99 Fun Facts About Gospel Music

Which soul star became pastor of his own Memphis church in 1976 and later sang only gospel for years?

Al Green fell from a stage in Cincinnati in 1979 and took it as God telling him to hurry up. He left soul hits behind for the pulpit of his Full Gospel Tabernacle and a run of gospel albums.

Thomas A. Dorsey wrote 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' after which personal tragedy?

His wife and infant son died within days of each other, Nettie in childbirth. The loss closed his blues career: his hokum recordings stopped that year, and gospel had him for good.

Before turning to gospel, Thomas A. Dorsey toured as pianist for which blues singer?

Ma Rainey made him leader of her Wild Cats Jazz Band. As 'Georgia Tom' he then cut racy hokum blues such as 'It's Tight Like That' with Tampa Red, years before he became gospel's best-known songwriter.

Thomas A. Dorsey led the music at Pilgrim Baptist Church for half a century in which city?

Chicago was his base, and his songs travelled far beyond it. They spread through Black churches so quickly that people took to calling any gospel song sheet 'a Dorsey'.

Mahalia Jackson sang 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' at whose funeral in 1968?

Martin Luther King Jr. had made the song his last request. Moments before he was shot, he asked bandleader Ben Branch to play it at that night's meeting.

Which 1947 recording sold in the millions and made Mahalia Jackson a national star?

Move On Up a Little Higher changed her standing overnight. The National Baptist Convention made her its official soloist, and she was soon touring the whole country.

Mahalia Jackson was born and raised in poverty in which city?

New Orleans was home until she went north at 16, hoping to train as a nurse. She ended up working as a laundress instead, and sang in storefront churches.

Mahalia Jackson adapted the style of which blues singer, her childhood favourite, to hymns?

Bessie Smith's records were her private passion in a family that disapproved of the blues. Yet Jackson herself turned down lucrative offers to sing in nightclubs and kept to gospel.

Mahalia Jackson left the small Apollo label in 1954 for which major record company?

Columbia Records carried her beyond the church circuit. Her first single there, 'Rusty Old Halo', made her a crossover name, and within a few years she was singing at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Which song did Mahalia Jackson sing at the 1963 March on Washington?

I've Been 'Buked and I've Been Scorned came shortly before the day's best-known speech. Jackson is said to have then called out 'Tell 'em about the dream!', and the speaker left his prepared text.

Which guitar-playing gospel star of the 1930s and 40s is known as 'the Godmother of Rock and Roll'?

Sister Rosetta Tharpe turned her 1951 wedding into a show. More than 20,000 paying fans filled a Washington baseball stadium to watch the vows, and she followed them with a concert.

Which English clergyman and former slave-ship sailor published 'Amazing Grace' in 1779?

John Newton did not leave the slave trade when a storm at sea began his conversion in 1748: he stayed in it for six more years. Decades later he joined William Wilberforce's campaign to abolish it.

Choctaw freedman Wallace Willis is credited with which spiritual?

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot reached the world through a minister, Alexander Reid, who heard Willis sing it at a Choctaw boys' school. Years later he passed it on to the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers, who took spirituals to concert halls, were students in which city?

Nashville's Fisk University was deep in debt when its student singers set out on tour in 1871. Their earnings kept the school open and paid for Jubilee Hall, which still stands on campus.

Which hymn did Horatio Spafford write in 1873 after his four daughters drowned in an Atlantic shipwreck?

It Is Well with My Soul was written at sea, near the spot where the liner went down. Gospel-song composer Philip Bliss set the words to music and named his tune 'Ville du Havre' after the lost ship.

Which blind 'Queen of Gospel Song Writers' wrote thousands of hymns including 'Blessed Assurance'?

Fanny Crosby wrote so many that her publishers hid her behind scores of pen names. They did not want their hymnals to look like the work of one woman.

Ira D. Sankey was the singing partner of which revivalist preacher from 1870 until 1899?

Dwight L. Moody heard him sing at a convention in 1870 and signed him up. Their British tour of 1873 to 1875 drew such crowds that the pair came home famous.

A hymn by Philadelphia minister Charles Albert Tindley is said to underlie which civil rights anthem?

We Shall Overcome is usually traced to Tindley's 'I'll Overcome Some Day', though its origins are unclear. Striking tobacco workers in Charleston sang a version on the picket line in 1945.

Sam Cooke was lead singer of which gospel quartet before going secular in 1956?

The Soul Stirrers had fans who might be offended, his label feared, so his first pop single, 'Lovable', came out in 1956 under the name Dale Cook. His voice gave him away at once.

The Blind Boys of Alabama sang the first-season theme of which HBO drama?

The Wire gave its theme to a different act each season, and the Blind Boys came first. The group began in 1939 as schoolboys sneaking off the campus of a school for the blind in Talladega to sing for soldiers.

The Blind Boys of Alabama broke into the mainstream via which 1983 Obie-winning stage musical?

The Gospel at Colonus retold a Greek tragedy as a Pentecostal church service. Morgan Freeman played the Messenger, and the Blind Boys together sang the part of the blinded king.

At which venue did the Golden Gate Quartet sing in John Hammond's From Spirituals to Swing series?

Carnegie Hall hosted both concerts. Hammond staged them as a history of Black music, running from spirituals like the quartet's up to the Count Basie band's swing.

Which 'King of Gospel' founded the Gospel Music Workshop of America and was an early mentor to Aretha Franklin?

James Cleveland was a regular guest in the Franklin house when Aretha was a girl and helped shape her early gospel singing. In 1972 he came back to lead the choir on her live album Amazing Grace.

Aretha Franklin's live gospel album Amazing Grace was recorded in 1972 at a Baptist church in which city?

Los Angeles was also where director Sydney Pollack filmed both nights, without clapperboards. The sound could not be matched to the pictures for nearly 40 years, and the film came out only in 2018.

As a girl, Aretha Franklin sang her first solos at New Bethel Baptist Church, her father's pulpit in which city?

Detroit was where C. L. Franklin preached. From the age of 12 she toured with his travelling gospel show, and her first recordings were made in his church when she was 14.

Elvis Presley's only three competitive Grammy wins were for gospel recordings, the first for which 1967 album?

How Great Thou Art won first, He Touched Me followed, and a live take of the title hymn brought the third. As a teenager in Memphis he had been a regular at the city's all-night gospel sings.

Which gospel song did Elvis sing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957?

Peace in the Valley closed his third and last appearance, and Sullivan then told the country he was 'a real decent, fine boy'. Red Foley had made the song a million-seller in 1951.

Which 1969 Edwin Hawkins Singers hit reworked an 18th-century English hymn?

Oh Happy Day began as one track on a church youth choir's own LP. A San Francisco underground radio station started playing it, and it crossed to the pop charts around the world.

George Harrison said the Edwin Hawkins Singers' 1969 gospel hit inspired which song of his?

My Sweet Lord was written with the Hawkins record in mind, by his own account. A court still ruled in 1976 that he had subconsciously copied the Chiffons' 'He's So Fine'.

Andraé Crouch's choir sang on which Michael Jackson hit?

Man in the Mirror was one call of many: Crouch was the man pop stars rang when they wanted a gospel choir. Madonna signed up his singers for 'Like a Prayer' soon afterwards.

Andraé Crouch shared an Oscar nomination for the music of which film?

The Color Purple had Quincy Jones as both producer and composer, so he handed much of the scoring to eleven other musicians. The Oscar nomination named all twelve, Crouch among them.

Which Detroit choral director was the mother of the five-sister act behind 'You Brought the Sunshine'?

Mattie Moss Clark wrote and arranged what her daughters sang as children, then shaped the five of them into the Clark Sisters. Her three-part choir arrangements were copied by gospel choirs for decades.

Kirk Franklin's 1997 hit 'Stomp' featured a remix guest verse by a member of which rap group?

Salt-N-Pepa's Cheryl 'Salt' James rapped over a sample of Funkadelic's 'One Nation Under a Groove'. The mix put a gospel video into heavy rotation on MTV.

Kirk Franklin grew up in which Texas city?

Fort Worth was home, with the aunt who raised him. She collected cans for recycling to pay for the piano lessons he started at the age of four.

BeBe and CeCe Winans first sang as a duo on which Christian TV show?

The PTL Club, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's show, had the brother and sister among its singers. Their duets there, and the album Lord Lift Us Up that came out of them, carried the pair to a national Christian audience.

Which Houston-born former schoolteacher scored an R&B hit in 2000 with the gospel ballad 'Open My Heart'?

Yolanda Adams taught elementary school in Houston and hoped to become a fashion model, with singing as a sideline. 'Open My Heart' later won her a Soul Train award for best R&B single.

Which former Caravans singer is often called the 'First Lady of Gospel'?

Shirley Caesar was a 19-year-old college student when she asked the Caravans for an audition. They hired her at once, and she left school to tour with them.

Which a cappella gospel group began in 1980 as a student quartet at Alabama's Oakwood College?

Take 6 began to grow when a fellow student overheard the quartet rehearsing in a campus bathroom and joined in. The dormitory bathrooms, with their ringing walls, stayed their practice rooms.

Sisters Erica and Tina Campbell perform as which gospel duo?

Mary Mary is named for two women of the Bible, the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The sisters chose the pair to say that the message is for anyone, whatever their past.

Which 2007 song was Marvin Sapp's crossover hit?

Never Would Have Made It was tucked away near the end of the album Thirsty, and Sapp has said he expected nothing of it. It went on to lead the gospel airplay chart for 46 weeks.

Tasha Cobbs's biggest hit, from her 2013 major-label debut Grace, was which song?

Break Every Chain was not new when she sang it: Will Reagan and the United Pursuit Band had written and recorded it in 2009. Her live version made it a hit and won her first Grammy.

The Gospel Music Association named its annual awards, first presented in 1969, after which bird?

The dove stands for the bird that descends at the baptism of Jesus. The designer's first sketches of a descending dove became the statuette, and the same shape is still handed out today.

Southern gospel is often nicknamed 'quartet music' for what traditional line-up?

Four men and a piano began as a sales force. In 1910 the Tennessee publisher James D. Vaughan hired a male quartet to tour churches and singing schools and promote his songbooks.

Which of Pops Staples's children sang lead on the Staple Singers' 1972 chart-topper 'I'll Take You There'?

Mavis Staples was, in her own words, a skinny little girl with a big voice when the family act began. Bob Dylan was a fan from the first record of theirs he heard, and the group later recorded his songs.

Which Albert E. Brumley song, often called the most recorded gospel song, was sung in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?

I'll Fly Away came to Brumley while he was picking cotton on his family's Oklahoma farm. He worked on it for about three years before it appeared in a 1932 songbook.

Kirk Franklin hosted which BET gospel singing competition from its 2007 launch?

Sunday Best gives its winner a recording contract, a car and a cash prize. Le'Andria Johnson had just lost her home to foreclosure when she auditioned; she won the third season and, within two years, a Grammy.

Which Christian rapper's 2014 album Anomaly debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200?

Lecrae put Anomaly out on Reach Records, the label he co-founded in 2004 to release his own first album. Andy Mineo, Trip Lee and KB all went on to record for it.

Which American Idol winner sang the 2005 single 'Jesus, Take the Wheel'?

Carrie Underwood topped the country chart for six weeks with it, and it won two Grammys. She came back to sacred music in 2021 with a full gospel album, My Savior, which won another.

Which family act reworked the hymn 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken' into a country standard?

The Carter Family were found at the 1927 Bristol sessions, country music's so-called Big Bang. A. P. Carter travelled around south-west Virginia collecting old songs, then rearranged them for the trio.

Whitney Houston sang with the Georgia Mass Choir on which film soundtrack, the best-selling gospel album of all time?

The Preacher's Wife went on to sell six million copies worldwide. Houston and her producer taped its traditional numbers inside a Baptist church in Atlanta rather than in a studio.

Which future pop star, raised on gospel by pastor parents, saw her 2001 Christian debut album sell barely 200 copies?

Katy Perry released it under her real name, Katy Hudson, on a label that went bankrupt nine months later. Secular music had not been permitted in her childhood home.

Which rock and roll pioneer quit secular music in 1957 after taking a fireball over Sydney as a sign from God?

Little Richard was later told the fireball was Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. He enrolled to study theology, made gospel albums and was later ordained a minister.

Which singer reworked the Southern Tones' gospel number It Must Be Jesus into the R&B chart-topper I Got a Woman?

Ray Charles heard the original on the radio while on the road with his band in 1954. Setting its church drive to secular words gave him his first No. 1 on the R&B chart.

Which rock band hired the New Jersey Mass Choir to sing on its only Hot 100 chart-topper, a 1980s power ballad?

Foreigner used the choir on I Want to Know What Love Is, a No. 1 in both Britain and America. Soon afterwards the choir released a similar-sounding version of its own.

The word gospel, from the Old English godspel, translates the Greek euangelion and originally meant what?

Good news is the sense: godspel joined god, meaning good, to spel, meaning story or message. The vowel later shortened because people assumed the word began with God.

Karen Gibson's Kingdom Choir became world-famous by singing gospel at which British royal couple's Windsor wedding?

Harry and Meghan's 2018 ceremony brought the London choir a worldwide television audience after more than 20 years of performing. It was the groom's father who asked them to sing.

Paul Simon handed gospel singer Claude Jeter a check for inspiring the title of which hit song?

Bridge over Troubled Water grew from a line Jeter sang with the Swan Silvertones in 1959. Simon wrote it on guitar, then switched to a gospel keyboard part to suit Art Garfunkel's voice.

Which trumpeter's 1938 Decca recording turned the hymn When the Saints Go Marching In into a jazz standard?

Louis Armstrong's version entered the National Recording Registry in 2021. The hymn pictures the faithful entering heaven, which is why it is sometimes played at funerals.

Which rapper's album Jesus Is King was the first to top Billboard's main, rap, Christian and gospel charts at once?

Kanye West led five Billboard album charts in the same week with it in 2019. The record went on to win the Grammy for contemporary Christian music album.

Which pop superstar played Cuba Gooding Jr.'s childhood friend in the 2003 gospel choir comedy The Fighting Temptations?

Beyoncé helps his character revive a hometown church choir so it can enter a gospel contest. Reviewers faulted the screenplay but praised the music, above all her cover of Fever.

Which country legend starred opposite Queen Latifah in Joyful Noise, a 2012 film about a small-town church choir?

Dolly Parton and Latifah play two strong-minded women forced to cooperate when budget cuts threaten the choir. Critics liked the songs and acting more than the script.

Mahalia Jackson sang at the 1969 concerts nicknamed Black Woodstock, held in a park in which New York neighborhood?

Harlem's Mount Morris Park hosted the concerts on summer afternoons from June to August 1969. Questlove's film of the long-shelved footage won the documentary Oscar in 2022.

The Soweto Gospel Choir, a Grammy winner formed in 2002, comes from which African country?

South Africa's township choir sang at the first 46664 concert for Nelson Mandela. It blends African gospel with spirituals and performs in several of the country's languages.

Which fuzz-guitar hit about the afterlife did Norman Greenbaum write after watching Porter Wagoner sing gospel on TV?

Spirit in the Sky reached No. 1 in Britain, Australia and Canada in 1970. Greenbaum, who is Jewish, filled it with references to Jesus all the same.

Which hymn, first recited by 500 schoolchildren in 1900, did the NAACP promote as the Black national anthem?

Lift Every Voice and Sing began as a poem by a Jacksonville school principal, set to music by his brother. The city's pupils kept singing it and later taught it in schools of their own.

Which band rehearsed a 1987 hit in a New York Baptist church with the New Voices of Freedom gospel choir?

U2 heard the choir's demo of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For while on tour in 1987. The church rehearsal was filmed for Rattle and Hum before a joint Madison Square Garden show.

Which soul songwriter drew on his church upbringing for the gospel-flavoured train anthem People Get Ready?

Curtis Mayfield wrote it as his songs grew more socially and politically aware. It was the first Impressions hit to feature his own guitar playing in the instrumental passage.

The campfire spiritual Kumbaya is known to have been sung early on by which people of the Carolina Sea Islands?

The Gullah, descendants of enslaved Africans, sang it in their creole language as a plea meaning come by here. A folklorist caught a version on a wax cylinder in 1926.

Which folk-rock star won a Grammy for Gotta Serve Somebody, from his first album after converting to Christianity?

Bob Dylan opened his 1979 album Slow Train Coming with it. The evangelical record alienated many of his old fans while drawing Christians to him, and the single was his first hit in three years.

Which NASA probes launched in 1977 carry Blind Willie Johnson's gospel lament Dark Was the Night on a golden record?

Voyager 1 and 2 each carry 27 pieces of music picked to represent our planet. Johnson only hums and moans on his, playing slide guitar with a knife by most accounts.

In which film does Sidney Poitier's wandering handyman teach a group of nuns the gospel song Amen?

Lilies of the Field won Poitier the Oscar for leading actor, but the singing voice is not his. Arranger Jester Hairston dubbed the vocals because the star was tone-deaf.

The spiritual Dem Bones, a singalong list of connected skeleton parts, retells which Old Testament prophet's vision?

Ezekiel sees scattered dry bones join together and prophesies that they will be raised at God's command. The tune was composed by a pair of songwriting siblings named Johnson.

Harriet Tubman, who used spirituals as coded signals to escaping slaves, was nicknamed after which biblical leader?

Moses was what people called her for guiding the enslaved to freedom by night. Her songs warned fellow travelers of danger or signaled a clear path, and she said she never lost a passenger.

Which California rapper, introduced to gospel by his grandmother, topped Billboard's gospel chart with Bible of Love?

Snoop Dogg put it out on a label he founded to give up-and-coming gospel artists an opening. It fared far better there than on the main album chart, where it entered at No. 148.

Which pop singer won the Grammy for gospel album with Hiding Place, written largely by her mentor Kirk Franklin?

Tori Kelly grew up on gospel and recorded the album at his studio outside Dallas. He had never co-written a song with anyone before, and the project took home two Grammys in 2019.

PJ Morton, a bishop's son who released the album Gospel According to PJ, joined which pop rock band as keyboardist?

Maroon 5 hired him as a touring player in 2010 and made him an official member two years later. His father founded the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship.

Which celebrated poet wrote Black Nativity, a 1961 Off-Broadway show retelling the Christmas story through gospel song?

Langston Hughes set traditional carols in gospel style for an all-Black cast. A week before opening, dancer Alvin Ailey quit his role in protest at the show's new title.

Which gospel singer, Cora in the Madea films, spent 25 weeks atop gospel radio with Take Me to the King?

Tamela Mann's signature ballad was written for her by Kirk Franklin. It went double platinum, making it one of the highest-certified gospel songs in America.

Which electric keyboard, first sold to churches in 1935 in place of costly pipes, became a gospel and jazz fixture?

The Hammond organ made its sound with spinning metal tonewheels. Its inventor declined to buy the rotating Leslie speaker, which players went on to pair with it anyway.

Which 1959 Lana Turner melodrama gave Mahalia Jackson special billing for a single scene, singing at a funeral service?

Imitation of Life casts her as a church choir soloist who sings Trouble of the World at the funeral of Annie. She was credited with a presenting card for that one appearance.

Whose gospel-choir-filled mixtape Coloring Book was the first streaming-only album ever to win a Grammy?

Chance the Rapper put it out on Apple Music alone at first. Critics praised its fusion of hip hop and gospel, and it reached number eight on the Billboard 200 purely on streams.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers, touring to raise funds for their college, sang spirituals for which British monarch?

Victoria heard the eleven singers in April 1873. Proceeds from their European touring paid for Jubilee Hall, the university's first permanent building, which still stands.

Which Brooklyn pastor won a Grammy for Live in Atlanta at Morehouse College with the Love Fellowship Crusade Choir?

Hezekiah Walker took the choir album Grammy a second time with the choir of his own church. He was born in the same borough where he became pastor of Love Fellowship Tabernacle.

Which gospel hymn, written in 1905, gave actress-singer Ethel Waters the title of her autobiography?

His Eye Is on the Sparrow came to its lyricist during a spring stay in Elmira, New York. Waters became closely tied to the hymn after helping to popularize it.

Whose gospel hour was BET's longest-running program, airing from the cable network's launch week in 1980 until 2016?

Bobby Jones Gospel premiered just two days after the channel itself went on air. Its finale was broadcast 36 years later, in July 2016.

Which Atlanta worship collective was, in 2022, the first Christian gospel group to perform at the Grammys in 20 years?

Maverick City Music sang its song Jireh on the telecast. The collective went on to tour with Kirk Franklin and record the joint album Kingdom Book One.

Which instrument, dubbed sacred in some Pentecostal churches, did Robert Randolph learn in the House of God Church?

Pedal steel guitar is known as sacred steel in many African-American Pentecostal churches. Randolph was discovered while playing at a sacred steel convention in Florida.

Which gospel star angered churchgoers in the 1960s by taking her million-selling group into Las Vegas nightclubs?

Clara Ward and her singers had made Surely God Is Able one of the first million-selling gospel hits. She also gave her group the lead-switching style that male quartets had used.

Which veteran gospel quartet sang backup on Paul Simon's Loves Me Like a Rock, then won a Grammy with its own cover?

The Dixie Hummingbirds also sang on Tenderness from the same Simon album. Their own version of the hit, co-produced by lead vocalist Ira Tucker, also reached Billboard's R&B singles chart.

Which a cappella gospel group, founded as a church trio in 1921, featured in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Fairfield Four appeared briefly as a quintet and shared in the soundtrack's Album of the Year Grammy. Their popularity had waned in the late 1950s as unaccompanied gospel lost its audience.

Which gospel singer, hailed as a last link to gospel's golden age, won MacArthur and Kennedy Center honors in 1993?

Marion Williams was praised by the MacArthur Foundation as one of the most versatile singers of her generation. Her leads had made the group she joined nationally popular from 1948.

The term gospel song probably first appeared in print as the title of an 1874 songbook by which American hymn writer?

Philip Bliss called his collection Gospel Songs. He then extended it into a series of hymn books compiled with a fellow revival singer, which spread the phrase further.

Which gospel and R&B ensemble began in 1969 as a student choir at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota?

Sounds of Blackness mixes gospel with R&B and jazz. Founder Russell Knighton first named the group the Macalester College Black Voices.

Mahalia Jackson partnered with comedian Minnie Pearl in Black-owned restaurants that carried her name and sold what?

Chicken dinners were the menu: a Nashville businessman persuaded both women to lend their names to fried chicken restaurants. Jackson wanted hers Black-owned and operated so that Black capital was reinvested in Black people.

Which Britpop band sang with the London Community Gospel Choir on Tender, a UK number two single?

Blur's writers shared the singing while the choir supplied the backing vocals. Tender entered the British chart at its peak position and became the band's 11th top-10 hit.

Which president sang the opening stanza of Amazing Grace during his eulogy for Charleston pastor Clementa Pinckney?

Barack Obama delivered the eulogy nine days after the pastor's death. The funeral was held in a college basketball arena in Charleston.

Which future R&B crooner lay in a coma after a 1958 car crash on tour with Sam Cooke and the Travelers?

Lou Rawls was pronounced dead on the way to hospital, then spent five and a half days unconscious. The Travelers were a gospel group, and he had earlier replaced Cooke in another, the Highway QC's.

Which biblical city falls in the title of a spiritual about Joshua that Elvis Presley and Mahalia Jackson both recorded?

Jericho's siege may have stood in for hopes of escaping slavery. The spiritual is believed to have been composed by enslaved people in the first half of the 19th century.

Which future music star had her breakout film role as a choir student in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit?

Lauryn Hill plays one of the talented pupils whom the lead character organizes into a choir. The story is loosely based on Crenshaw High School choir instructor Iris Stevenson.