But let it be stated for the record that by all accounts, the event was a success, at least according to everyone with something to gain from saying so (for some discussion board chatter, see here). It sold out, was streamed live and free on the the web (I was working and so couldn’t catch it but this was a stroke of great insight for southern gospel), and SGMA’s Charlie Waller got a solid zinger in against yours truly and other bloggerly skeptics of the move (h/t, NG). On the SGMA’s website, Waller wrote:

The curtain has fallen and the show is over, but not forgotten!  The day was beautiful, Dolly Parton was a charm, as well as all the artists and fans in attendance. I apologize to the negative bloggers for the show selling out and being so successful.

Yes, but were the Fake Florida Boys resuscitated for a special appearance?!

Seriously though, it remains to be seen if moving an awards show that formerly attracted upwards of 15000 people and was broadcast on premium cable television, to a boutique venue with a web simulcast constitutes an improvement or not (I’d call it a draw, if only on the basis of the free webcast). And Daniel Mount notes a strange Claude Hopper remark that suggests it isn’t impossible that the show will back at NQC next year despite Waller’s victory lap.

But just to be safe, I’ll be happy to order a side of crow at dinner tonight.

The Singing News could really expand on this idea as a new funding model in these tough times for old media. Call it the Hairshirt Special. Add it to the rate card and everything. According to this comment, a full-page ad goes for $2300. So ascending up the scale of impropriety as judged by the sg world, your standard-issue marital infidelity ought to be worth at least $2500. Returning to southern gospel after a stint in rehab or CCM: $3000. Sleeping with the spouse of another performer: $3500 (additional charges apply for being caught in flagrante delicto on the bus, in the green room, or any kind of Sunday school classroom). Someone got sticky fingers counting the take from the product table? $4000. Homosexual anything starts at $5000 and goes up from there.

Monetizing (im)morality … just another service we provide here at avfl.

Among them: the president/COO and Jim Cumbee, the company’s president of non-broadcast media are both gone. Cumbee, of course, is an old hand in sg from way back – among other things, he started was  involved in Solid Gospel radio (before selling it was sold to Salem)*, and had a stake in the NQC for years. At Salem, he was in charge of publishing, which included not only the Singing News, but also CCM Magazine and the Gaither Homecoming Magazine (and a bunch of other stuff).

Salem is a vastly diversified company (for instance: it’s home to right-wing yakkers Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved), and I don’t know what, if anything, this means for the Solid Gospel network. As far as the SN is concerned, there’s no sign so far of any fallout in Boone yet, though the SN had a huge asset and ally in Cumbee that I can’t imagine they’ll have to the same extent in his replacement, whomever that is or turns out to be.

*The original company from which Solid Gospel emerged was initially called Reach Satellite Network and operated out of the Sonlite studios in Nashville. Chris White and Maurice Templeton were principals. Cumbee, as several of you have reminded me, came in later in the process and was involved in the sale of Solid Gospel to Salem, which included his joining the Salem team.

Perhaps needless to say, I couldn’t agree more with the comments about the SN’s deplorable web presence. The SN itself seems caught between two competing attitudes toward their new media operation: ignore it and hide it behind a subscription wall. For my part, though I still long for a real news site that does more than copy and paste press releases and cheerlead for the industry, my thinking has shifted, or evolved, with time to realize – even if I haven’t fully accepted it, if acceptance means being ok with it – that we’ve got exactly the kind of coverage of, and commentary about, sg that the market – that is, the southern gospel industry and audiences – wants and is willing to support. I was reminded of this when Salem, SN’s parent company, recently shut down the print edition of CCM Magazine. CCM fans don’t really care about print publications; they want a developed new media presence. Southern gospel fans, on the other hand, don’t really care about well-developed new media operations; they want a robust print edition that tells them reliably good news about their favorite artists, with lots of glossy pictures and comforting conclusions about the rewards of clean living and godly music focused on Christ and the cross in I-IV-ii-V7-I.I think we webheads tend to forget that we’re a statistically insignificant subgroup barely worth the status of “demographic segment.” I say “barely” only because there are a few signs that the industry is moving ever-so-slowly into the digital age. The SN is now publishing full editions online in addition to its web-only features. It needs work, but it’s a start. And Crossroads Music is starting to roll out some new web products, including most recently an e-store for soundtracks.

There are probably other things I’m forgetting, but I get the feeling these are more “build it and hope some day they will come” efforts than responses to pent up aching rivers of demand. Whatever the origins of these efforts, though, experience teaches us that most of these new media ventures will largely re-create the old ways of the industry’s business and publicity cultures – including the “praise report and prayer request” style of sg “journalism” – in new media formats.

Doug,

As I recall, you were a lot more easy going than me a couple of years ago when Daywind fabricated a quote out of thin air on your behalf and used it in a Singing News ad. I’d have been pretty hot if something like that had happened to me, but I think you said something to the effect that it didn’t really bother you, because it more or less reflected something you might have said anyway.

I’ve written for hire before, and this sort of thing can be routine. Editors edit, and they have their reasons. I’m not upset over the McKameys edit, mainly because I have my blog where I can point out any significant changes of this sort that take place.

To the credit of Singing News, they have allowed some less harsh statements to stand in the two previous reviews I’ve submitted. For example, I complained that Allison Speer is content to sing other people’s music. With the Cumberland Quartet, I mentioned that their tracks weren’t particularly unique. Even with the McKameys, they left in the words “vein popping.” I don’t think there’s a crusade to cut every negative comment from the reviews like some people are saying.

I prefer to give credit where credit is due, and not make a mountain out of a molehill. I’ve had three reviews published in Singing News at this point in time, and I have no complaints whatsoever about the way they handled the first two.

Credit where credit is due indeed. I guess DBM missed the multiple times I’ve sent shouts out to the boys in Boone (and Nashville) for the improvement the SN has made in the last 18 months or so. Short memory. Or, rather, selective memory, for he dredges up a long-ago and seemingly similar incident involving a quote of mine and some Daywind ad copy to suggest some kind of flip flop. But I’m afraid it doesn’t wash – for the very reason DBM points out: the botched edit didn’t change my underlying meaning. As I said at the time “I guess I’d be more upset if I had been misquoted as saying something like “I hate Mom and Apple Pie.” As it is, though, I do think MM’s project is among the best I own, as I was misquoted saying, even though I never said that.”

For the record, time has only made me wish I had said MM’s debut project was among the best I own. But no matter. DBM’s’ words and meaning did get changed, and I don’t know why he isn’t more upset. Why take the time to listen to and write a serious review about an album if he’s ok with having the meaning of his conclusion (arguably the most important part of a review) changed without his permission? Because, evidently, even though he meant to say something significantly different than what is attributed to him in a magazine read by a few hundred thousand people, he can say what he really meant on his blog, read by … well, not anywhere near that many people. Uhm, ok.

But we’re not only about snark here at averyfineline.com. There’s a larger issue at stake here: will the SN publish responsibly critical reviews that model for its large (and perhaps even growing) readership how to think with a degree of honesty and candor about music?

In his original conclusion, DBM was not at all harsh on the McKameys. He didn’t gush all over them, true. But he was pretty generous all the same. This would seem like the perfect opportunity to introduce a bit (just a wee bit) of genuine criticism in SN reviews (a moderate move toward real reviewing that could have built on earlier but passing remarks on Allison Durham Speer’s song selection and on the Cumberland Quartet’s unoriginal material). But instead of seeing this as a way to build incrementally toward more serious reviews (which would make it a part of what I’ve commented on before: a larger movement afoot at the magazine to rethink some old styles and ways), the SN reacted instinctively. The SN is pretty clearly trying to cultivate new instincts (why else bring new voices into the magazine?). It’s going to be a lot harder to make any headway in this direction, though, if the new voices are more or less content to have the newness rewritten right out of their copy.

On a personal note, I should say that Danny Jones was one of the most pleasant and collaborative editors I’ve ever written for. Not quite all the swords have been beaten into ploughshares, and I haven’t seen any invitations to “The Lion and The Lamb” square dances in Boone yet. But the SN’s rapprochement with … well, some of the rest of the world seems to me like a good reason to be hopeful.

On an unrelated note: I’ve been traveling for work and will be through the rest of week; thus the light blogging.

Avery,

I find myself agreeing with you far more than I disagree, but on the subject of Roy Pauley. I must fervently disagree. I do not believe that slamming Roy for his personally held beliefs is quite fair, especially when you have likely never met the man.

In Pauley you will find a person totally dedicated to this business we call Southern Gospel. He is certainly a fan of traditional Southern Gospel, the style of music that represents and the delivery of that music. He knows more about the history of Gospel music than virtually all the newer artists combined, in my opinion. However, if you look closely you will find a man who has helped many struggling new groups to acquire some recognization for their music and work. We are one of those groups who have benefited from the pen of Roy Pauley. His column is in fact, titled, “In My Opinion”. Do you not have opinions that run contrary to many people’s widely held views? Of course you do, as do I. Why are Roy’s opinions so invalid when yours are not?

Of course Roy is a relic by today’s standards, but one only has to attend one Southern Gospel concert, anywhere, anytime, to come to the conclusion that most of the audience we sing to every week is also, collectively, a relic. If you were to meet Roy and discuss (Southern) Gospel with him, you might be surprised to learn how much you agree with his thinking. Should we explore those things he stands for?

1. Quality performance.

Can you disagree with his desire for quality. Can you argue that very few artists today can pull off the arrangements that made the Statesmen famous all those years ago. Do you know of any groups that can record those kind of arrangements as they did, many direct to vinyl without the possibility of overdubs? To sing the cluster chord style arrangements they did requires a huge amount of musical skill and discipline. I have recorded many of today’s Southern Gospel groups. I personally have found only one current performing artist capable of singing like that, and that is Gerald Williams of the Melody Boys. Now the style may or may not be your cup of tea, but we are not talking style at this juncture, we are talking sheer talent level, or the lack thereof.

2. Presentation

Can you find fault with anyone who thinks our genre of music needs a strong dose of professionalism? This is where Roy’s stand has always been, and his offering up examples from past artists that exhibited these traits may get old to some, even to you, but does that make it less valid?

3. Educated artists

His view in this regard is that very few singers and musicians in Southern Gospel have enough musical training to be showcasing their talents. I have heard him say time and time again that so very few learn music anymore, and that the vast majority sing without any music theory background at all. Can you fault that? Having the knowledge of working with many so called artists in the studio, I can tell you that very few have enough musical knowledge to know where the one in a bar is let alone musical theory. Just recently I worked with a well known artist who did not know the difference between 3/4 time and 4/4. When do we start requiring more of our name artists?

4. Giving credit where credit is due.

There is no doubt that the Statesmen and the Blackwood’s made (Southern) Gospel Music what it is today. Many youthful artists of today would rather forget the roots of the music they say they love, and in many cases tend to deny its existence or importance at all. Roy has long given credit to these great pioneers of our past for the very music we say we love today. Yes change can be good, but change that is so drastic that it makes the music all but unrecognizable for much of the audience is short sighted. And change which requires less and less musical expertise, is destroying our future.

The most successful group in recent years was the Cathedrals, and they made a great living on traditional quartet music, much of which was copied direct from the playbook of the Statesmen. In fact George Younce once said “Every time I think I have come up with something new, I learn that Hovie and Chief had already done that and far better”.

A good example of where the music was allowed to stray with consequences is: in 1964 the Goodman’s came on the scene with a new brand of Gospel Music, straight out of the Pentecostal Church. Now don’t get me wrong, much of my family is Pentecostal, and I love much of what it represents. It was country steel guitar, songs with a message sung in a Pentecostal/country style, and it took roots. The probable mistake was that it was accepted as (Southern) Gospel and not Country Gospel. There are many who would say that it was not, and still is not (Southern) Gospel. I am close to that belief but maybe not 100%. Rusty Goodman was a good friend for many years, and I have heard him laugh about how musically wanting the Goodman’s were, but that they were crying all the way to the bank. Rusty was once a member of the Plainsmen and I can guarantee you Roy Pauley loved the Plainsmen with Rusty, but did not care for Rusty with the family. Is that wrong? Of course not, it was his preference in music and Roy’s opinion.

I too loved Rusty’s great voice, but in regard to the Family, I need more. Is that wrong? Of course not, it is my preference in music and my desire for better arranged, better performed music. So, I know you disagree with Roy and find his comments ancient and out of touch. But I would say to you, look at 90% of the audience. I think you will find them pretty much in-line with what Roy believes. Oh yes, there are those who are very much into the charismatic, ministry minded music so frequently heard today. But I think overall they are in the minority. Ministry is a great thing, but calling something a “ministry” when in fact it is far closer to Christian entertainment, maybe doing both disciplines a disservice.

In closing, you have personal opinions that are far removed from the majority of Southern Gospel Music fans, and artists. Does that make your opinions less valid? Is Roy’s opinion less valid than yours? Avery, I respect what you have done with your blog and how you have made people stop and think, but on Roy Pauley, I think you are wrong. I am very glad to call Roy and Amy friends, for they have been super nice to me and our group. I respect his fervent desire for better singing, better presentation, and better education for our artists. He is correct, if we do not begin to do better musically we will never succeed in bringing our genre even back to where it was, let alone grow it beyond its current boundaries. I know his constant examples of “what to do” and “who to pattern from” get old, but his ideas are just as timely as they have always been. I think Roy’s thorn in the collective side of progressive minded folks is more akin to my

wife’s constant reminder to me that I must watch what I eat if I want to lose weight. Of course she is right, I just get tired of hearing it.

I still love you.

I’ll have to come back some other time to the interesting insight here about the effect of Pentecostalism on southern gospel music and culture. To the matter at hand though: Pauley should hire the writer to ghost-write for him. If Roy wrote as clearly and plainly as this writer does in this email, I’d have far less to write about (that bit about cluster chords and no overdubs, for example, is the kind of evidence that Pauley rarely provides).

But I fear my correspondent has mistaken my critique of Pauley’s arguments and ideas for a put-down of Pauley of himself. Not knowing him, I’m Switzerland on the matter of Roy Pauley the man. It seems perfectly possible for a really nice guy, a good friend, and faithful fan of gospel music to write the kind of column Pauley regularly produces. This reader also implies that I begrudge him his opinions. Not so. That’s why I said clearly that he has every right to his opinion. Having the opinion isn’t what I object to (that would, of course, make me chief among all hypocrites). It’s the sloppiness that tends (inadvertently?) toward intellectual dishonesty that’s troublesome.

Of course I’m for quality and appropriateness and class. And apple pie and old glory and I believe in love. I believe in babies. I believe in Mom and Dad. And I believe in you. Oh wait. That’s Don Williams. Anyway, that Pauley reveres the masters (and mistresses) of gospel music isn’t the point (on this, he and I and, as the reader notes, almost everyone else, agree). It’s that he suggests or implies over and over that because no one sings or dresses or acts like Mom Speer and Big Chief and Doye Ott and Hovie and Jake and Rosie and Rosa Nell, southern gospel today is largely crap. But since Pauley never tells us precisely who in today’s roster of gospel talent he has in mind when he makes these sweeping denunciations, he conveniently avoids having to actually defend his assertions. “I’m for quality and good music,” he says every month. Well, yeah. So what?

For instance, it’s all well and good to have firm beliefs about what “appropriate” hairstyles and “classy” dress ought to be for artists of “quality.” And it’s fine to believe, as Roy seems to, that artists today do some kind of irreparable harm to their music and integrity if they don’t dress like James Blackwood or Lily Fern Weatherford. But no one looks like that today, not even Lily Fern (or, for that matter, Roy Pauley). See the problem? No one disputes that James and Lily were paragons of respectability in their day or that the Statesmen or the Stamps of yore were great. At least I certainly don’t. But unless Roy’s argument is that no one is any good unless one sings and dresses and acts exactly like those old timers, then I’m not sure what his point is.

What, that is, does Roy’s opinion mean in practice? Is he saying that we must or ought to disregard the obvious talent of EHSSQ or First Love or the Crabb Family because of their hair and clothes? We don’t know and I can’t say, because in his column Roy refuses to translate his 1962 standards in 2007 reality.

That’s the weird thing about the reputation Roy has for being such a straight-shootin’, tell-it-like-it-is guy. He really only tells it like it was. As for today’s music, he doesn’t have much specific to say. Anything remotely critical is directed at a bunch of straw men and women – “some artists today,” or some such phrase – who never get named. This has the effect of making Roy sound tough and honest while distracting from the fact that he’s really tip toeing through the tulips of today’s artists and traveling talent.

Only Roy knows why he does this. Certainly the SN seems to make it a point of avoiding critical judgments of any kind about anyone who might ever be inclined to buy ads from the magazine. But whatever the reason, it’s a problem for the SN and, not least of all, for us as his readers, who would be much better served if he would speak up in a meaningful way about today’s talent. If Roy wants to complain about hairstyles, fine, but if he goes no further than saying in effect “some artists have bad hair,” why bother? The really interesting column would be the one in which Roy squares the circle of his absolutist notions about hair and hemlines with the reality that many of gospel music’s most talented people today – our own Blackwods and Speer Families – traduce Roy’s aesthetic standards.

All of this leaves untouched Pauley’s character, his goodness as a friend, colleague, or southern gospel booster. He may be first rate in all those roles. My only concern is with his column. If he is as smart and insightful as this correspondent suggests, and I have no reason to think he isn’t, then his column not only shortchanges the SN’s subscribes but shortsells himself – in my opinion, of course.

And the January 07 issue stands head and neck above what’s come before it. The centerpiece is the Tori Taff cover story on EHSSQ. I would have preferred less fixation on profiling EH. He’s such a well-known figure by now that Taff struggles to say anything new about him and so must resort to dramatizing his management philosophy. This is interesting enough as inside baseball goes, and it certainly reinforces EH’s self-styled myth of himself as Gospel Patriarch to His Boys on the Bus. But a more balanced article might have told a much more interesting story about the group as a whole and tilled some new ground in the process.

Really, though, I’m quibbling, which is not a luxury one has historically not had with SN’s content. The piece is solidly written and holds your attention. And anyone who can spend as much time as Taff must have with guys as overtanned as this bunch and not make an orange-glo joke deserves … well, that takes an estimable gift that I don’t have. Anyway, Taff’s article is more evidence of the SN’s ongoing transformation. (More evidence: David Bruce Murray’s reviews will soon begin appearing in the magazine … I still think he gives too many stars to most projects, but any kind of genuinely evaluative system will dramatically improve on the artist-friendly “make a joyful noise” style “reviews” that the SN normally publishes).

And speaking of transformations, Jerry Kirksey earns all kind of respect and congratulations in my book for having done some honest self-examination and owned up to his own evolving values and rethinking of longheld beliefs. This is not ever easy to do and it gets harder as we age. And even harder for highly visible people in positions of leadership. Kudos to Kirksey.

But (you knew this was coming) what’s up with that enormous advertising section on new talent? At first I thought it was from some label purchasing space for its artists, but on closer examination, I think it’s actually SN-generated copy that groups could purchase to go in this section on young artists, alongside ads for their new product.

This is actually a good idea for a feature - the next generation of sg - but why sell the space? I assume the reason is that if the SN were to run the piece as an editorial product, they’d have to choose whom to select and whom not, and that would inevitably require showing preferences for some and not others or including everyone at the SN/Salem’s expense. And either way, that would probably mean lost revenue - either now or in the future. So, giving everyone the opportunity to buy space in the young talent special advertising section absolves the SN of appearing to make (gasp) any judgment of quality and nets them more ad revenue in the process. A flat fee is a very democratizing thing. And a smart move, really. A bit self-serving, and perhaps a purist would balk at how steadfastly the magazine refuses to bring its staff’s considerable experience to bear on qualitative assessment of artists, music, and the industry. But smart, all the same.

Randomly: I still don’t know what J.K. Stuffle’s doing in all the Perrys group pictures. Really. This isn’t entirely rhetorical. And how many consecutive months will Dennis Zimmeran use his Pacifically Speaking column to plug his own group? It’s “Pacifically Speaking,” Dennis. As in “the large geographical area of North America bounded on the west by the Pacific.” Not “Have I mentioned my group, The Watchmen.”

And then there’s Roy Pauley (You might want to use this brief intermission to go get a snack or something).

Part of me thinks he’s the kind of guy it’s best to ignore. But I’ve tried that and he doesn’t seem to be going away (tangentially: whatever happened to the “No, it’s MY opinion” tit-for-tat thing that the SN tried to get off the ground last year? Is that coming back?), so there you are. And here, in January’s issue, we have another Feat of Solipsistic Declamation from Roy “Stuff Was Better in the Past” Pauley. Does it strike anybody else as odd that “In My Opinion,” all the best of everything happened, originated in, or came out of the 1950s-60s? Or should I say, Pauley’s ever-more shortsighted memory of that time?

Honestly. This month we’re treated to the thousandth-and-first rewrite of Roy’s Favorite Topic: “your hair’s too long/short/messy and your clothes are too tight/loose/ugly.” This month’s subtitle: “clothes and hair were better in the past” (implication: gospel music was holier back then). Pauley’s preferred method of argumentation is to set himself up on the side of all that’s “appropriate” and “professional” and of the highest “quality” but without providing any kind of working definition for what he takes these vexingly slippery terms to mean, exactly. I don’t know if he refuses to or simply can’t, but no matter. Here’s the trick: Pauley then labels anything he himself finds personally distasteful as the opposite of “appropriate,” “professional,” and “quality” etc.

The cherry on top of all this is that, as always, a choir loft full of southern gospel’s great names - living and dead - are called upon to back up Pauley and his opinion. This month “Mom Speer, Lily Fern Weatherford, Eva Mae and Naomi Sego” are summoned up to bear witness to Good Ole Roy’s lonely stand against the insidious encroachment of morally derelict hemlines, sexually suggestive hair cuts, and other latter day sartorial sins against the white-robed mothers and fastidiously clothed fathers of gospel music’s long ago.

On almost any subject, this is Pauley’s signature move: wave a finger-wagging hand in the direction of the past’s most venerated figures – the Speers, the Statesmen, the Lefevres, the Weatherfords – and let the overpowering venerability of their collective reputations stand for Roy’s idea of quality, goodness and what it is appropriate in all matters of music and morality.

The trouble is that quite obviously these people themselves did not share anything like a consensus view of what constitutes – for them, personally – quality, appropriateness, or good music, except in the most general ways. And we know this is true because the music each of them sang - and, for that matter, the clothes they wore - was quite different in their own individual cases. Compare “City Coming Down” to, say, Rosie Rosell’s “Oh What a Savior” (since it’s such a hot topic these days). Or Brock Speer’s conservative attire and bearing to the Big Chief’s self-consciously cool-cat manner in dress and stage presence.

Now, when compared to EHSSQ or the Booth Brothers or First Love or whomever else from today’s young vanguard Pauley has in mind when he writes his manifestos on Christian costuming and cosmetics, these old people and their music and style may well seem more alike than different. But that only takes the measure of how much has changed in 50 years (the bouffant and the beehive are two very different hairstyles popular among gospel divas of the mid-20th Century, but they look equally ridiculous in hindsight). What that difference doesn’t mean is that Brock Speer and James Blackwood, or Rosie Rosell and Naomi Sego all represent, as Pauley likes to imagine, some unified, absolute and fixed standard of quality, excellence, and what’s appropriate.

And if anyone should know this, it ought to be Roy Pauley, who – as he never tires of reminding us – was there in these people’s heyday.

What Pauley seems unable or unwilling to accept is a fairly simple truth: something roughly equivalent to “time’s change” crossed with a little bit of “there’s no accounting for taste.” Follow along at home now:

• Exercise 1: If Ernie Haase and Signature Sound were to wear Speedos on stage, this would be inappropriate (though it would also likely redefine the idea of “hip,” I imagine, and people would definitely not be talking about their short ties anymore). Times change but not that much.

• Exercise 2: Whereas if one were to – purely hypothetically of course – look at Roy Pauley’s column photograph in the SN and find his super-coif, Aqua Net, Hold Tight pompadour hair style affected and preposterous, as though Benny Hinn met Steve French and started an off-the-rack hairpiece kiosk in the mall … well, now, that would just be a matter of taste, since Pauley’s hair is his bidness and his ideas and opinions are no better or worse for it. Hairstyles, like the times (and opinions for that matter), change - except maybe in Pauley’s case.

Back when the Singing News seemed to be under the sway of the Roy Pauleys of the gospel music world, “In My Opinion” fit right in and made quite a lot of editorial sense. It was no less infuriatingly solipsistic than it is now, but with J.D. Sumner on his right and Andrew Ishee to his left, Pauley was just one more cock crowing.

But in an issue like this one, in which Jerry Kirksey writes persuasively and evocatively about his own personal – dare I say, enlightened – realization that people who look and sound very different can share and communicate the same underlying values and commitments, Pauley’s one-note jeremiads about hair and haberdashery seem a touch enfeebled, his self-righteousness gone a bit stale. I’m sure Pauley is still popular among a certain bloc of readers, and he has every right to his opinion.

But as the SN elevates the level of discourse in the magazine, improves the quality of thought and writing, and generally takes things up a notch or two, Pauley’s column is, I suspect, going to increasingly look like an anachronistic sop to what Lee Roy Abernathy once called the “ignorant, jealous hearted backbiters” of gospel music.

This is the first I’ve heard of these changes, not being a big message board guy. Furthermore, I’ve only just read Cumbee’s main points and I’ll be curious to see a full list of the new streamlined categories. So I reserve the right to change my mind. But I can’t see a lot to dislike in these changes. Certainly I can’t see any reason for the Chicken-Little hysteria that Daniel Mount and some of his commenters seem to be headed toward. Gendered categories are the relics of another, more hidebound era. Depending on how the new categories shake out, these changes strike me as a fairly important recognition that times have changed. Or as Cumbee says, “A southern gospel group is a southern gospel group.” (No matter, I’m counting this a win for my one-man campaign for greater gender equity in sg: see here and here and here, among other places).

And far from being a “step backward,” as Mount calls the elimination of awards based on group composition, or some kind of hang-dog admission that “we did not have enough professional trios (to take an example) to make an award in that category competitive,” the disaggregated categories recognize that gospel music fans make very little practical distinction in their choice of “favorites” based on group composition. People don’t say “Greater Vision is a great group … for a trio” or “The Rupes sing good … for a bunch of women.” They’re just great or good or bad or whatever. For quite some time now, the mixed-group, quartet, and trio categories were not a reflection of reality in the way gospel music fans sift, weigh, and determine preferences among artists. Rather this pigeonholing of groups based on gender and number reflected an elitist view of the male quartet as the end-all-be-all in gospel music - a view that lingers to be sure, but is fast becoming the mark of smallmindedness, not to mention an economically untenable position.

The SN awards have for too long tried to serve way too many masters: artists, fans, and, not least of all, the SN itself. The result was a bloated ballot that gave fans the illusion of “a voice” and almost every artist of any caliber a spot somewhere in the nominating process. Meanwhile, the SN got to play beneficent king and queen maker to the stars. That the fans’ voice often seemed to speak schizophrenically (The Inspirations and EHSSQ favorite quartet! Short ties AND the full length holy roller denim skirt for favorite fashion trend!) is partly a function of how increasingly diversified and hybridized the southern gospel sound has become. But the odd results have had not a little to do with the SN’s “statistical ties” and byzantine balloting and other administrative idiosyncrasies. All this may not have actually amounted to having your thumb on the scale but certainly it gave the impression at times that the fans’ voice often spoke so schizophrenically because that was a useful way to keep powerful performers happy (I mean, honestly, I’d be surprised if even Martin Cook’s wife likes to hear him play the piano, but there he is … in the top 10 favorite pianists more years than not).

Thursday night at NQC has been less an awards show or even a popularity contest and instead a festival of handing out “good sportmanship” awards to everybody on the team while the two Tims take this or that sketch-comedy skit too far. “Four Time Singing News Fan Award nominee” sounds great but really means only that you’ve not disappeared from the sg stage in the last four years. Favorite female singer, favorite soprano, favorite hanky waver, favorite cry-talker — don’t wory, hon, you’ll be in there somewheres (we’re all winners in God’s eyes!).

Thus it’s encouraging to hear the SN officially, on the record, talking about the dangers of diluting the process and making the case for slightly more rigorous standards. Now let’s hope this newfound commitment to the awards process comes with the courage to send some powerful people home unhappy now and then. Not least of all because this would be great, great fun. Imagine: a single award (group of the year, for argument’s sake) in which, say, the Perrys, the Inspirations, Legacy 5 and Greater Vision were all contenders …

In theory I like the idea a lot (and I should say that the SN continues to improve markedly each month). And it may well turn out to be successful, but aside from the problems that DBM identifies, the larger issue that the first back-and-forth between Pauley and Daywind VP Ed Leonard exposed last month is that Pauley does not so much make an argument that one can engage with. Rather he mistakes assertion for argumentation. Heavy on the “I thinks” and “I believes” and “it’s this ways” and “in my opinions,” and short on a claim that’s backed up by analysis of evidence (examples - i.e. George Younce is the greatest emcee in the history of the world - are not necessarily evidentiary). It’s hard to engage with assertions and declarations, and even harder when you’ve got to pretend, as poor Ed Leonard had to last month, that you’re dealing with a reasoned analysis and not another of Pauley’s jeremiads or celebrations of the 10 Greatest Something or Others.

For this feature to work, SN editors are perhaps going to have to help build the kind of dialogue the features imagines and be more prescriptive about the topics at first. For instance: politics and patriotism (see above) - what role should political statements and actions play in gospel music performance? Discuss. Or, What is southern gospel music? (a perennial favorite). The idea here is to pose the question in a way that makes it as difficult as possible for someone (Roy Pauley, for instance) to just start declaiming. Pauley will be Pauley, of course, and the column is “in my opinion,” and not “point counter point.” But if the SN can put Bill Gaither on the cover and start publishing letters to the editors with writers’ actual names, then may be Roy Pauley can be led to water and begin to back up his opinion with more than the force of his personality transplanted in print. This would not only be good for the SN. It’d be good for gospel music, which could really do with some positive models for intelligent discourse and the exchange of opposing ideas without people talking past each other.

Have you tried [Googling] the trend for Singing News? Very sharp spike right about the time they announced their new logo. Then, a sharp decline when folks realized they still can’t get into the website without a login and password.

Yes it is too bad there’s still that content block on the SN’s site. Which brings us to:

2. Lotsa questions lately about the difference between the SN’s “Stories” and their “Wire” page. I don’t need to recover the ground already traveled here. But I will add that it’s a baffling (non)distinction. The only news niche the SN really has cornered is the death watch and sickbed beat. They really should find some way to collaborate with somebody like Chuck Peters, who could give them real daily news for the website. Whereas the SN often goes days at a time without a new news post (and then it’s usually just some press release that’s already made the rounds or an update on some sg performer’s relative whose health condition is deteriorating or improving), Peters has daily news … by which I mean NEW news.

3. You’ll have noticed by now the announcement that sogospelnews has launched a sghistory site … the day after David Bruce Murray launched one of his own (you’ll recall some flirtatious overtures in this direction a while back). Of course sogospelnews owners, the Unthanks, pretend it was their plan all along to launch the site the DAY AFTER DBM launched his. Back on planet earth, the sogospelnews history site, like most of its other products, tries so hard to shoehorn everything Unthankable onto the page that the website teeters vertiginously on the edge of uselessness (I mean for cryin out loud the DAILY NEWS items on sogospelnews.com have been pushed off the main page … what thuh?). So I’ll focus on DBM’s site for a second.

It would be nice if his group members list included the years that each person was with the group and what part they sang or played. Similarly, the discography really minimally needs to include the year each album was released for the lists to be of much real use, and even better would be a list of songs for each album. I realize all this could be coming in later phases, but it’s the kinda thing that should be the primary focus for any new content that comes online, since there’s no way to ever reach a place where you can say “well, yup … we’ve listed every group member and every album in sg so NOW we can start making that second pass through the data.” One way to speed this kinda thing up is to push out the content in wiki format so that readers could update and tag the information and add new info rather than just noting corrections or additions or whatever in the comments section. SG is the kind of niche subculture about which a vast oral history is just waiting to be put down in writing … and an sgwikipedia would be the perfect way to tap into that resource. Sounds like a job for John Crenshaw, unless Bill Gaither is already doing it. Update: DBM writes to point out that I overlooked some of the very functionality at sghistory.com that I was pining away for in the post above (especially project dates and the positions that group members filled). I did do a quick fly over obviously … Strange I should miss so much. But the depth of my impercipience seems bottomless. Anyway, the more I think about it the more I think that my point was that a real sg wiki would be super cool (DBM says there are some plans to make the site more interactive, though it doesn’t sound like a full blown wiki is in the future of sghistory). At any rate, go look at the sites yourself.

With Southern Gospel music going through a mild case of changes right now (Gold City, Palmetto State Quartet), people often wonder what the future will hold for the affected groups. It’s only natural, and for the most part, there’s nothing wrong with speculation.

But have you thought about such a thing in reverse? In other words, have you ever looked back at a change and followed the results of that change? Most people don’t, but just for the sheer enjoyment of such a thing, let’s do that right now.

I’m going to go back to Danny Funderburk’s announcement that he was leaving the Cathedrals to help form a new group called Perfect Heart. Let’s follow the trail from that moment…

The rest of the post is a mildly tedious exercise is standing fallen dominos back up in order to push them over again. But Jones’s point appears to be that what seems like troubling upheavals and worrying personnel changes are actually necessary shifts in the plate tectonics of gospel music. This is all fine and good so far as it goes, but it strikes me as unhelpfully facile. In this particular case, surely Jones must know that the uncertainty surrounding the Gold City personnel changes isn’t really about some phantom fear of people changing jobs in the quartet bidness but because it’s one more big change in a group that 15 years ago had probably the second-best sound in gospel music and was poised to take over where the Cats left — and then not only didn’t but proceeded to pretty much melt down. Now they’re back to Triple A ball, trying to (re)consolidate their sound. I’m not necessarily pessimistic about their future, but they’ve got a long way to go by any measuring stick. With the Cats gone, Bill Gaither and the Vocal Band inhabiting another stratosphere and some of the best talent of gospel music’s prime generation (L5, GV, Mercy’s Mark, BFA) locked up in a relationship with a label that mostly insists its artists cut only songs owned by the label (and, it seems, may now even be penalizing artists with buy-back amounts for cutting songs non-Daywind songs) … well, you don’t have to agree with the “sg in decline” theory to at least acknowledge there are more than few legitimate reasons for other people to think so and to get jittery about the future when things get shaken up. Instead of acknowledging any of this, DJ goes chasing the rabbits of sg history into the high weeds of long-ago personnel changes. Danny: Zero. Opportunities Missed: 1.

Well…it sure is interesting food for thought. I do know that sales are at an all time low through distribution and concert ticket sales are slipping as well. I don’t think the problem is a dying industry as much as it is over saturation of “talent” in the market. Anyone can record a CD. Anyone can get an ad in the Singing News and anyone can hire a radio promoter. The days of a local buzz are dead. But on the other hand, I have witnessed this …

In a time of diminishing sales I have watched as the Gaither Vocal Band, The Martins and the Crabb Family STILL sell in the 6 figure range. Signature Sound, Greater Vision and the Perrys have also proven to be money-making artists for labels. I think it goes back to the old saying, “quality, not quantity.” As long as SG stays in the church, it will have a market. To me the real question is can the SG industry attract youth who have a passion to carry on the tradition of excellence in songwriting, production, marketing and promotion? Who will be the next J.G. Whitfield, Marvin Norcross or Bob Benson? Who will be the next Lari Goss or Jerry Crutchfield? Who will be the next Dottie Rambo, Ira Stanphill or Bill Gaither? These are they who thought outside of the box. Will we continue in that tradition, or just get by like I am seeing labels, artists, producers and promoters do now?

That’s the real question, it seems to me.