Rupe turned up just after they'd recorded "You Send Me": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Rupe was horrified that Bumps and Battiste had put white backing vocalists behind Cooke's vocals. They were, in Rupe's view, trying to make Sam Cooke sound like Billy Ward and his Dominoes at best, and like a symphony orchestra at worst. The Billy Ward reference was because René Hall had recently arranged a version of "Stardust" for the Dominoes: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Stardust"] And the new version of "Summertime" had some of the same feel: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Summertime"] If Sam Cooke was going to record for Specialty, he wasn't going to have *white* vocalists backing him. Rupe wanted black music, not something trying to be white -- and the fact that he, a white man, was telling a room full of black musicians what counted as black music, was not lost on Bumps Blackwell. Even worse than the whiteness of the singers, though, was that some of them were women. Rupe and Blackwell had already had one massive falling-out, over "Rip it Up" by Little Richard. When they'd agreed to record that, Blackwell had worked out an arrangement beforehand that Rupe was happy with -- one that was based around piano triplets. But then, when he'd been on the plane to the session, Blackwell had hit upon another idea -- to base the song around a particular drum pattern: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Rip it Up"] Rupe had nearly fired Blackwell over that, and only relented when the record became a massive hit. Now that instead of putting a male black gospel group behind Cooke, as agreed, Blackwell had disobeyed him a second time and put white vocalists, including women, behind him, Rupe decided it was the last straw. Blackwell had to go. He was also convinced that Sam Cooke was only after money, because once Cooke discovered that his solo contract only paid him a third of the royalties that the Soul Stirrers had been getting as a group, he started pushing for a greater share of the money. Rupe didn't like that kind of greed from his artists -- why *should* he pay the artist more than one cent per record sold? But he still owed Blackwell a great deal of money. They eventually came to an agreement -- Blackwell would leave Specialty, and take Sam Cooke, and Cooke's existing recordings with him, since he was so convinced that they were going to be a hit. Rupe would keep the publishing rights to any songs Sam wrote, and would have an option on eight further Sam Cooke recordings in the future, but Cooke and Blackwell were free to take "You Send Me", "Summertime", and the rest to a new label that wanted them for its first release, Keen. While they waited around for Keen to get itself set up, Sam made himself firmly a part of the Central Avenue music scene, hanging around with Gaynel Hodge, Jesse Belvin, Dootsie Williams, Googie Rene, John Dolphin, and everyone else who was part of the LA R&B community. Meanwhile, the Soul Stirrers got Johnnie Taylor, the man who had replaced Sam in the Highway QCs, to replace him in the Stirrers. While Sam was out of the group, for the next few years he would be regularly involved with them, helping them out in recording sessions, producing them, and more. When the single came out, everyone thought that "Summertime" would be the hit, but "You Send Me" quickly found itself all over the airwaves and became massive: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Several cover versions came out almost immediately. Sam and Bumps didn't mind the versions by Jesse Belvin: [Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, "You Send Me"] Or Cornell Gunter: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, "You Send Me"] They were friends and colleagues, and good luck to them if they had a hit with the song -- and anyway, they knew that Sam's version was better. What they did object to was the white cover version by Teresa Brewer: [Excerpt: Teresa Brewer, "You Send Me"] Even though her version was less of a soundalike than the other LA R&B versions, it was more offensive to them -- she was even copying Sam's "whoa-oh"s. She was nothing more than a thief, Blackwell argued -- and her version was charting, and made the top ten. Fortunately for them, Sam's version went to number one, on both the R&B and pop charts, despite a catastrophic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which accidentally cut him off half way through a song. But there was still trouble with Art Rupe. Sam was still signed to Rupe's company as a songwriter, and so he'd put "You Send Me" in the name of his brother L.C., so Rupe wouldn't get any royalties. Rupe started legal action against him, and meanwhile, he took a demo Sam had recorded, "I'll Come Running Back To You", and got René Hall and the Lee Gotch singers, the very people whose work on "You Send Me" and "Summertime" he'd despised so much, to record overdubs to make it sound as much like "You Send Me" as possible: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "I'll Come Running Back To You"] And in retaliation for *that* being released, Bumps Blackwell took a song that he'd recorded months earlier with Little Richard, but which still hadn't been released, and got the Specialty duo Don and Dewey to provide instrumental backing for a vocal group called the Valiants, and put it out on Keen: [Excerpt: The Valiants, "Good Golly Miss Molly"] Specialty had to rush-release Little Richard's version to make sure it became the hit -- a blow for them, given that they were trying to dripfeed the public what few Little Richard recordings they had left. As 1957 drew to a close, Sam Cooke was on top of the world. But the seeds of his downfall were already in place. He was upsetting all the right people with his desire to have control of his own career, but he was also hurting a lot of other people along the way -- people who had helped him, like the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, and especially women. He was about to divorce his first wife, and he had fathered a string of children with different women, all of whom he refused to acknowledge or support. He was taking his father's maxims about only looking after yourself, and applying them to every aspect of life, with no regard to who it hurt. But such was his talent and charm, that even the people he hurt ended up defending him. Over the next couple of times we see Sam Cooke, we'll see him rising to ever greater artistic heights, but we'll also see the damage he caused to himself and to others. Because the story of Sam Cooke gets very, very unpleasant.

Clarke Beasley Executive Vice President at National Quartet Convention, Clarke discusses with Darien, Arthur and Jeff this years convention, some of the exciting things happening, his late father Les and some special things.

Clarke Beasley Executive Vice President at National Quartet Convention, Clarke discusses with Darien, Arthur and Jeff this years convention, some of the exciting things happening, his late father Les and some special things. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2017 Trio of the year, Surrendered, will be the featured artists this week on The Gospel Jubilee.Go to: https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/18715032/download.mp3Surrendered is a southern gospel trio based out of Gadsden, AL and began singing regionally in 2015.  Current group members are Russell Wise, Tiffany Hamiltonand Jesse Fuson.Surrendered started touring nationally in 2016, after gaining notoriety for their first top 40 hit, "I've Been to the Well”, which stayed on the top 40 for three consecutive months.  Since then, their follow up single, "You Don't Know The Half Of It", was also a charting success.They followed these two songs with a rendition of "His Tomb Is Empty Now" - which in Spring of 2018 became their highest charting song on Singing News- landing at #33!  Their single "What Kind Of a Man" debuted for SN Nov 2018 chart at #71 and moved to #56,it is doing well on stations across the US, Scotland/UK, and Canada.In May of 2019, they released "Oh What a Day" (written by Melissa Smith of Oklahoma). It too seems to be gaining national recognition.Accolades:2017 - 2019: TWO Singing News Top 40 charting SongsTWO Singing News Top 80 charting Songs2017 Top 10 Fan Favorite New Artist (Singing News)2017 Trio of the year (Crimson Music Awards)2017 Social Media Ministry of the year (Crimson Music Awards)2016 Sunrise Trio of the year (Diamond Awards)2016 Winners of Sing Atlanta - hosted by The Nelons and Daywind RecordsWith heartfelt delivery and family harmony, Surrendered has fast become one of America's favorite trios.  They consider it an honor to perform at someof the biggest events in southern gospel music including Singing in the Sun, Gatlinburg Gathering, National Quartet Convention, Sing Atlanta, JubilationAtlanta, and Dollywood.Also, we will be drawing the name of the winner of the CD, “A New Beginning,” by Gloryway Quartet, so you'll want to tune in to hear if your name is drawn.If you have an Echo you can say, Alexa, tell Spreaker to play The Gospel JubileeIf you have never used Spreaker, say, Alexa, enable Spreaker.Playlist:list of 1 items1. The Perrys - Blue skies cominglist endlist of 1 items2. The LeFevre Quartet - I have it alllist endlist of 1 items3. Gordon Mote - Just believelist endlist of 1 items4. Surrendered - His tomb is empty nowlist endlist of 1 items5. Surrendered - What kind of a manlist endlist of 1 items6. Terry Franklin - That same handlist endlist of 1 items7. The Heritage Singers - I just feel like something good is about to happenlist endlist of 1 items8. Michael Sykes - I love my friendslist endlist of 1 items9. The Old Paths - The God I knowlist endlist of 1 items10. The Gaither Vocal Band - I worship only at the feet of Jesuslist endlist of 1 items11. Surrendered - The blood is still therelist endlist of 1 items12. Surrendered - Land of endless tomorrowslist endlist of 1 items13. High Road III - Christ my hope, my glorylist endlist of 1 items14. Barry Rowland & Deliverance - Sing about going homelist endlist of 1 items15. The Hyssongs - Walk by faithlist endlist of 1 items16. The Waymasters - There's a man in herelist endSend your request to: Request@GatewayForTheBlind.ComOr call: (636) 428-1500

The Old Time Preachers Quartet will be the featured artists this week on The Gospel Jubilee.Go to: https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/18218514/download.mp3While the name of the group may be new, the members of the quartet will be familiar faces to the fans of Southern Gospel Music.The Old Time Preachers Quartet was formed by industry leader Les Butler with a desire to blend old time preaching with traditional quartet singing.This combination has resonated with the fans of Gospel music and has made the Old Time Preachers Quartet one of the most exciting new groups to come alongin years.They have already garnered multiple Singing News hit songs, including one of the Top 40 Songs of 2018, “I'll Ride This Ship to The Shore.”They'll also had multiple #1 songs on other major Southern Gospel radio charts. The quartet has been invited to sing at many of Gospel music's major events including the National Quartet Convention, Blue Gate Theater, Shadow Valleyand the Seminole Sing.They have also appeared on Daystar's hit TV show Gospel Music Showcase.The quartet has received multiple award nominations, winning the 2017 Diamond Award; Sunrise Quartet of the Year.Singing bass for the Old Time Preachers Quartet is Mike Holcomb.  For Years, Mike has been considered one of the all-time great bass singers.He has won the Singing News Fan Award for Favorite Bass Singer six times.  He was recently inducted into the Tri-State Gospel Music Hall of Fame.Mike was a member of the Inspirations for over 40 years.  Mike states, “I'm excited about the opportunity of singing with the Old Time Preachers Quartet.The name says it all.  We are old time preachers who believe in the old time way.  The old time Gospel still does the job.The burden to start this unique group was first placed on group member, Les Butler.  Les has been involved in the industry nearly 40 years as a DJ, TVhost, producer, studio musician, as well as Publisher of the Singing News magazine.Fans have also seen him on stage with countless artists including, but not limited to, the Kingsmen, Hoppers, Crabb Family and more.  Les serves as thegroup's baritone and piano player.Singing tenor for the Old Time Preachers Quartet is Tim Owens.  Tim also sang with the Inspirations along with other groups.Tim is married and has two children.  Like the other members of the quartet, Tim is a preacher and travels the country as an evangelist when not on theroad with the group.For years Bob Sellers traveled with his own group, the Capstone Quartet.  The past 7 years Bob sang lead with the Kingsmen Quartet.In 2018 he started his own solo ministry.  With the extra time on his schedule, he accepted the lead vocal spot with the Old Time Preachers Quartet whichtravels a fraction of the time he was used to with the Kingsmen.Bob is the only non-preacher in the group.  He is a deacon at his home church in Gordo, AL.Adam Borden anchored Gold City Quartet's, Band of Gold for 11 years.  In addition to playing bass, Adam also sings lead, baritone and tenor with the OldTime Preachers Quartet.He also travels as an evangelist.If you have an Echo you can say, Alexa, tell Spreaker to play the Gospel Jubilee.Playlist: 01. The Collingsworth Family - I come here to tell you that the Lord is good02. The Mark Dubbeld Family - This joy is mine03. The Browns - Brave04. The Old Time Preachers Quartet - Joy comes in the morning05. The Old Time Preachers Quartet - One more reason06. The Booth Brothers - Wedding rings and Bibles07. The Dove Brothers - Maranatha church revival08. Mark Norman Murphy - I give me09. The Browders - You're not in this alone10. The Bakers - Why should I worry11. The Old Time Preachers Quartet - The chapter and the verse12. The Old Time Preachers Quartet - When God's chariot comes13. The Gaither Vocal Band - Clean14. Mark209 - My last day here15. The Old Paths - I want to get closer to my GodSend your request to: Request@GatewayForTheBlind.ComOr Call: (636) 428-1500________________________________________

This week's featured artists on The Gospel Jubilee will be the Dunaways, 1993 - present, from Philadelphia, Ms.Go to: https://api.spreaker.com/v2/episodes/18015489/download.mp3Family members include: Randall Dunaway, Tammy Dunaway, and daughter, Kanah Dunaway.In early 1993 a family ministry was born.  The Dunaways were only babes in Christ, and in-experienced but they were eager and willing to do whatever andgo where-ever God wanted.They began traveling in the family car sharing a simple testimony of how God changed their lives.  Most of the services would be filled with gospel singing.A couple of years later, since their ministry was mostly music oriented, it was a big surprise to the family one night when Brother Dunaway started togive his usual testimony.  He opened his bible and an hour or so later he had preached the glory down and the altars filled with hungry souls.Their ministry would never be the same again! Their music has become a mainstay on Christian radio nationwide with chart topping hits, record sales, and they have garnered multiple awards and nominations. Ongoing acceptance by radio includes the continued exposure of their music by the Singing News Radio Network based in Nashville, Sirius XM, multiple otherradio networks and gospel radio stations across the country and some abroad.Some of the larger venues where they have appeared include Silver Dollar City, Dollywood, Crabbfest, The National Quartet Convention, Gospel Music TelevisionWorld Premier, and radio programs including Front Porch Fellowship, The Gospel Greats with Paul Heil, and The Midnight Jamboree with Dottie Rambo. Whether it's pastoring, teaching Sunday School, doing church work, or ministering to people with their music, The Dunaways stay quite busy just livingfor God.  It is their desire that the Lord would continue to use them in what ever way he chooses.If you have an Echo you can say, Alexa, tell Spreaker to play the Gospel Jubilee.Playlist: 01. Avenue Trio - One of these mornings02. Gold City Quartet - God handled it all03. Real Truth Revival - Boy on a bus04. The Dunaways - Faith like that05. The Dunaways - Where there's no fire06. Aaron Wilburn - The Master of me07. The Torchmen Quartet - Coming home08. The Booth Brothers - How long has it been09. The Kingdom Heirs - The lovely name of Jesus10. The New Speer Family - Hallelujah chorus11. The Dunaways - Don't start doubting now12. The Dunaways - Church in the kitchen13. The Mark Trammell Quartet - Heaven14.  The Dove Brothers - Didn't it rain15. The Old Time Preachers Quartet  - I'll soon be goneSend your request to:Request@GatewayForTheBlind.Comor (636) 428-1500

Join Darien Southerland and producer Jonathan Jiles live from the floor of the National Quartet Convention at the LeConte Center in Pigeon Forge TN.   #NQC2018 #LegacyFive #OnTheCouchWithFouch #TheGuardians #TributeQuartet #JasonCrabb #KarenPeckAndNewRiver #TheMcKameys #SouthernGospelMusic #PigeonForge Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Darien Southerland and producer Jonathan Jiles live from the floor of the National Quartet Convention at the LeConte Center in Pigeon Forge TN.   #NQC2018 #LegacyFive #OnTheCouchWithFouch #TheGuardians #TributeQuartet #JasonCrabb #KarenPeckAndNewRiver #TheMcKameys #SouthernGospelMusic #PigeonForge

In this special edition documentary of SGNP, host Darien Southerland and co-host Arthur Rice reached out to many in the gospel music industry, including Karen Peck, Eli Fortner, Tim Lovelace, Josh Singletary Mark Bishop and more to discuss their memories of the NQC. Clark Beasley, Executive VP of the NQC, also joins us today.     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this special edition documentary of SGNP, host Darien Southerland and co-host Arthur Rice reached out to many in the gospel music industry, including Karen Peck, Eli Fortner, Tim Lovelace, Josh Singletary Mark Bishop and more to discuss their memories of the NQC.  Clark Beasley, Executive VP of the NQC, also joins us today.    

Great news! The National Quartet Convention is returning to Pigeon Forge for another exciting year of fun and adventure. Promising to be better and bigger than ever before, this year’s event is sure to be one that you and your family or group will remember for years to come. However, in case you missed the […] The post Everything You Need to Know About the National Quartet Convention 2018 appeared first on Visit My Smokies.

Angie and John play some of the best in Southern Gospel Music. This week John also brought back some gems from the National Quartet Convention!

Angie and John play some of the best in Southern Gospel Music. This week John also brought back some gems from the National Quartet Convention!

Edition: Vol. 1, No. 9File Size: 22.39 MBLength: 48 min. 50 sec.Program Features:Ghana Update: Evangelist Raphael Adjei Kingbi, JCEA Ministry Coordinator (e-mail). Evangelist Ralph shares information about an upcoming revival meeting in Teshie, Ghana, in which he will be the youngest speaker.Interview: Junior Combs and Southern Joy, winner of the group talent competition during the 2006 National Quartet Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. This Southern Gospel trio had been singing together for only four months prior to winning this prestigious competition. The group consists of veteran Southern Gospel singer and musician Junior Combs, his 18 year old daughter Jessica and his 11 year old son Wesley. Two songs from their first CD, Expressions From The Heart, are featured during the interview. For more information abou the group visit their website or send them an e-mail.Message: Forsaking All by Evangelist James Croft. The excerpt from this message features Croft's testimony about becoming a preaching evangelist and a special announcement about a new chapter for the ministry.You may also contribute financially to this ministry to help with production costs by following these links:Credit CardCheck or Money OrderMay God richly bless you for your prayerful and financial support!