Brian's interview with C.P. who is the leader of the VoL.  C.P. is also one of the founders of the organization. 

Interview Transcription

<st1:date Year="2006" Day="16" Month="10">10/16/06</st1:date> 3:10PM-3:50PM

C: The important thing about gospel music is that you have to understand its origin.  And you have to go back all the way to slavery and the negro spiritual and songs that communicated hope and comfort in spite of the conditions that they were in.  They sang sounds about the promise land and they were out in the field and were singing to help themselves cope with their plight because in most cases because in most cases they were either snatched from Africa by other Africans and taken from their country, and how do you cope with that?

B: right

C: Having a child born into it and once that child gets old enough to work to be snatched from them (their parents).  How do you cope with knowing that the success that the master is experiencing is all on your back?  The spirituality of gospel music, in my opinion, goes all the way back to there.  And this in my opinion, the music, crosses all socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.  You can look into the music we enjoy now and find traces of it that go back to slavery.  You can see how slaves were dispersed into America and you can find influences from all different kinds of musics, also South America and Cuba and fast forward and you have blues and the father of gospel music is Thomas A. Dorsey, who was a jaz…..was a blues guy.  He was credited as being the father of gospel music because he was taking scriptured songs and incorporating them with blues.  I printed off some links about him and it has some information about him and it talks about the great hymns of the black church like Precious Lord, take my hand and standards like Peaceful valley. He was considered to be a radical because he was taking the Devil’s music and blending it with church.  Early 30’s forward…that was him.  There is certainly a hymnal that you should look at.  The National Baptist Convention has it, the National Baptist Hymnal has a lot of song.

B: ok.

C: And nowadays contemporary gospel is going back and using songs (from the Hymnal) and going back and remaking it and sampling it, so to speak.  But, so he (Dorsey) was a radical.  And when you run into him you run into people like Mehalia Jackson and those kind of individuals who were heralded because they were amongst the first to record and then we have the big quartet movement where you have guys and a couple ladies and you sing gospel music and you have Roberta Martin and her singers, and you have the Caravans who consisted of such individuals as Shirley Cesar, Aberdeen Walker, Dorothy Norwood who are now and still today very prominent within the black church with more traditional gospel and they’re still alive and touring.  Caravans was a real popular female group who launched the careers of a lot of singers.  You go from Thomas Dorsey and that group and then you get people like James Cleveland who was a kid who hung around and was kind of like an understudy of Thomas A. Dorsey.  Thomas A. Dorsey was born in 1899 and he died in 1993 and so there were a lot of people in which his music influenced them.  James Cleveland will be very big in the Chicago, Detroit are as far as gospel music was concerned.  His music was really hot in the 70’s so that was kind of gospel music’s forefront and that is where a lot of people starting coming out and recording gospel music and that is where you started seeing a lot of choirs because before then it was just quartets. And then you have a lady named Dr. Maddy Moss Clark who was the first person to record gospel music in 3-part harmony.  Her children, her daughters would be more contemporary, called the Clark Sisters and now all of them have albums and now her granddaughter is a real popular contemporary urban gospel artist and you see there’s this heritage there and James Cleveland, to go back to him, was credited with founding and launching the careers of a lot of people and I have to get you this.  I have the DVD called Gospel that really grabs people such as those that I’ve mentioned.  It has James Cleveland on it.  It has the Clark sisters on it.  It has Edward Hawkins and the Hawkins family on it.  It has Shirley Ces……Mighty Clouds of Joy on it.  This is gonna be the 70’s, early 80’s.

B: right (really, this was all that I said during pretty much the whole interview.)

C: And you will get to see.  What I’m trying to do is to paint this picture for you and giving you names that you can go back and dig out.  These links that I’m giving you are great and should point you into some good directions. 

B: ok.

C: Umm, in the late 70’s, in the mid 70’s, ok so you had James Cleveland who comes from Thomas Dorsey. James Cleveland records Aretha Franklin singing Amazing Grace which was very inspiring.  We have Mahalia Jackson, Shirley Cesar.  Then you go forward in the 70’s, late 70’s and you have the Hawkins.  The Hawkins, Andre Crouch is more contemporary.  Edward Hawkins came out with O Happy Day, I dunno if you’ve heard of it.

B: Yeah.

C: You did? Well that was Edward Hawkins and Walter Hawkins and their album was Love Live and they caught a lot of flack because they tended to take what was then in their day more disco sound with the hidden bass and incorporating it into gospel.  So just as Thomas Dorsey was considered….

B:..putting spiritual music into…

C: Yeah, they were considered doing the same thing.  They were Hood.  They took it to another level because they had big choirs and the choir sound was real hot, so they would do songs that were tremendous standards now and you would have people like Tremaine Hawkins and then you have the Winans and the Winans were the late 70’s, early 80’s  were like a quartet but not a quartet on a contemporary style.  Again, you are taking these, as the music scene changed you have these new people coming on who did what Thomas Dorsey did, but in their own way.  And that’s when you are getting too far from the church, and people say it’s losing its tradition but consistently you still have people like James Cleveland.  They were still doing their thing all the way through, and promoting and pushing young artists and giving them opportunities and so gospel music continued to grow.  I’m skipping over a lot of people that you will find as you read through.  Then we got into the 80’s of course and of course the Gospel Music Workshop of America was big and it was a yearly gathering to showcase the talents, do recordings, and learn what’s the newest trends as far as gospel was concerned and that was very very popular in the 80’s and really propelled gospel music into a whole ‘nother level.  And then it wasn’t just Detroit and Chicago and now small towns were going and what they did was they had what they called chapters and they are underneath it (the Gospel Music Workshop of America). We would be, you know, like the Lubbock chapter.

B: right.

C: And so, in Lubbock we would be doing gospel music and we would have the dopest, latest music and remix it and we would come back to Lubbock and teach it and so that it when these chapters started branching off.  They were humongous.  They still have a convention every year.  After James Cleveland died in February of ’91, after he passed away it took a dip, because he was the driving force in the music and knew big record executives and if he was on your album, the album was going to sell.  And even if he didn’t, if he wasn’t singing on your album, if he produced it, or it had James Cleveland presents, then, you know, that was hot.  And that helps the choirs a lot.  Then you get into the 90’s and you get into more contemporary gospel music like Bebe and Cece and they were considered radicals and in the early 90’s I believe you have Kirk Franklin come out.  His first album was very much choir oriented but still had more of that urban kick to it. 

B:  What do you mean by urban? 

C:  That would be synonymous with the R&B sound. So he got ridiculed and his success with that album led to another album.  The first was Why We Sing and then he did Whatcha Looking for?  And then he did Stomp, and that put him on the national scale so people who did not buy gospel music prior to that began to listen to gospel music.  He had some crossover.  Now Bebe and Cece had some crossover appeal.  Andre Crouch..his roots were gospel but he went more Christian, the sound was different than the traditional gospel.  But then when Kirk Franklin came around, he was, you know, the first gospel artist to cross over into the billboard charts.  His album, is where they first really started producing singles, you know, where like you could go to the store and pick up just that song.  And you see the change and trend now where it has changed and now you got gospel hip-hop, gospel jazz, and so it has morphed tremendously, but the roots still go back.  And I think it has been a necessary shift because different generations need different music. And you know country music has morphed from where it was to where it is…all music has.  And now gospel music is much more of a funding, it brings in much more money now.  Before people would travel hours, in cars, around to different churches and now they have major record contracts and buses but before if choirs wanted to travel the church would raise the money and your album was no mix, there was no overdub and you get in there and sing it and we have this much time and whatever you get in there when you finish, that’s what it sounds like.  And in some cases, I’ve got a cd for you that has some old gospel music, some old gospel choirs and you will be able to tell, to hear definitely, the different in sound and recording techniques.  Just the quality, you hear people off a little bit.  And now you can go in and spend the big money for records to clean it up.  Someone that you have to talk about in gospel, early 80’s late 80’s or so….Richard Smallwood.  He’s a classically trained pianist who takes classical music and merges it with gospel.  Awesome, Visions of Light brought him here…it’s just phenomenonal.  He’s Grammy award-winning.  You can hear his classical training in the way he writes.  Literally, take his gospel music and analyze as you would, you know, Mozart, and you actually see how it is, but again I think it goes back to those roots.

And I’ve been talking a whole lot, do you have any questions?

B: Actually, I do have some…is gospel music necessarily text oriented or is it necessarily style oriented or is it more of like, a melding of both?  ]

C: It’s both.  The underlying, the lyrics tell a story and it’s always about God, something that deals with the spiritual and refers back to God and the flow of it, you know, that sound, with the piano and keyboards and organ.  So I think it’s a combination of the way the music is written, the way the music is performed.

B:  Is there a specific way to sing gospel music? Cuz you know, classical music, gospel music, are totally different. 

C:  I think gospel music is more, I don’t want to say heart, I think it’s more soul.  With classical music you don’t have to have experience…..you don’t have to be where the person was when he wrote it to be able to sing it well.  Gospel music is heart, you have to put yourself there, it has to hit you first to sing it effectively.  Because most gospel music is not written, you know, you don’t find sheet music, well nowadays, but in the past you didn’t find song books of gospel music.  As a matter of fact, Thomas Dorsey was one of the first blacks to be an independent music publisher.  And then you have people in the late 70’s, early 80’s like Dr. Margaret Douroux, who, interestingly enough, she feels like there was not, you know, Classical music had Carnegie Hall, Country music had the Grand Ole Opry, there was no gospel home.  Way back then, and I had the opportunity to meet her as a young boy, she was raising money to create a gospel heritage house.  So it’s called the Heritage Music Foundation.  And she is a trained musician, a composer, understands musicology.  The average gospel singer doesn’t read music.

B: Is it mostly just taught by rote, but just singing?

C: Yeah, most gospel music is taught like Visions of Light.

B: Is that common?

C: Very much so.  Especially in the Southern part of the country.  If you go into the DC areas, where you have more classically trained or professionally trained or educated musicians, you know, they can sing solfege, but the average gospel singer, no.  The average black church is taught like the Visions of Light. 

B: Is it all three part? 

C: It’s usually three part.  The old hymns were a lot of three and four part.  And there are people like Glen Burleigh who does cantatas and entire Easter works complete with orchestra.  You will find that more on the East coast, some parts of the West coast, where there is a large gathering of professional African Americans. 

B: So do you think that contemporary gospel music now would still be considered sacred because of its text?

C: Yes, I think so.  There would be those who are different from me.  Just like you have traditionalism saying, “No, there’s no way that you can because it’s not true to the sound.”  The context I think, it’s the message.  My opinion is that the song, look, when Bebe and Cece Winans came out and they were singing songs where you couldn’t tell if they were singing to Jesus, of it was singing about Jesus, or what.  They never said the name Jesus, so it was like is it? Or is it not?  That was a big controversy because it was not really clear what they were singing about.  Kirk Franklin, a couple of his albums had the same problems.  I think sacred music is such that it could still have a message, even though it may be more contemporary.  Now we’re talking about people like Fred Hammond, John P. Kee, talking about Donald Lawrence and the Tri-City Singers.  For me it still goes back to the music, to the message of the music, even though the music style has modernized. 

B:  Are there churches in Lubbock that are, strictly traditional, and others that are more contemporary?

C:  Yes, yes.  Traditional churches in Lubbock, you’re gonna look at a St. Luke Baptist Church and A New Hope Baptist Church.  Ones with a more contemporary feel but with that feel you’re gonna look at a Lion’s Chapel Baptist Church, A New Hope Baptist Church, Agape Temple Church.  So the older the church is, the more traditional is will be.  In my opinion, a successful music ministry encompasses it all.  One of the things that traditionalists are afraid of is that since we have become more modern, the roots, the heritage of the music is being lost because we’re not teaching them the traditional music.  Today, in the average black church you won’t find a hymnal.  Go back 20 years ago, it was part of every worship service.  But the average musician now can’t play that stuff.  They have never been exposed to it.  Now if you go to the East coast, you’re still going to get, you have progressive, but you have that deeply rooted, you know, you’re talking churches that are, that were founded by former slaves.  My opinion is that we need to have, you know, you don’t want to lose Mozart and Wagner, you don’t want to lose, but classical doesn’t have to worry about that because there are groups that play that music.  Unfortunately, there are not enough groups that continually support the traditional gospel.  To ask the average African American teenage to name three hymns in the hymnal?  I don’t think they could do it.

B:  So, what’s being sung then? Contemporary?

C: Contemporary stuff.  It’s what’s hot.  There are some churches that are quite contemporary, but sing at least one hymn at every service and I think it a good thing to do.  You can’t really appreciate what you have unless you know where you came from.  Back in the day, church started off service with what they call devotion.  Nowadays, churches start off with what is called a praise team with praise and worship music.