Light’s Gospel Legacy Series: The Winans & Vickie Winans

Among the first Gospel Legacy CDs Light Records released this year were tributes to the Winans, the Detroit family that was to the Eighties what Andrae Crouch and the Hawkins Family were to the Seventies. The Winans, like Crouch and Hawkins, employed the medium of contemporary music to express a spiritual message. Although disparaged at the time by some traditionalists, what these artists did was very much in keeping with gospel’s time-honored tradition of taking the mountain to Mohammed, instead of the other way around.

The Winans

The Winans brothers – Marvin, Carvin, Michael and Ronald – encapsulated lyrics of encouragement and inspiration with the smooth jazz-soul treatment that propelled artists such as the Commodores, Earth Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang and Peabo Bryson to fame.

The brothers’ first album as the Testimonial Singers was introspective and musically complex, sounding nothing like the gospel music of the day. But when the group signed with Light Records in 1981, they commercialized their sound and hit the gospel charts with songs such as the quintessential call-and-response “The Question Is,” “Bring Back the Days of Yea and Nay,” and “Restoration.” Another hit, “Long Time Coming (Holdin’ On),” was a conscious or subconscious follow-up to Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come.” “For We May Never Know” was a pleasant surprise for me, as I had never heard this lovely ballad before, and was smitten with it.

Obviously the twelve songs on this CD are culled from the group’s Light Records days, with two from 1981’s Introducing the Winans, four from Long Time Comin’ (1983) and the remaining six from the Winans’ third and most popular Light LP, Tomorrow (1984), though ironically the title track and major hit is missing from the latter. Overall, however, Light offers up what amounts to an aural charting of the Winans’ rise to superstardom, which they achieved by juxtaposing lyrics about simpler times with musically complex arrangements, harmonies and instrumentation that pointed clearly toward the future.

Three of Four Stars

Vickie Winans
If the Winans men are a string section, Vickie is a one-woman brass section, capable of wrecking a church – steeple, cross, lightning rods and all – with her concrete-crushing voice. And that’s a good thing.

The Gospel Legacy CD devoted to her artistry is the finest of the lot, though similar to the 2005 Greatest Hits set, with Vickie’s version of the late Dottie Rambo’s “We Shall Behold Him” alone worth the price, right up to its heart-racing high note. A number of tracks on the CD come from Vickie’s two Live in Detroit CDs (1997 and 1999), including Darius Brooks’ hit for the Tommies, “Safe in His Arms,” which Vickie renders almost as marvelously as did the Tommies. Another live track is her Aretha-like gospel workout of hometown hero Bill Moss’ “Already Been to the Water.” Here, Vickie delivers lyrics with machine-gun force and with an authentic gospel rasp missing from her earlier material.

“Because He Lives” and “Oh What Love” are also live and vintage Vickie. They demonstrate her ability to pack ounces of charisma into every single line. Of course, the set would not be complete without her concert version of the late Calvin White’s “Long As I Got King Jesus,” introduced by White’s Gospel Wonders but popularized by James Cleveland.

The final two tracks are spoken word snippets, though the CD would have been even better if these tracks had been replaced with another Vickie special, such as “Victory” or “No Cross, No Crown.”

The liner notes – taken from Bill Carpenter’s Uncloudy Days – provide a dramatic summary of the ups and downs of the singer’s life. But like all good gospel songs, Vickie’s life and career are on the upswing. She’s looking and sounding good, and gospel music is all the better for it.

Three and a Half of Four Stars