1. Has Gospel Music sold out to secular sound? Do you think that its "dense, over-produced, over-sung and virtually indistinguishable from secular easy-listening pop"?~Gospelrama
2. Gospel Music has always had enormous popularity among African-American audiences and that has proven to be great for the Gospel Music Channel. 56% of GMC’s audience is African American or [...]  read more »

1. Mahalia Jackson is viewed as a pinnacle of gospel music.~ Source Mahalia Jackson, The Queen of Gospel Music, was born in New Orleans in 1912 and moved to Chicago at an early age. She absorbed the sounds of blues singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, but it was the church to whom she pledged her allegiance. She began singing gospel in the 1920s at Chicago’s Greater Salem Baptist Church and performing with Prince Johnson Gospel Singers. By the late 1930s she had begun recording as a solo artist, and in the early ’40s she toured with the great Thomas Dorsey. As illustrated by “Move On Up a Little Higher,” her incredible melisma and charismatic performing style influenced the young Aretha Franklin among many others. Jackson died of heart failure in 1972 at age 59. Source 2. Marvin Sapp’s blockbuster song “Never Would Have Made It”, like all great gospel music songs, comes from a place of deep sorrow and pain. The beloved song was written after the death of Marvin Sapp’s father, Henry Lewis Sapp, Jr. The song spent an unprecedented 26 weeks at #1 in Billboard’s Hot Gospel Songs and was replaced by Kirk Franklin’s “Declaration (This Is It)”.~ Source , Squidoo Page 3. Good news for DirectTV subscribers!  read more »

1. Aretha Franklin was on the View to promote her new Christmas CD, This Christmas. Watch the video on Gospelrama . The CD is sold exclusively at Borders bookstore. Visit the bookstore to watch a behind the scenes look at the recording.You can get your CD signed Wednesday, October 29 at 7 p.m. at Borders, 10 Columbus Circle-Time Warner Center in New York. 2. The Christian Science Monitor is planning to go from a daily print format to an online publication in April 2009.  read more »

Respect - Aretha Franklin

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