Volume 1 of Nothing but Love in God’s Water traced the music of protest spirituals from the Civil War to the American labor movement of the 1930s and 1940s, and on through the Montgomery bus boycott. This second volume continues the journey, chronicling the role this music played in energizing and sustaining those most heavily involved in the civil rights movement.Robert Darden, former gospel music editor for Billboard magazine and the founder of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University, brings this vivid, vital story to life. He explains why black sacred music helped foster community within the civil rights movement and attract new adherents; shows how Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders used music to underscore and support their message; and reveals how the songs themselves traveled and changed as the fight for freedom for African Americans continued. Darden makes an unassailable case for the importance of black sacred music not only to the civil rights era but also to present-day struggles in and beyond the United States.Taking us from the Deep South to Chicago and on to the nation’s capital, Darden’s grittily detailed, lively telling is peppered throughout with the words of those who were there, famous and forgotten alike: activists such as Rep. John Lewis, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and Willie Bolden, as well as musical virtuosos such as Harry Belafonte, Duke Ellington, and The Mighty Wonders. Expertly assembled from published and unpublished writing, oral histories, and rare recordings, this is the history of the soundtrack that fueled the long march toward freedom and equality for the black community in the United States and that continues to inspire and uplift people all over the world.

Nothing but Love in God's Water: Volume 2: Black Sacred Music from Sit-Ins to Resurrection City

People Get Ready!: A New History of Gospel Music is a passionate, celebratory, and carefully researched chronology of one of America's greatest treasures. From Africa through the spirituals, from minstrel music through jubilee, and from traditional to contemporary gospel, People Get Ready! shows the links between styles, social patterns, and artists. The emphasis is on the stories behind the songs and musicians. From the nameless slaves of Colonial America to Donnie McClurkin, Yolanda Adams, and Kirk Franklin, People Get Ready! provides, for the first time, an accessible overview of this musical genre. In addition to the more familiar stories of Thomas A. Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson, the book offers intriguing new insights into the often forgotten era between the Civil War and the rise of jubilee-that most intriguing blend of minstrel music, barbershop harmonies, and the spiritual. Also chronicled are the connections between some of gospel's precursors (Blind Willie Johnson, Arizona Dranes, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe) and modern gospel stars, including Andrae Crouch and Clara Ward. People Get Ready! knits together a number of narratives, and combines history, musicology and spirituality into a coherent whole, stitched together by the stories of dozens of famous and forgotten musical geniuses.FROM THE INTRODUCTION"Among the richest of the lavish gifts Africa has given to the world is rhythm. The beat. The sound of wood on wood, hand on hand. That indefinable pulse that sets blood to racing and toes to tapping. It is rhythm that drives the great American musical exports, the spiritual (and, by extension, gospel), the blues, jazz and rock 'n' roll. But first you must have the spirituals-religion with rhythm.In this book, I will show the evolution of a musical style that only occasionally slows down its evolution long enough to be classified before it evolves yet again. In historical terms, spirituals emerged from African rhythm, work-songs, and field hollers in a remarkably short time-years, perhaps days-after the first African slaves landed on American shores. From the spirituals sprang not just their spiritual heir jubilee, but jazz and blues. And gospel music in its modern understanding morphed from the spirituals, the blues, jubilee and-of course-African rhythm.What today's gospel music is and what it is becoming is part of the continuing evolution of African American music. Religion with rhythm."

People Get Ready!: A New History of Black Gospel Music

“Agony and hilarity,” said Norman MacLean, “are both necessary for salvation.” We Christians seem to know a lot about the agony part, but what about hilarity? Why do we have to remind ourselves so often that the Bible is full of funny and ridiculous stories and situations? Why do so few of the pictures we’ve drawn of Jesus show him laughing? Because we’ve forgotten the redemptive power of humor, that’s why. In Jesus Laughed, Robert Darden–senior editor of The Wittenburg Door, the world’s oldest, largest, and pretty much only religious satire magazine–draws on his years of experience deflating religious pomposity and making the faithful laugh to show why humor is so central to the faith, and how to make it a big part of your daily walk with God. Click here to listen to Terri Gross's interview with Robert Darden on NPR's Fresh Air about the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project. Darden runs the project at Baylor University where he is a journalism professor. The purpose of the project is to identify, acquire, preserve, record, and catalogue the most at-risk music from the black gospel music tradition, primarily between 1945 and 1970.  Robert Darden is Associate Professor of Journalism at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He served for 12 years as Gospel Music Editor for Billboard magazine, and since 1988 has been Senior Editor of The Wittenburg Door, the world’s oldest, largest, and “pretty much only” religious satire magazine. He is the author of more than 25 books, including the definitive People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music, which has been featured on National Public Radio, and Reluctant Prophets and Clueless Disciples, also published by Abingdon Press.

Jesus Laughed: The Redemptive Power of Humor

Baylor University, a private Christian university and a nationally ranked research institution, provides a vibrant campus community for more than 15,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship.

Baylor University 

Darden is the author of two dozen books, most recently: Nothing But Love in God’s Water, Volume II: Black Sacred Music from Sit-In to Resurrection City (Penn State University Press, 2016); Nothing But Love in God’s Water, Volume I: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement (Penn State University Press, 2014); Jesus Laughed: The Redemptive Power of Humor (Abingdon Press, 2008); Reluctant Prophets and Clueless Disciples: Understanding the Bible by Telling Its Stories (Abingdon Press, 2006); and People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music (Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2004).

He founded the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, the world’s largest initiative to identify, acquire, digitize, categorize and make accessible gospel music from gospel’s Golden Age (1945-1970). The BGMRP provides the gospel music for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History & Culture. 

At Baylor, he has won numerous teaching and research awards, including The Cornelia Marschall Smith Award as Outstanding Professor; the Baylor University Diversity Award; Outstanding Research Professor, College of Arts & Sciences Award; and Baylor Centennial Award.

He is a popular speaker for seminars, conferences and events. His writings have appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times to the Oxford American. He has been featured in hundreds of radio and television programs, including Fresh Air with Terri Gross (NPR), 1A with Joshua Johnson, All Things Considered (NPR), CSPAN, BBC World Service, BBC Outlook, Austrian Public Broadcasting, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He has also been published in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity, the World Book Encyclopedia, the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress and is a frequent contributor to Huffington Post and Christianity Today Online.

Darden spent 20 years as the Senior Editor for The Wittenburg Door and another 15 years as Gospel Music Editor for Billboard Magazine. In 2016, he created the radio insert “Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments” for KWBU-FM Waco. Darden researches, writes, and records the weekly show, which now appears on eight NPR stations, including KERA-FM Dallas.

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African American Museum in D.C.

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Aretha Franklin’s One Faith

Waco, texas (aug. 22, 2017) - as the 54th anniversary of dr. martin luther king jr.’s “i have a dream” speech approaches, robert darden, professor of journalism and founder and director of baylor’s black gospel music restoration project (bgmrp), says king’s speech was fertile ground for creative expression by black gospel artists recording in the years after 1963.

Mlk’s ‘i have a dream’ inspired response from black gospel artists

Fifty-four years ago this week.

On Aug. 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered “I Have a Dream” – one of the most iconic speeches in American history and a defining moment of the Civil Rights Movement.

For black gospel artists recording in the years after 1963, King’s speech was fertile ground for creative expression, said Robert Darden, professor of journalism and founder and director of Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP).

“These artists responded by creating songs that sampled portions of Dr. King’s recorded audio, drew inspiration from his words or supported the Civil Rights Movement in the wake of its delivery,” Darden said.

Darden founded Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project more than a decade ago in an effort to identify, acquire, preserve, digitize and catalog recordings from the black gospel music tradition. This music, from the Golden Age of Gospel from 1945 to 1975, was quickly vanishing as albums made the transition to CDs.

Through the work of the Baylor Libraries’ Digital Projects Group, recordings from the BGMRP are available online in the Baylor Libraries Digital Collection, and in some cases includes other materials, such as taped interviews, photographs, press packets, tour books and programs, newspaper and magazine clippings, and sheet music.

Music from the BGMRP also has been included in a permanent exhibit featuring African-American musical history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. 

Baylor Gospel Expert: MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Inspired Response from Black Gospel Artists

One of the most cherished parts of entering the holiday season is gathering to sing and listen to christmas carols. songs like silent night, hark the herald angels sing and the first noel resound as Christmas approaches. however, a Baylor University expert in black gospel music holds another Christmas tradition near and dear to his heart. he treasures the rich sounds of Christmas spirituals, which differ from Christmas carols.

Black gospel music expert discusses timelessness of christmas spirituals, which differ from christmas carols

Robert F. Darden, professor of journalism and founder of Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, treasures the rich sounds of Christmas spirituals, which differ from Christmas carols.

“So many of the spirituals are written in what has been performed as and what scholars call the ‘eternal now,’” Darden said. “If you read the lyrics as they were transcribed, many of them are in the present tense.”

To illustrate his point, Darden referenced the spiritual “Were You There?” in which the lyrics read, “It causes me to tremble.” Darden said that since slaves in America were not book-educated and struggled with the concept of time, the Bible was a contemporary account of what was going on for them. In their minds, they conflated Abraham in the Bible with Father Abraham Lincoln who was going to free them, and associated Harriett Tubman with Moses and the Ohio River with the Jordan River. Darden said the powerful resonance in these spirituals is unmatched because of the passion of the people who sang them.

“When you hear the Christmas spirituals, you’re hearing people who (believe) this is a real live event,” Darden said. “Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born, not was born. That gives them more of an immediacy and a power than songs that are in the past tense.”

Darden also said that slaves had a more intimate understanding of the nativity story because they identified with the conditions into which Christ was born. They understood what it was like to come from a foreign land to a place where they were despised and enslaved in the same way that Christ was born as a refugee child with people seeking to kill him.

“The spirituals reflect a people who believe they’re in the middle of the Bible story. I think that gives them a power that’s hard for others to match and why the Gospel artists, who would later record these songs, tried to capture that and keep that immediacy and intimacy that I think a lot of Christmas carols don’t have,” Darden said.

Darden said the modern world still needs Christmas spirituals. While commercialism gets people excited and inspired for the holidays, people in 2017 need something that will help them reflect on what truly matters about the season. They need something that will not only remind them of history but will also evoke the sensation of gratitude for a needed savior.

“By noticing and listening to the words of the spirituals, you see how they focused on what really matters," he said.

Black Gospel Music Expert Discusses Timelessness of Christmas Spirituals, Which Differ From Christmas Carols

In the days of rage and grief that followed the assassination of martin luther king jr. in memphis on april 4, 1968, many americans found, at least...

Hope for MLK's vision reverberates 50 years later in 'Abraham, Martin and John' lyrics

Robert Darden, professor of journalism, PR and new media at Baylor University, is a gospel music expert. He penned this column to commemorate the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and to remember the music that carried people through the grief of the time. 

He writes: "In the days of rage and grief that followed the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis on April 4, 1968, many Americans found, at least for a time, relief in music.
Rosa Parks, whose brave stand on a Montgomery, Ala., bus just 13 years earlier was the inciting incident in the slow build of the civil rights movement after World War II, watched as Detroit erupted in violence. She sat in her room playing Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" over and over. She said the song 'saved her sanity.'"

Darden is the author of two dozen books, most recently: Nothing But Love in God’s Water, Volume II: Black Sacred Music from Sit-In to Resurrection City (Penn State University Press, 2016); Nothing But Love in God’s Water, Volume I: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement (Penn State University Press, 2014); Jesus Laughed: The Redemptive Power of Humor (Abingdon Press, 2008); Reluctant Prophets and Clueless Disciples: Understanding the Bible by Telling Its Stories (Abingdon Press, 2006); and People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music (Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2004).

He founded the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, the world’s largest initiative to identify, acquire, digitize, categorize and make accessible gospel music from gospel’s Golden Age (1945-1970). The BGMRP provides the gospel music for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History & Culture. 

Baylor Black Gospel Music Expert Pens Dallas Morning News Column Remembering MLK

Robert Darden, professor of journalism, public relations and new media, director of Baylor's Black Gospel Music Restoration Project

black-gospel-music-expert-shares-10-of-the-most-powerful-enduring-freedom-songs-protest-spirituals

Professor, Journalism, Public Relations and New Media

By Robert F. Darden, Professor of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media, Founder and Director of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University WACO, Texas (June 19, 2020) – As the protests following the death of George Floyd began to roil the country, it was only a few days before the demonstrators began to sing an array of freedom songs and protest spirituals, as well as a few new adaptations, including Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me.” Some of these songs have been sung by people fighting nonviolently for freedom and justice for hundreds of years. Many have been sung continually in the United States since the 1800s, right through the #blacklivesmatter and #metoo movements. Others have been adopted by freedom fighters in the Arab Spring, at Tiananmen Square and even now in Hong Kong.

The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University has the world’s largest collection of digitized vinyl songs and sermons from gospel’s “golden age.” Not surprisingly, there are hundreds of freedom songs and protest spirituals in the collection as well.

Below is a list of some of the most influential, most powerful, most enduring and beloved songs that have inspired and encouraged sings for two centuries. Each song is available for listening in the digital collections of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project. (Assistance provided by Baylor Libraries’ Digitization and Digital Preservation Services.)

10. “We Shall Not Be Moved” and “Which Side Are You On?” When labor unions admitted African Americans in the 1930s and '40s, labor protesters quickly absorbed and adapted the great protest spirituals. These two old union songs were quickly adopted and expanded by the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s.
Listen to “I Shall Not Be Moved” by the Mighty Wonders of Aquasco, Maryland. 9. “A Charge to Keep Have I” In the days before hymnals, a song-leader would sing or speak a line and the congregation, whether in a church or at a mass meeting, would sing it back, called “lining out.” One of the most popular lined-out hymns during the movement was the old hymn, “A Charge to Keep Have I.”
Listen to “A Charge to Keep” by Betty Simmons. 8. “Up Above My Head, I Hear Freedom in the Air” This old spiritual became a favorite in the great singing protests of Albany, Georgia, and quickly spread throughout the South.
Listen to “Up Above My Head, I Hear Freedom in the Air” by Sister Rosetta Tharpe. 7. “If I Can Help Somebody” Not all freedom songs were defiant in tone. Some provided comfort in difficult times. Some helped encourage those in despair. This is one of those songs.
Listen to “If I Can Help Somebody” by Dorothy Love Coates and the Gospel Harmonettes from the LP, Till My Changes Come. 6. “Freedom Highway” Some original songs were composed during the movement that were not only quickly adopted by the civil rights activists, they’ve remained in the repertoire of freedom fighters everywhere. One such song is “Freedom Highway” by the Staple Singers who themselves marched many miles with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Listen to “Freedom Highway” by the Staple Singers.  5. “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize”/“Hold On” There are dozens of variations of this civil rights-era favorite. Most include the couplet about Paul and Silas in jail, but all were sung to bolster spirits in tough times.
Listen to “Keep Your Hands on the Plow” by The Famous Ward Singers from the LP on Vista Records. 4. “This Little Light of Mine” Fannie Lou Hamer made this old children’s song one of the most popular and righteous of the freedom songs. It was easily adaptable to every situation and good for naming the names of your oppressors.
Listen to “The Little Light of Mine” by the Ward Singers. 3. “99 ½ Won’t Do” “99 ½ Won’t Do” was one of the most powerful songs to come out of the Birmingham freedom movement, sung by choirs and soloists alike, and it has since become a staple for many gospel singers, along with “I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord.”
Listen to “99 ½ Won’t Do” by the Greater Sabathani Baptist Church Mass Choir. 2. “Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around” This freedom song has been sung repeatedly during the George Floyd protests – and has been sung for a hundred years or more. It lends itself well to a tone of defiance against great odds and was another freedom song that was infinitely adaptable to the situation.
Listen to “Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around” by the Five Trumpets. 1. “We Shall Overcome” Few songs can match the majesty and soulful power of “We Shall Overcome,” always sung standing, with arms crossed clasping the hands of those on either side. It is at its most powerful -- then and now -- when the lines “black and white together” are included.
Listen to “We Shall Overcome” from the 45 by Alice McClarty and the Traveling Echoes. ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 18,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 90 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions.



Black Gospel Music Expert Shares 10 of the Most Powerful, Enduring Freedom Songs, Protest Spirituals


preacher-archives-add-new-element-to-baylor-universitys-black-gospel-music-restoration-project

The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University is preserving more than just gospel music.

In the past few years, Baylor journalism professor and former Billboard gospel music editor Robert Dardenand a team from the Baylor Libraries have undertaken the project of restoring and preserving recorded sermons from black preachers in addition to the gospel music. While both are equally important to preserve, finding sermons to preserve comes with a unique set of challenges.

Darden said the idea for preserving sermons started about four years ago, when the BGMRP team was in contact with the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Marvin Griffin, former pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Waco. Griffin was a renowned Civil Rights leader in Central Texas and boasts a list of significant firsts, including first black man to earn a degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and first African-American president of the Austin Independent School District board of directors. Darden said somebody mentioned in passing that they kept Griffin’s sermons and said he ought to hear them because they are full of music.

“All black preachers sing, and all black singers preach,” Darden said. “That got me thinking – nobody has been collecting the black preaching from the Civil Rights movement, other than Dr. King. All these incredible heroes who were preaching around the rest of the country, there’s not a collection of their work. So, I met with the other folks in the Black Gospel project, and we agreed that in addition to the music, we ought to be trying to collect preaching.”

Many of these sermons had been recorded on vinyl, and Darden said some have even speculated that it was black preaching that started black gospel music in the 1930s. He said some records that were just a black preacher preaching for two and a half minutes on each side sold half a million copies – even during the Great Depression.

Digitizing sermons from different formats When the BGMRP was founded in the Baylor Libraries in 2005, the bulk of incoming materials focused on recorded gospel music. Over the ensuing decade, the BGMRP team realized they already had hundreds of vinyl LPs from famous preachers in their collection. Shortly after, they started receiving sermons in many different formats. Darryl Stuhr, associate director of the Libraries’ digital preservation services, consulted with Darden and together they decided they needed a collection to show to preachers and their families who were not familiar with the projects, in hopes of convincing them to trust the project with their sermons long enough to digitize them.

Darden worked with two in particular – the Rev. E.E. Jones in Shreveport, Louisiana, and the Rev. Clay Evans in Chicago, who is still preaching at 93-years-old.

“Evans) was one of only two preachers who helped Dr. King in Chicago during those really rough times, and they had collected video cassettes of him back into the ‘70s,” Darden said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is they kept them in unairconditioned or unheated warehouses.”

Darden said the BGMRP spent lots of money getting these cassettes stabilized enough to play them even just one time so they could be digitized. Using technology at the Libraries’ Riley Digitization Center, audiovisual digitization staffers Stephen Bolech, Travis Taylor and Hannah Engstrom are able to rescue the recorded sermons from other formats as well, including videocassette, film and digital audio tape. The wide range of formats the BGMRP team can work with means a greater number of sermons can be saved, Stuhr said.

“They’re not all in the best condition, but they’re just thrilling because (Evans’ church) is one of the largest historic African-American churches in just full 1970s regalia. We got (Jones and Evans) and we’ve been using those to approach other preachers and their families now. This is already the largest collection in the country, and we just started,” Darden said.

Recently, Darden got a call from PBS. Dr. Henry Louis Gates of the TV series “Finding Your Roots,” whom Darden quotes in his books, will have a new six-part series on the history of African-American churches in America debuting in 2020. Darden said they contacted him about providing materials for the show and contacts of people. The BGMRP already has made hundreds of copies for PBS and is communicating about how they can help.

“I’m hoping they’re going to come down and do some filming here as well, because a lot of the stuff we have is old bulletins and the sheet music – we just have everything. Sure, we can digitize it, but if they came down, they could array it in such a way from an artistic standpoint,” Darden said.

Search continues Darden got together with some of the “preaching folks” at Baylor and put together a top 10 wish list of influential black preachers of the past 50 years whose sermons they would like to digitize.

“I just think God put me in a place where I could facilitate, rather than me initiate, and it was God’s idea apparently, because it wouldn’t have worked this well otherwise,” Darden said.

Darden said new vinyls continue to come in every few days, and it is like Christmas for him to go see what is new.

“I don’t mind not knowing every artist or every preacher – there’s hundreds and thousands of them,” he said. “But what scares me is when I pull a piece of vinyl out and it’s a label that I don’t know, which means there’s another whole line of that label that we’ve never heard of. So here we’re sitting 15 or so years into this project, and I don’t know if we have 1 percent of what’s out there – 10 percent? There’s no database. Nobody knows.”

“It’s unlike every other kind of music. Nobody ever made a discography of gospel music,” Darden said. “So, whether we mean to or not, we’re actually putting that together as well. Trying to figure out how many Andraé Crouch albums, how many James Cleveland, how many Rosetta Tharpe, and now with preaching, it could go on forever. It’ll be going, hopefully, long after I’m gone.”

For more information or to learn how to donate materials, visit the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at www.baylor.edu/library/gospel or email digitalcollectionsinfo@baylor.edu. 

Preacher Archives Add New Element to Baylor University’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project

the-heaven-11-gospel-music-expert-lists-11-most-influential-black-gospel-songs

June is African American Music Appreciation Month Photo by Robert Rogers, Baylor Marketing & Communications Baylor Professor Robert Darden attends Baylor University's 2019 Pruit Symposium, "Lord, Make Me An Instrument: Black Sacred Music at the Intersection of Gospel and Jazz."  WACO, Texas (May 31, 2019) – Robert F. Darden, professor of journalism, public relations and new media at Baylor University and a former gospel music editor for 
Billboard Magazine, is leading a national movement to preserve the fast-disappearing legacy of African American sacred music on vinyl.

To celebrate African American Music Appreciation Month in June, Darden, who is founder and director of Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, compiled the “Heaven 11” – a list of the 11 most influential black gospel songs.

“There is no way to quantify the ‘greatest’ gospel song of all time, but certain songs have been more influential than others through the years,” said Darden, who selected songs from the 1940s through the 1980s.
  (Listen to the “Heaven 11” on this Spotify playlist, created by Baylor Proud.) The list includes Darden’s comments about each selection:
  1. “Move on Up (A Little Higher)” “The Queen of Gospel Mahalia Jackson’s first big hit, and one of the best-selling gospel songs of all time. It was also understood to be an early ‘Freedom Song’ in the African-American community.”
  2. “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” “Perhaps the best-known, most beloved of all gospel songs. Written by Thomas Dorsey after the loss of his wife and infant child, it is still sung today at virtually every African-American funeral service in the country.”
  3. “Oh Happy Day” “This song by Edwin Hawkins was the first gospel song to be a hit single in the 1960s, and had a revolutionary combination of gospel choir, stirring chorus and a thoroughly modern beat.”
  4. “The Reason Why We Sing” “Kirk Franklin did to the ‘80s and ‘90s what Hawkins did to the ‘60s and Andrae Crouch did to the ‘70s, combined straight-ahead gospel with the beat of the day, while paying tribute to the old gospel classic, ‘His Eye is on the Sparrow.’”
  5. “People Get Ready” “This tune by Curtis Mayfield is not really a gospel song, but it was so compelling that it was adopted by both the Civil Rights Movement and the African-American church. There are a number of great versions, including the Chambers Brothers, the Blind Boys of Alabama and even Rod Stewart.”
  6. “We Shall Overcome” “This is the ‘signature’ song of the Civil Rights Movement, an adaptation of an old gospel tune that has been honed by the fire and blood of a thousand movement events and is still sung by oppressed people around the world.”

7. “Peace Be Still” “This song by the Rev. James Cleveland and the Angelic Choir of the First Baptist Church of Nutley, New Jersey, is the song and the arrangement that made young black people want to join mass choirs and sing. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, ‘Peace Be Still’ was the gospel anthem that the black church turned to.”
  8. “Through It All” “Andrae Crouch and the Disciples forever changed gospel music, opening it up lyrically and musically. He was also a brilliant composer – you could just as easily substitute “My Tribute,” “The Blood,” “Soon and Very Soon” and any one of several other enduring classics here.”
  9. “Touch the Hem of His Garment” “This song by the Soul Stirrers, featuring Sam Cooke, helped invent the hard-charging gospel quartet sound. The popularity of this song helped convince Cooke, the writer and featured singer, to launch a mainstream performing career.”
  10. “Mary, Don’t You Weep” “The great old spirituals often make great gospel songs. This is one by the Caravans, featuring Inez Andrews, and is one of my personal favorites.”
  11. The next great gospel song “We haven't heard it yet. Few people still alive even know of its existence. But it could be in the next batch of long-lost gospel classics by a hitherto unknown gospel artist donated to the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project.”

Search-and-rescue mission to preserve black gospel music Darden founded Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP) more than a decade ago in a search-and-rescue effort to identify, acquire, preserve, digitize and catalog recordings from the black gospel music tradition. This music, from the Golden Age of Gospel from 1945 to 1975, was quickly vanishing as albums made the transition to CDs.

“Thousands of at-risk songs have been saved for future generations,” Darden said. “These recordings are priceless, irreplaceable and historic in a way that scholars are only now realizing.”

Through the work of the Baylor Libraries’ Digital Projects Group, recordings from the BGMRP are available online in the Baylor Libraries Digital Collection, and in some cases includes other materials, such as taped interviews, photographs, press packets, tour books and programs, newspaper and magazine clippings and sheet music.

Music from the BGMRP also has been included in a permanent exhibit featuring African-American musical history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016 in Washington, D.C. The interactive exhibit, “Musical Crossroads,” has featured these key recordings from the BGMRP:

·        “The Old Ship of Zion” by The Mighty Wonders of Aquasco, Maryland (1972)
·        “Amen” by Wings over Jordan (1953)
·        “I Won’t Be Back” by The Caravans (1962)
·        “Over My Head” by Wings Over Jordan (1953)
·        “There’s a Tree on Each Side of the River” by The Davis Sisters (1957)

Visit Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project website to learn more and to listen to the collection of digitized recordings.

ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 17,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 90 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions.


The ‘Heaven 11’: Gospel Music Expert Lists 11 Most Influential Black Gospel Songs

A clip from the documentary "A Life's Work." (For more about the film visit http://alifesworkmovie.com/blog/) In this segment Robert Darden, a journalism professor at Baylor University, talks about why he began the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, an organization dedicated to finding, restoring, preserving and archive the most at-risk gospel recordings.

Looking for Rare Gospel Vinyl

Baylor Professor Robert Darden co-founded the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, the world's largest initiative to identify, acquire, catalogue, preserve, and make accessible gospel music's fast-vanishing vinyl legacy. With nearly 8,500 “sides” digitized to date, the collection will be featured in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Darden will discuss the history of gospel music and play samples for Black History Month.

Robert Darden is an associate professor at Baylor University. He is the author of two dozen books and numerous articles. His most recent work, Nothing But Love in God's Water, was released in October 2014.

Nothing but Love in God's Water: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement

Why does gospel music matter to the larger culture today? How did the roots of the music influence the future of the form, and what lessons can we learn from the artist's of the past and present? Join Prof. Robert Darden and gospel scholar Robert Marovich as they explore the question, "Why Gospel Music Matters," a lecture delivered as part of the opening celebration of the Black Gospel Archive & Listening Center at Baylor University.

More info on the BGA at www.baylor.edu/library/bga

Why Gospel Music Matters with Robert Darden and Robert Marovich. November 12, 2021

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