JGM Pick of the Week – September 21, 2026
“That’s What He’s Done” is the latest example of the buoyant and infectious Low Country sound as it's done by North Carolina’s Jason Singleton & the Sound of Destiny Choir.
JGM Pick of the Week – January 30, 2024
“Blessed My Soul” Jason Singleton & Friends From the Singletone Music Group CD The LowCountry Church Experience (release date: July 16, 2023) By Robert M. Marovich In what artist and minister Jason Singleton calls a Low Country arrangement, meaning the area along South Carolina’s coast, “Blessed My Soul” evokes the [...]
Shirley Caesar – “Take Your Knee Off My Neck”
By Bob Marovich Give it up for Pastor Shirley Caesar. She stands once again, unafraid, and speaks her mind through music. Caesar, whose heart-wrenching “Mother Emanuel” honored the nine who lost their lives in the 2015 shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, is back with another protest [...]
JGM Pick of the Week: March 19, 2018
“Prayer Room” Jarell Smalls & Co. From the CD A New Season Southern Wave Music Group / Get Ready Music Group (release date: May 19, 2017) http://jarellsmalls.com/ By Bob Marovich By evoking Grandma at the outset, Jarell Smalls gives the appropriate old-school pedigree to “Prayer Room.” Then, to a rockabilly-guitar-meets-Pentecostal-beat, [...]
Shirley Caesar – Fill This House
Shirley Caesar Fill This House Entertainment One Music (release date: June 3, 2016) www.shirleycaesar.com By Bob Marovich From its days as a seedling in the American soil, black sacred music has been a balm to soothe the sin-sick soul as well as the soul beaten down by life’s humiliations and [...]
JGM Pick of the Week: May 23, 2016
“Mother Emanuel” Shirley Caesar From the forthcoming Entertainment One Music CD Fill This House Available from digital retail outlets Gospel songs with explicit social messages are a rarity these days, making Shirley Caesar’s sobering memorial to the shooting at "Mother" Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, stand out all [...]
Gospel Memories: Remembering Emanuel AME in Charleston
The June 20, 2015 episode of Gospel Memories on WLUW Chicago includes a long set in memory of the victims and their families, and all the members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Gospel music helps us mourn, helps us heal, helps us remember. May this kind of tragedy [...]
