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JGM Music Hour – Episode 183
This episode includes music reviewed on the Journal of Gospel Music between mid-March and late May 2025.
Lynda Randle – By the Riverside
By the Riverside is a 10-song house wrecker that comes straight out of the country church.
RIP: Jo Jo Wallace, Guitarist, Singer with the Sensational Nightingales; also wrote “The Twist”
Jo Jo Wallace, the famed guitarist and quartet singer, passed from earthly labor to heavenly reward on May 7, 2025, at age 98.
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Recent Posts
JGM Music Hour – Episode 183
This episode includes music reviewed on the Journal of Gospel Music between mid-March and late May 2025.
Lynda Randle – By the Riverside
By the Riverside is a 10-song house wrecker that comes straight out of the country church.
RIP: Jo Jo Wallace, Guitarist, Singer with the Sensational Nightingales; also wrote “The Twist”
Jo Jo Wallace, the famed guitarist and quartet singer, passed from earthly labor to heavenly reward on May 7, 2025, at age 98.
Sponsored Post:
“There Wouldn’t Be a Me” Shonda English Gospel Diva Music (release date: January 23, 2024)
Clocking in at less than ten minutes, OMARI is an affectionate love letter, wrapped in swaddling Christian pop and R&B, from a first-time father to his son.
Congratulations to the 2025 GRAMMY Awards nominees in the Gospel and Contemporary Christian Music Group
“Never Turn Back” Gregory G. Pearson feat. Angelena Starks Inner Court Music (release date: September 15, 2023)
JamesTown Music, founded by GRAMMY-nominated and multiple Stellar Award winner, JJ Hairston, has announced the signing of a deal finalizing a partnership between Motown Gospel and JamesTown Music.
5-0 Studios London and the “Queen of Gospel,” Pastor Shirley Caesar will tell her story in a new film series entitled BLESSINGS - My Life - His Glory.
LATEST 5 STAR REVIEWS
Various Artists WOW GOSPEL 2017 RCA Inspiration (release date: January 27, 2017) www.rcainspiration.com By Bob Marovich In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the annual WOW GOSPEL collection was my personal tutor for learning about the gospel scene. Back in those days, I was focused exclusively on vintage gospel music, and particularly the contributions of [...]
Various Artists Waxing the Gospel: Mass Evangelism and the Phonograph, 1890-1900 Archeophone Records (release date: September 30, 2016) www.archeophone.com By Bob Marovich There is something quite thrilling about hearing voices singing and speaking from more than a century ago. Those crackly, trebly vowels and consonants, like faraway voices over an old telephone, preserved on cylinder [...]
Rev. Clay Evans & the Ship What a Legacy Rev. Clay Evans Heritage Series (2016) By Bob Marovich “Give me my flowers while I am still here,” the Consolers instructed in 1955, “so I can see the beauty that they bring.” What a Legacy, a collection of Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church Choir tracks never before [...]
Mahalia Jackson Moving On Up a Little Higher Shanachie / Spirit Feel (release date: September 30, 2016) www.shanachie.com By Bob Marovich Moving On Up a Little Higher may well be the finest collection of Mahalia Jackson selections ever released, and ranks among Anthony Heilbut’s best produced music projects to date. It’s certainly the most historic gathering [...]
Various Artists Best of Proverb & Gospel Corner Records: 1959-1969 NarroWay Records (2016) www.gospelfriend.com By Bob Marovich Gospel music has had many multi-taskers, chief among them the late Brother Henderson of Los Angeles, California. In the late 1950s, Sylvester C. “Duke” Henderson forsook his R&B singing career, hung up his rock and roll shoes, and [...]
LATEST PICK OF THE WEEK – SINGLES
“Move Upstairs” Tim Woodson and the Heirs of Harmony Marxan Records (release date: January 27, 2023)
“When Love Comes In” Jonathan Butler feat. Keb’ Mo’ From the Artistry Music / Mack Avenue Music Group album Ubuntu (release date: April 28, 2023)
“It Is Well” Monica Lisa Stevenson Blacksmoke Music Worldwide (release date: April 28, 2023)
“Heaven Belongs to You” The Wilson Family of Cades JEF Records (release date: March 7, 2023)
“Till We Meet” Jerard & Jovaun From the CD No Troubled Hearts (release date: February 17, 2023)
By Robert Marovich
In A City Called Heaven, gospel announcer and music historian Robert Marovich shines a light on the humble origins of a majestic genre and its indispensable bond to the city where it found its voice: Chicago.
By Robert Marovich
In A City Called Heaven, gospel announcer and music historian Robert Marovich shines a light on the humble origins of a majestic genre and its indispensable bond to the city where it found its voice: Chicago.
By Bob Marovich Rocky Mount, North Carolina, an hour's drive from the state capitol of Raleigh, is neither rocky nor mountainy. The population is a modest 60,000, but the town looms large in gospel music lore as the longtime home of one of the genre’s most important family dynasties: the Barnes Family. The dynasty began in [...]
By Bob Marovich "Keep pushing and hold on to God, because there's a way out." That's how Grammy and Dove Award nominee Dayna Caddell describes the theme of her first full-length solo album, Push, released July 8 on Forty Entertainment/eOne. The album's positive disposition and personal testimonies encourage listeners to overcome their own personal and [...]
By Bob Marovich Lady LaVarnga Hubbard, known as the Duchess of Gospel Music, has been a member of the Chicago Mass Choir since it was the Ecclesiastes Community Choir, under the leadership of the late James C. Chambers. Her lead on Chicago Mass's “Call Him Up” has ensured the song a place in the choir’s repertory. [...]
JGM was saddened to learn of the transition of Bishop Claude Odell Timmons, a gospel music artist and religious leader.
Wednesday, August 2, 2023, saw the passing of two towering figures in the history of African American gospel music: musician and educator Kenneth Woods Jr. and Professor L. Stanley Davis.