Watershed albums…an interactive exercise
For the idea behind this post, I want to give thanks and credit to Wes Burke, whose Burke's Brainwork is one of the more fun gospel music blogs to read.
Recently Wes posted on the old Gold City album "Pillars of Faith", a much-acclaimed recording that erased forever any doubts as to whether the Alabama-based quartet was the top quartet at that time in gospel music. It was an excellent album with many of the group's most well-remembered songs, including "One More Time Will Do It", "Beneath This Armor", "If God Be For Us", and their Easter season classic, "There Rose A Lamb".
A great album indeed...but Wes got a little carried away in his praise of it, IMHO. He described it as the "Sgt. Pepper" or "Pet Sounds" of gospel music, after the Beatles' and Beach Boys' mid 60s rock classics respectively.
I confess...I'm old enough to remember the impact those two classic albums had on the pop music world. So influential were they that subsequent rock albums were never the same as before. Instead of 10-12 songs thrown together on an album, albums became the main creative concentrations of rock artists...the era of the big top 40 single had ended.
Sure, there were still huge singles. But what pop music fans looked forward to from their favorite artist was no longer their big single, but their new album. The popular and critical acclaim both those albums received changed the world of rock music forever. Even today, fans still draw lines in both the Beatles' and Beach Boys" careers, denoting their "pre" and "post" Pepper and Pet Sounds eras.
Was "Pillars" the same kind of album? Not really. It didn't really change how gospel albums were marketed or made. "Pillars" was not new musical ground for Gold City...if anything, it was a culmination of everything the quartet had been heading towards for the decade since they became a headline gospel quartet.
That's not to take anything away from "Pillars"...it was a great album. But a "Sgt. Pepper" or a "Pet Sounds" it was not, at least by the criteria I used.
So what gospel albums would be that kind of classic, I wondered? Hence this post.
Everyone has his or her own idea of what would make a "Pepper"-type album in gospel music. I do, you do, and so do your gospel-loving friends.
So, since there are no right or wrong answers really in this kind of exercise, I'd like you to help me come to a consensus as to which gospel albums in the southern genre's history would be a "Sgt. Pepper" or a "Pet Sounds" type of defining album.
Suggested criteria(you can add some of your own)...
1) Was it popular? Do most fans know of it?
2)Did it change gospel music? Surely a "Pepper" type album would be hugely influential on the genre, to the point of other artists trying to emulate it(or it's impact).
3)Can you draw a line in the artist's career from it? As in "before" that album, and "after" that album?
4)Did it forever change that artist's career?
You get the idea. I have candidates in my head already, but I want to know what yours are(maybe you have better ones than I do)...then, sometime next week, I'll tally it all up(and so some thinking on it myself)and post a list of possible "Sgt. Pepper" or "Pet Sounds" gospel albums.
I'm looking forward to your input on all of this.
Posted on May 08, 2008 - 08:47 PM | [12]
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Happy Birthday to you as well, John. I hope it was a good one. You deserve it.