Gospel Music Trivia
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99 free Gospel Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
These gospel music trivia questions and answers run from the revival hymns of Fanny Crosby and Ira Sankey to the urban contemporary sound of Kirk Franklin and Tasha Cobbs. In between are the people who built the genre: Thomas Dorsey and the song he wrote in grief, Mahalia Jackson's first two-million seller, Sister Rosetta Tharpe's electric guitar, the Soul Stirrers and the young Sam Cooke, the Blind Boys of Alabama, James Cleveland, Andrae Crouch, the Clark Sisters and the Winans. There are questions on the songs everyone knows, from Amazing Grace and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot to Oh Happy Day and Precious Lord, on the crossover records by Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley, and on the awards: the Doves, the Stellars and the gospel Grammys. About a third are easy for anyone who grew up in church, a third are medium, and the rest are for choir directors and record collectors. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and the biographies it cites, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which soul star became pastor of his own Memphis church in 1976 and later sang only gospel for years?
Al Green
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.
Q 02Thomas A. Dorsey wrote 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' after which personal tragedy?
His wife and infant son died
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.
Q 03Before turning to gospel, Thomas A. Dorsey toured as pianist for which blues singer?
Ma Rainey
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.
Q 04Thomas A. Dorsey led the music at Pilgrim Baptist Church for half a century in which city?
Chicago
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'.
Q 05Mahalia Jackson sang 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' at whose funeral in 1968?
Martin Luther King Jr.
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.
Q 06Which 1947 recording sold in the millions and made Mahalia Jackson a national star?
Move On Up a Little Higher
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.
Q 07Mahalia Jackson was born and raised in poverty in which city?
New Orleans
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.
Q 08Mahalia Jackson adapted the style of which blues singer, her childhood favourite, to hymns?
Bessie Smith
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.
Q 09Mahalia Jackson left the small Apollo label in 1954 for which major record company?
Columbia Records
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.
Q 10Which song did Mahalia Jackson sing at the 1963 March on Washington?
I've Been 'Buked and I've Been Scorned
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.
Q 11Which guitar-playing gospel star of the 1930s and 40s is known as 'the Godmother of Rock and Roll'?
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
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.
Q 12Which English clergyman and former slave-ship sailor published 'Amazing Grace' in 1779?
John Newton
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.
Q 13Choctaw freedman Wallace Willis is credited with which spiritual?
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Q 21The Blind Boys of Alabama broke into the mainstream via which 1983 Obie-winning stage musical?
The Gospel at Colonus
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.
Q 22At which venue did the Golden Gate Quartet sing in John Hammond's From Spirituals to Swing series?
Carnegie Hall
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.
Q 23Which 'King of Gospel' founded the Gospel Music Workshop of America and was an early mentor to Aretha Franklin?
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.
Q 14The Fisk Jubilee Singers, who took spirituals to concert halls, were students in which city?
Nashville
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.
Q 15Which hymn did Horatio Spafford write in 1873 after his four daughters drowned in an Atlantic shipwreck?
It Is Well with My Soul
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.
Q 16Which blind 'Queen of Gospel Song Writers' wrote thousands of hymns including 'Blessed Assurance'?
Fanny Crosby
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.
Q 17Ira D. Sankey was the singing partner of which revivalist preacher from 1870 until 1899?
Dwight L. Moody
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.
Q 18A hymn by Philadelphia minister Charles Albert Tindley is said to underlie which civil rights anthem?
We Shall Overcome
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.
Q 19Sam Cooke was lead singer of which gospel quartet before going secular in 1956?
The Soul Stirrers
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.
Q 20The Blind Boys of Alabama sang the first-season theme of which HBO drama?
The Wire
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.
James Cleveland
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.
Q 24Aretha Franklin's live gospel album Amazing Grace was recorded in 1972 at a Baptist church in which city?
Los Angeles
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.
Q 25As a girl, Aretha Franklin sang her first solos at New Bethel Baptist Church, her father's pulpit in which city?
Detroit
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.
Q 26Elvis Presley's only three competitive Grammy wins were for gospel recordings, the first for which 1967 album?
How Great Thou Art
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.
Q 27Which gospel song did Elvis sing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957?
Peace in the Valley
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.
Q 28Which 1969 Edwin Hawkins Singers hit reworked an 18th-century English hymn?
Oh Happy Day
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.
Q 29George Harrison said the Edwin Hawkins Singers' 1969 gospel hit inspired which song of his?
My Sweet Lord
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'.
Q 30Andraé Crouch's choir sang on which Michael Jackson hit?
Man in the Mirror
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.