A most fitting tribute

The name of Don Baldwin has been discussed here often of late.

And now there is a place on the Web where the founder, manager, and erstwhile baritone singer for the Couriers Quartet is being celebrated for the wonderful life and legacy he left us all.

Don's widow, Cheri Baldwin, has put together a collection of articles, photos, and a slideshow to honor the memory of her late husband, who left this world to be with the Lord a couple of Saturdays ago.

The pictures alone are a treasure...Don is seen at various times with the Couriers, family, friends, and some other gospel music legends...as well as in various stages of relaxation, just being himself. There is also the lovely 1977 wedding picture of Don and Cheri.

Oh, yes, and a link to an article about Don written by some piker who never even knew him personally.

If you'd like to get a good, up close, personal look at the life of a true gospel music pioneer, check out this site...it's at http://www.donbaldwinmemorial.com.

Good job, Cheri.

Jealousy: a gospel tradition?

Finally, time to follow up on my previous entry.

These are the thoughts I had that I couldn't post in my last entry because it would have taken my commentary too far afield...I wanted to reflect on the idea that pettiness and jealousy didn't suddenly come to gospel music in the early 1970s with the success of the Imperials and the Oak Ridge Boys. It has been a pervasive part of the genre since its earliest days.

Of course, it's almost a given that any endeavor involving human beings will naturally have some pettiness and jealousy inbred...after all, it's part of human nature.

In the case of gospel music, though, that unfortunate trait existed fairly extensively for most of the first four decades of professional gospel singing...once it became a business where several artists attempted to make a living from it. the gauntlet was thrown!

In the earliest days of professional gospel music, quartets were formed to advertise for music publishers. And since times were hard in the period during and right after the Depression, and since the Southern United States(where most gospel music was originated and performed)was slower to reach affluence than the rest of the country, it behooved any artist wishing to achieve a measure of success and distinction from other artists to outperform any of its rivals. This reality brought a spirit of competition to the fledgling industry.

Which was not all bad...competition forced the various quartets to attain their highest possible level of competence and professionalism, and motivated them to achieve their best, in order to reach that seemingly elusive level of success they were trying to attain. It was that healthy competition that spurred the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen to their positions of preeminence in gospel music in the 1950s...and in later years, it would do the same for the Oak Ridge Boys, the Imperials, and the Stamps, all of whom were rivals in the late 1960s and 1970s.

But in the 1930s and 1940s, sometimes the competition got a little intense...and competing quartets thought nothing of such stunts as unplugging their rivals' sound systems or microphones, stealing their rivals' repertoire and arrangements, and overall sabotaging their rivals' performances, rationalizing such puerile behavior with the idea that if they didn't do it first, their rivals would do it to them unhesitatingly.. Whether that was correct or not, the annals of gospel music are rife with such stories, and that behavior undoubtedly kept the genre's popularity from spreading too far beyond the groups' local followings.

All that began to change with the advent of radio and records, two media that could go where the artists couldn't readily go themselves. Because those media helped circumvent the hi-jinks that was such a part of concerts, groups began to resign themselves just to improving their presentations, and the success of groups like the aforementioned Blackwoods and Statesmen, and those groups' subsequent joining forces as a team, tended to draw the lines in the genre between the "haves" and the "have nots".

But the spirit of competitiveness had not gone away by a long shot. It still was most important to many artists to outsell, outsing, outpromote, and generally outdo the rest of their peers. The objective superiority of the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen enabled them, as a "team", to essentially control the industry in the 1950s well into the 1960s.

What changed it? For one, the rise of gospel music on television helped other groups to put dents in the popularity of the team, and as they grew stronger, the "team"'s hegemony began to fade. Other changes in the Blackwoods and Statesmen reduced those once-mighty groups to the level of their rivals, and the playing field for gospel music began to level significantly.

Another factor was the initial success of the contemporary music movement in gospel music. Based as much of it was on more spiritual criteria(or so it seemed to many), it tended to usher in a sort of conscience into the gospel music industry that was largely invisible or dormant in previous years.

Along with that, the success of groups like the Couriers forced singers to reexamine their reasons for singing gospel music. With their pioneering evangelical approach to their singing, emphasizing the message of the music along with the music, audiences perceived a distinctiveness in them that set them apart from other groups. (The Couriers encountered some jealousy from their peers for years because of THIS)

Gradually, the influence of groups like the Couriers and the contemporary music all around it caused the gospel industry to realize that the age of rivalry and ultra-competitiveness was passe and outdated, and attitudes began to change. And they have tended to remain relatively congenial and collegial to this day(with some occasional exceptions, of course).

Look, I know it looks like I want to give the Couriers credit for virtually every step forward in the gospel music industry. And while they have done much, honestly, they haven't done everything. But I am led sometimes to counterbalance the appalling lack of recognition given the Couriers by too many so-called "experts" in the gospel field at large.

Most who know the real history of gospel music know that the Couriers have contributed a great deal not only musically, but image-wise as well, and have given gospel music a level of integrity and excellence it wouldn't otherwise have had if not for them. And if the only thing I ever do for the cause of gospel music is to wake people up and recognize the Couriers for their true contributions to the genre, then I'll feel I have done SOMETHING for the appreciation of gospel music.

Anyway, the point of this too-long essay is...as long as there are human beings involved in the making of gospel music, there will always be a certain amount of jealousy and resentment...just as there is in churches, gospel music webistes and message boards, and every other walk of life inhabited by people! We shouild never be surprised when encountering this.

Thanks, Daniel! Some (relatively)clear thoughts…

Well, I have something to say today!

And it was inspired by the comment my friend Daniel Mount left on my last entry here.

On his own very fine blog, Daniel posted a quote from Duane Allen(longtime lead singer of the Oak Ridge Boys)sharing HIS(Allen's)thoughts about the success of Ernie Haase and his Signature Sound Quartet. Allen compared SSQ's situation to the one the Oaks encountered in the early 1970s, when they took the gospel music industry by storm and won nearly every award in sight.

It is a good comparison, and in his statement, Allen cites the rampant jealousy that some of the artists of that day(the early 1970s)had for the Oak Ridge Boys. You see, the Oaks were known as industry trendsetters, along with the Imperials in those days. The consensus at the time was that one of the two groups would eventually leave gospel and go on to secular success...their look and sound was that far beyond what most of the rest of the industry had to offer.

And of course, the Oaks, after a rocky transitional period, became one of country music's most popular vocal groups of the last part of the 20th century. They recorded hit after hit, peaking with "Elvira" in 1981, which was not only a #1 country hit, but a top five pop hit as well.

The Imperials? Well, for a while in the early 1970s, they, too, flirted with pop music, particularly in the 1971 album "Time To Get It Together"(Impact 3082) and their eponymous 1972 album(Impact 3165). They also aroused some backbiting from their gospel peers by appearing in concert as backup singers to secular hitmakers Jimmy Dean and Elvis Presley. There was real concern at that time in gospel music that the Imperials would be the first to bolt gospel for the pop world.

Instead, the group made the transition from the gospel quartet field into the then-new contemporary Christian music field. By 1976, the Imperials had sold their bus, and had made the complete stylistic change from quartet gospel to CCM(a term I don't like, but I'll use it here as a summary abbreviation for the pop gospel the Imperials had begun recording).

The southern gospel field continued to keep a hold on the Imperials as one of "theirs" long after the change was complete, finally letting go by the 1990s after there was no doubt they weren't "your father's Imperials" any more.
The group was still committed to Christian music and witness, but it clearly didn't want to be a part of the same portion of the industry that sniped at them for years for the length of their hair, the clothes they wore on stage, and the way they presented their music.

Which were the same types of criticisms the Oak Ridge Boys had to endure, even when they were clearly the most acclaimed group in the gospel industry. Now the Oaks stylistically never wavered that far from the traditional gospel sound(except for eschewing a lot of the older Stamps-Baxter type standbys many of the other quartets continued to perform in favor of newer songs), but their appearance(longer hair, more casual fashions)tended to alarm the traditional fans of gospel quartet music.

And not only were the fans talking, but some of the other, more traditionally oriented artists of the day. Some of them began to make public comments in print and on the stage about the Oaks, such that by 1975, their formally booked concert dates from the existing gospel industry had declined from 275 in 1974 down to 3.

Thus, the Oaks concluded that they weren't welcome any longer in their musical "home town", and began making their move to segue to country music, which they did completely by 1977.

See a pattern here?

SSQ is now enduring to a certain extent the same kind of petty criticism that the Oaks and Imperials did thirty years ago. But even more so than those groups, SSQ is NOT involved in a musical rebellion against traditional southern gospel music. Their style is about as straightforward, four-part quartet style as gospel groups can be these days, and outside of their appearance(that loaded buzzword again), there is nothing about SSQ that would indicate that they have any intentions of forsaking gospel for another genre of music. Leader Ernie Haase is as committed to quartet music as can be...in the footsteps of his legendary father-in-law, popular Cathedral Quartet bass George Younce.

Where is the difference? Allen alluded to it, but my feeling is that Bill Gaither is the main reason that SSQ will remain committed to gospel music. The huge popularity of Gaither and his Homecoming concert tours ensures that talented gospel singers will always have a place to ply their trade, and resist temptations to go elsewhere to express their musical abilities. Arguably, had the Gaither phenomenon(or something like it)existed in the early 1970s, it's possible that the Oaks and Imperials would never have abandoned the southern gospel field for other opportunities. Likely they would have found a congenial, fraternal atmosphere among their peers, and would have been given the respect they both deserved for contributing to the larger gospel tradition, while showing that they could make contributions of their own toward advancing that tradition.

I have further reflections on the historical tradition of jealousy in gospel music toward the success of other artists, but they would take me too far afield for this essay, so I'll share those later. Suffice to say for now, Daniel Mount's citing of Duane Allen's observations provides a fertile field of discussion for gospel music fans of today, and yesterday...and I thank him for stirring me out of my cyber-slumber and influencing me to cite my own observations on the subject.

Where to resume?

I realize it's been a while since I've posted anything...not to worry, I've just been thinking!

Most of this week I've spent reading and working...and there have been a lot of issues to mull over of late.

I did read the new Singing News, and the article about the southern gospel blogosphere, written by the one most responsible for their being so many gospel music oriented blogs in the past couple of years. I was in general agreement with his basic observations, as well as his recommendations as to where to go to find good examples of the better gospel blogs going today.

I also read that same blogger's observations on the state of the gospel music industry today, and of the apparent determination of one artist in particular to obtain recognition...I was alarmed my what I read, and I am still in the process of formulating my own thoughts on the situation.

Some may say this is unusual for me to be so reserved on a matter of this nature...perhaps noting my tendency in the past to comment reflexively on stories that attract attention. I am really trying to weigh all the facts in evidence before simply posting a reaction here. Hence, I will make no comments on these stories until my thoughts are clearer and more defined.

The same is true for a commentary by my friend Daniel Mount on Duane Allen's observations on Ernie Haase and Signature Sound. Some interesting lines of thought are developed by Daniel there, and they deserve attention. When I'm able to express my own thoughts on that post, I will. But I'm trying to do a better job of making my own observations, by thinking things through thouroughly before posting.

Not all my thoughts center on the world of gospel music. All week long(especially today), I was inundated with the sickening, tasteless media spectacle that is the seemingly never-ending coverage of the circumstances surrounding the funeral for Anna Nicole Smith. Such garish treatment of the death of a human being rightly should be held up to ridicule and scorn.

Needless to say, that and other media train wrecks did nothing to boost my spirits or to clarify my thoughts on gospel music issues. If anything, I have to say that I'm thankful that I get to write about gospel music as opposed to events in the "drive-by" new media,.to appropriate Rush Limbaugh.

So for those who were hoping for some fresh thoughts from this inquiring mind, forgive me for not being more forthcoming. My mind has been busy of late, and still needs to fine tune my thoughts further to make them acceptable for posting here.

Until that time then, I will lie low...and prosper(I hope).

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