averyfineline

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Shalom, and Bon Nuit. I’ll see you in the new year.

Over at sogospeluvers.com, they’re having an “Oh What a Savior” festival … pages and pages about who does or doesn’t sing the best OWAS. Ho hum. But this comment seems worth plucking out of the tedium:
I would agree that Ernie does a good job on OWAS. If you notice though, he really pulls the mike […]

Reader CVH provides the comment of the day (from a few days ago), responding to my post on Janet Paschal and hymn projects:
I agree with you. Janet’s voice has always possessed a unique character, well suited to the catalog of material she’s done, but particularly nice when she finds a tune that’s a bit more […]

Via Martin Roth (seriously, give this man an award for finding the most fascinating mainstream media coverage of Christian music, and then withhold it from him until he consistently puts permalinks on his posts), a brave Washington Blade story that dares to talk about something that anyone paying attention has known for years but no […]

It doesn’t matter if you like the song he’s writing about - “And I’m Telling you I’m not Going” from Dreamgirls - or not (though I for one do). The writing here is just distractingly wonderful.

David Bruce Murray links to some vintage JD and the Stamps from 1967. DBM points out Sumner’s predictable subterranean ending and if that’s your bag you’ll definitely want to see the clip through to the end. But more enjoyable, to my ear, are the early verses. Before all the belching and growling around starts, Sumner […]

Daniel Mount does some nice work reporting out a bit of gossip on the sogospelnews message boards about changes to the SN Fan Awards. He’s got Salem big-wig Jim Cumbee on the record explaining the major changes, including the elimination of gender segregated awards for mixed vs male quartet as well as awards for part […]

Over at Janet Paschal’s blog, I see she’s working on a hymns project (be careful with this list, though, as there are some non-hymns here like “God Walks the Dark Hills” and “He Touched Me”). Where can I sign up for one? Seriously, if the album is anything close to as good as the “Jesus, […]

Danny Jones wheels out the phony war-on-Christmas trap-set and gives it a few licks. Sigh. Obviously, I’m unmoved by this crusade, not least of all because it’s simply not true that Christmas has been suddenly secularized by newly aggressive anti-Christian forces. On this point, I recommend David Greenberg’s recent article in Slate. Money quote:
The Christmas […]

I’m trying to get a fairly comphrensive list compiled of current sg blogs in two categories: artists/industry and fan/non-industry. The latter first. Here’s the list I’ve got (which relies heavily on Martin Roth’s list; h/t Martin). Who should be added to it?

Adventures of a Starving Artist
Chris Unthank
Daniel Britt
Danny’s Diary
Fan of Gospel Music
Front Row Follies
Global Southern […]

Via Daniel Mount, the neverending soap operalet of the Anchormen’s personnel woes continues. All the current members have walked out to start their own group. Longtime readers of this site won’t find any of this all that surprising. Way back in the early days of avfl, there was this post in praise of Tony Rush […]

No one will believe me when I say this, but it has been genuinely nice to see Ernie Haase learning the lessons of Bill Gaither’s strategic benefaction toward EHSSQ and paying it forward by playing Bill to the Ball Brothers’ Ernie (if this website is accurate, they’re still opening for EHSSQ these days). And obviously, […]

Comment of the day:
I began reading Singing News in 1972 and remember seeing ads and “news articles” (read: rehashed press releases from the group or label) like this. Nothing new, nothing surprising. I can see where someone involved in the project may really believe there’s something special about the record but how it’s […]

Please. Is there an award for the most shameless PR overreach in an music industry full of shameless PR overreaches? Yes, this is gospel music, and yes, many artists and industry people believe their work is not just or even primarily bidness but rather a ministry. But honestly, “producer says KP&NR album anointed?” As […]

Patty Paige just followed the Four Aces on some Nostalgia-Fest PBS fund-drive this evening. I would be remiss not to report that the Four Aces took everybody else’s geritol money and stood as many of the people in the crowd who could stand on their feet no less than three times in a two-song set. […]

I’m surprised that there are not more southern gospel wikipdians out there sloughing off work, using up their employers’ bandwidth and generally obsessing over sg content on wikipedia. I seem to recall David Bruce Murray mentioning in passing somewhere that he’s contributed a bit to wikipedia (though I could be wrong), and you’ll see a […]

A while back I got this email from a reader:

Noticed today that Salem unlocked the Singing News website temporarily. To quoth the homepage: “For a limited time, we’ve opened all areas of SingingNews.com to everyone–FREE! Be sure to check out the Links, Personal Appearances, News, and Charts during this limited preview.”

After perusing […]

The American Gospel Music rebranding of southern gospel seems to be going …. very quietly. The big news about AGM seems to be the lack of news, big or small. According to Clarke Beasley, whom I asked to give me an update on AGM, “all our efforts right now are focused on the AGM Festival […]

The man of the hour himself, Kenny Bishop, took a few minutes out of the limelight today to exchange a few messages with me. Bishop had this to say, among other things:

When I received the call yesterday from Ed Leonard, letting me know that I had actually received the Grammy nomination, it was quite evident […]

I guess I should have listened more carefully to Kenny Bishop’s project when I got it back in the summer. What are we to make of the nomination and this album? Having just finished listening to it tonight, not too much, I hope. Not because the album isn’t good (it ranges from serviceable to enjoyable, […]