By Bob Marovich As a young person growing up in Central Indiana, Leonard Scott had an inkling of what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wanted to be a rock star. “I wasn’t into gospel music [at that time],” Dr. Leonard Scott told the Journal of Gospel Music. “I was into rock and R&B. But I had an experience with my Maker. And at that experience, I learned that music had been my God.” Rather than transition from secular to sacred music, howeve,r Scott’s religious conversion kept him away from music altogether. “I didn’t want anything to draw ...

Various Artists Feel Good! 40 Years of Life Changing Music Tyscot Records (2016) www.tyscot.com By Bob Marovich What started out as a hobby for an Indianapolis, Indiana, dentist and his nephew is now the oldest existing African-American gospel music label in the country. Tyscot Records is celebrating its fortieth anniversary in the music business with a retrospective CD: Feel Good! 40 Years of Life Changing Music. The title comes from the name of the label’s first offering, a full-length album by the Radio Choir of Christ Church Apostolic, where founders Dr. Leonard Scott and L. Craig Tyson were members. The ...

By Bob Marovich In 2012, the Wheeler Avenue Mass Choir recorded a CD in honor of the Houston, Texas church’s fiftieth anniversary. The full-length album, Oh To Be Kept by Jesus, brought together the church’s music department and two longtime collaborators, Wheeler Avenue music minister Henry “Hanq” Neal and Leon C. Lewis, who produced the CD. Lewis wrote a song called “I Believe” for Neal, who sang lead on it. Almost immediately, the church recognized the song would become the album’s main selection. But no one could have anticipated that “I Believe” would be Neal’s last solo. The Grammy-nominated vocalist, ...