Gospel Music

Margaret “Babe” Allison & the AngelicsTouch Me AgainMalaco Records 2008www.malaco.comFor 86 years old, Margaret Allison is remarkable. She’s still singing, and sounding pretty good, too. She still possesses much of that piercing, plaintive voice that was the force behind the Angelic Gospel Singers, the sweethearts of the gospel circuit. But [...]

“Oh How Precious”Kathy TaylorFrom the CD The Worship Experience Katco Music Group 2008www.kathytaylorlive.comHouston's own Kathy Taylor is already a familiar name to those who have followed her various projects with Favor, the group she founded, with the most recent being Taylormade on Al “The Bishop” Hobbs’ Aleho International label. She [...]

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 [...]

Special thanks to Jason Rubley (Rubes Marketing), Ruben Rodriguez and Pendulum Records for this well-written press release on Regina Belle's Love Forever Shines, released this past Tuesday (May 13).It’s not without some measure of fear and trepidation that gospel music puts checks and balances on reverse crossover artists. After all, [...]

Gospel music singer and songwriter Joyce “Dottie” Rambo was killed Sunday morning, May 11, when her tour bus crashed on Interstate 44 near Mount Vernon, Missouri.Rambo was on her way to a Mother’s Day performance in Texas at the time of the crash. According to www.dottierambo.net, the force of high [...]

“Lead Me to the Rock”Rev. Stefanie R. Minatee & JubilationFrom the CD The Launch Out Projecthttp://www.jubilationinc.com/When I reviewed Rev. Stefanie R. Minatee and Jubilation’s The Launch Out Project in November 2006, I commented that “Lead Me to the Rock,” featuring soloist and Stellar Award nominee Min. Nancey Jackson-Johnson, was the [...]

Deborah Smith Pollard, associate professor of English literature and humanities at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, is also a successful gospel concert producer and host of a popular Sunday morning gospel show on Detroit's FM 98 WJLB. Add "author" to her list of accolades.When the Church Becomes Your Party is Pollard's [...]

As the Helen Robinson Youth Chorus sang, "Time is Winding Up!"The 2008 Lighten the Load Gospel Contest is seeking Gospel Choirs that are affiliated with a church and would be interested in submitting music for the contest. The areas in the program are as follows: * Atlanta, GA* Birmingham, AL* [...]

Gospel music authorities Rev. Lawrence Roberts and Gregory Gay informed TBGB that Elmo Franklin, an original member of the Mighty Clouds of Joy of Los Angeles, California, passed from labor to reward last week. Franklin, Willie Joe Ligon, Richard Wallace and Johnny Martin were the four founding members of the [...]

Light Records released two more Gospel Legacy reissue CDs last week, and this time the focus was on the Hawkins Family.In 1968, Edwin Hawkins single-handedly, though quite unexpectedly, changed the sound and expanded the popularity of gospel music with the release of the Northern California State Youth Choir (COGIC) vanity [...]