“God Has Been So Good” MYDASON feat. Bishop Rance Allen Brainstorm Music Company (release date: October 18, 2020) By Robert M. Marovich Bishop Rance Allen may be gone in body but his music lives on. On “God Has Been So Good,” he joins MYDASON at the lead mike, singing, shouting, and making those gut-wrenching growls that only he can do. The Prayer Garden COGIC Mass Choir of Flint, Michigan, rejoices in rich, thick harmonies as it supports both lead vocalists. The song, written and produced by Bernard Jackson Jr. and Glenn “Sweety G” Toby, has the feel of something you ...

By Robert M. Marovich Last March, the COVID-19 pandemic washed over Bishop J. Drew Sheard’s family and associates like a tsunami. His brother, the Reverend Ethan B. Sheard, tested positive for the virus. So did his children, well-known musicians J Drew II and Kierra. His mother, Willie Mae Sheard, and father, Bishop John H. Sheard, pastor of Greater Mitchell Temple Church of God in Christ in Detroit, also contracted the virus. “It hit my family pretty hard,” Sheard, Senior Pastor of Detroit’s Greater Emmanuel Institutional (GEI) Church of God in Christ, told the Journal of Gospel Music. “The most difficult ...

By Robert M. Marovich A. Jeffrey LaValley informed JGM of the passing of his friend, gospel singer and pastor Steve Hawkins. Born in Waco, Texas, on Valentine’s Day, 1953 (“That’s why I’m such a sweetheart!” he chuckled during our 2014 interview), Hawkins was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where his father was pastor of the Jerusalem Church of God in Christ. As a youngster, Hawkins learned the finer points of singing from his mother. His uncle and aunt, Dorothy and Lawrence Abrams, took him on the road to open for the Original Five Blind Boys, in which Lawrence was a member ...