Gospel music evolved in often surprising directions during the post-Civil Rights era. Claudrena N. Harold's in-depth look at late-century gospel focuses on musicians like Yolanda Adams, Andraé Crouch, the Clark Sisters, Al Green, Take 6, and the Winans, and on the network of black record shops, churches, and businesses that nurtured the music. Harold details the creative shifts, sonic innovations, theological tensions, and political assertions that transformed the music, and revisits the debates within the community over groundbreaking recordings and gospel's incorporation of rhythm and blues, funk, hip-hop, and other popular forms. At the same time, she details how sociopolitical and cultural developments like the Black Power Movement and the emergence of the Christian Right shaped both the art and attitudes of African American performers.
Weaving insightful analysis into a collective biography of gospel icons, When Sunday Comes explores the music's essential place as an outlet for African Americans to express their spiritual and cultural selves.
Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Lord, Let Me Be an Instrument: The Artistry and Cultural Politics of Reverend James Cleveland Chapter 2. A Special Kind of Witness: Andraé Crouch, the Growth of Contemporary Christian Music, and the Politics of Race Chapter 3. Hold My Mule: Shirley Caesar and the Gospel of the New South Chapter 4. A Wonderful Change: Walter Hawkins and the Love Alive Explosion Chapter 5. Higher Plane: The Gospel According to Al Green Chapter 6. The Only Thing Right Left in a Wrong World: The Clark Sisters, the Winans, Commissioned, and the Search for Cultural Authority in the 1980s Chapter 7. If I Be Lifted: Milton Brunson and the Thompson Community Singers Chapter 8. Through It All: Vanessa Bell Armstrong and the Perils of Crossover Chapter 9. Hold Up the Light: The Crossover Success of BeBe and CeCe Winans Chapter 10. Outside the County Line: The Southern Soul of John P. Kee Chapter 11. We Are the Drum: Take 6, the Sounds of Blackness, and the New Black Aesthetic Epilogue: Do You Want a Revolution? Kirk Franklin, Yolanda Adams, and the Beginning of a New Era in Gospel Music Notes Selected Bibliography Index
"A prodigious job of research. The author seems to have consulted all available print sources in addition to important manuscript collections and interviews. No book covers this terrain as thoroughly and with such a deep knowledge and appreciation for the music. I don’t think it would be out of line to describe When Sunday Comes as a labor of love." --David W. Stowe, author of No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism
