One, Terry Gross talks with legendary country music songwriter Bobby Braddock (one of my favorite songs of his is Tammy and George’s “Golden Ring”). He discusses among other things the effects of vocal tuning on country music and country stardom. He’s particularly insightful about image often trumping musicality, which of course is not unique to country music. Gross is doing a whole week of country music shows, collected here.

And also on the topic of digital tuning, NPR takes up the question of the too-perfect performance.

• Ryan Seaton has signed with Crossroads and submitted himself to the indignity that befalls almost every sg soloist: appearing on TBN.

• Everyone seems to be pretty twitterpated about the 100 Years of SG Celebration at NQC. I predict that there will be a few acts in a very crowded menu of performers that everyone will want to have heard a lot more of, and a lot of acts that we will in retrospect think might well have been left off the list. Which is pretty much a decent description of almost every NQC multi-artist showcase, no?

• Speaking of this showcase, an outfit called the Gay Christian Movement Watch is very upset about Reba Rambo McGuire appearing at NQC. Very, very upset.

• Roy Webb is out as Gold City pianist.

• How the sausage is made in the studio … via Daniel Mount, an Irish trio recently signed with Crossroad lays down vocals for single on their debut album.

• David Bruce Murray has today’s songwriting fail.

• This came up in a discussion thread while I was gone, but I’ll just note that there is a petition afoot to get RCA to re-release the Weatherfords 1959 classic, In the Garden. I’ve got more to say about this spectacular album, but you’ll have to wait for the book. In the meantime, it really would be nice to have a remastered version of this wonderful record available.

What have I missed?

In a post debunking the latter, Mark Lowry concludes by whining about the “stupid” rumors that people start, as if this came from someone who got up this morning and said, “Gee, I think I’ll start a big fat lie about David Phelps dying in a car wreck so I can piss Mark Lowry off.”

I don’t doubt that these things have to be annoying to people in Lowry’s and Phelps’s position. But I also suspect the origins of this sort of stuff are as often as not pretty benign.

Celebrities generate some pretty strong attachments among some fans, whose enthusiasm can lead to stories and bits of misunderstood gossip getting jumbled up in an imagination fueled by strong desires for opportunities (like car accidents or other Major Life Events) to express superfan concern and support for the beloved performer.  You’d think a guy like Lowry, who’s spent nearly his entire life in entertainment (and actually been in a really serious accident), wouldn’t default to such an ungenerous set of assumptions about the people who have made him a household name in Christian music.

One, there’s got to be an apocryphal scripture out there somewhere that says, like the poor, tracks and stacks (and the stracks debate) will always be with us.

And two, though I’ve spent a lot of time criticizing the use of stracks, if I’m honest with myself I gotta say that I don’t have that big of a problem with tracks and stacks …. so long as they don’t draw attention to themselves (and in my defense, the times I have criticized them is when they are abused or overindulged). We all know that most groups do polish their sound with background stacks and tracks, and frankly we’d probably not like the music much these days without stracks, given how unmusical so much of the music is in its unguarded or trackless moments. But if you’re in a small country church and you’re singing with a 50 piece orchestra, or when you sound like a million bucks in the ensemble but most of you struggle to sing a solo with even a modicum of tunefulness, or when the same voice can be heard singing more than one part on stage … well, it’s hard for the mind sustain the suspension of disbelief that this is a genuinely live experience.

And with that, I would be happy to never have to discuss the track/stacks issue again.

PS: Consider this your sandbox while I’m gone.

[T]he Dove Brothers have decided that until our nation is over this recession and the economy is back on its feet that all of our cds and dvds here on our web store and at our product table at a concert near you can be purchase for ten dollars each.

Certainly you can’t say this decision was made with the bottom line in mind! (I guess this could be seen to make bidness sense viewed as an effort to get more music in the hands of more people. Presumably, the more people who own your music, the more likely they are to become repeat customers. Presumably.)

But I confess, this whole “helping the nation during tough times” feels a wee titch gimmicky to me. I mean, just two years ago Dove announced that - lo! - he was hiking CD prices to $23 per, and actively solicited other groups to do the same. Hard to imagine that that move is paying off for him, and so now he’s overcorrecting in the other direction with the sg equivalent of the “recession buster” lunch special that’s been running at the Applebees down the street from me most of the summer.

Make what you will of this as a bidness decision. But it’s pretty much guaranteed to annoy many of Dove’s peers (not that I have any reason to think this matters to him in the least). I mean, imagine if you’re, say, GV, L5, BB or the Hoppers. In each of those cases, you’ve just dumped a lot of cash into a Lari Goss recording, which means it will take you a lot longer to recoup on the project, even at regular CD prices of $15-$20. And along comes Dove and undercuts you by $5-$10 per unit, and immediately fans start praising him for giving the industry a much-needed jolt. There might be some satisfaction in telling yourself you’ve put out a Lari Goss album of superior quality to DBQ’s stuff, but among sg consumers, “quality” production has never been a reliable way to move product.

Mind you, I know of no law that says sg is immune from price wars, but unless Dove starts moving more than twice the product he was selling before the price cut, or starts producing projects that cost substantially less (both unlikely in the long run), it’s hard to see how this will be a financially sustainable move. Then again, that’s what I thought about the price hike a few years ago, and I assume this latest move will work just about as well, until Dove decides the economy has turned around sufficiently and re-reprices his product.

But really, the issue here isn’t what the next “bold move” from DBQ’s pricing department will be. Rather, it’s that all this to-ing and froing about CD pricing ignores the underlying problem that no one really seems to be grappling with: namely, that selling CDs is rapidly becoming pretty much the best way to go broke in the music business. Just because your CDs might be making a joyful noise for the Lord doesn’t mean you too can’t go broke selling them - whether they’re produced by Lari Goss or now available at a new, reduced, recession-friendly price.

No matter, it’s hard to see the point of a Danny vs Ernie Cage Match given that Funderburk was at the peak of his career and Haase was just starting out. So let’s talk about something else: namely, why it is that after Funderburk left the Cathedrals, he never managed to capitalize on his George and Glen connection (and the overwhelming affection fans felt toward him) the way pretty much every other member of the Cathedral has since the 1980s, when the group really began to dominate?

As you no doubt recall, Funderburk quit the Cathedrals in 1989 to join the newly formed Perfect Heart, which had its moments (including at least one pretty decent live album) but ultimately dissolved (I seem to recall that it’s since been revived, though I’ve heard nothing from this more recent iteration). And of course, at the time he left the Cats, Funderburk was flying high in the late 80s on a string of hits with the George and Glen and a trademark tenor voice.

What was his appeal? Some commenters say it’s because he sounds like a man even in his upper ranges, which sounds kinda silly. Being generous, I assume this kind of thing is meant to refer to his ability to sing in full voice in ranges where most tenors lost depth or warmth in their voices (the “manly” thing might also have something to do with the fact that Haase tends to bring S sounds to the front of his mouth, which many people automatically and somewhat ignorantly construe as fey or less “straight acting“). At least this is the technical explanation, but it’s pretty dissatisfying, especially considering Kirk Talley, just to take the other obvious Cathedrals tenor example, sounded almost exactly opposite of Funderburk in terms of coloration and texture and tone and he had no trouble launching off on his own after the Cats.

No, I actually think Funderburk’s appeal was as much his astonishing ability to sculpt the line of a musical thought so carefully and bend the curve of his melodic phrases so skillfully that his voice interacted with audiences almost as if he were in a personal musical conversation with his fans (as opposed to the David Phelps virtuoso wall of sound model, for instance). Indeed, I think what most people are hearing in the difference between Haase and Funderburk in the “Living” clip is the way Haase sings his words mostly on the beat and Funderburk … well … he doesn’t.

Lots of singers get in front of the beat (esp in vocal jazz) or behind it (Willy Nelson, the Greenes). But Funderburk has a knack for singing all around the beat (and here for the sake of ease, I’m going to refer to his version of “Living” from the Cathedral Reunion), as in the way he sings the line “oh and it’s totally indwelling” – “ohhhh” gets strung out in a bit of tone painting to emphasize just how nearly beyond regular words the spirit’s indwellingness is, so that that the rest of the phrase gets pushed to the end of the line, except that he scrunches up “and it’s” (the most ancillary words of the phrase) in almost a single beat so that he can give “totally indwelling” just bit more space in the measure, communicating the musical thought with a finely calibrated sense of evocative phrasing.

In other words, he speeds up and slows down the rhythm of singing not unlike the human voice in ordinary speech, which provides a felt human presence that can be lost in metronomically regularized vocalization of lyrics where every word falls in perfect rhythmic positions.

It shouldn’t go without saying that Funderburk often sacrificed diction to his vocal style (if I didn’t know that the word was “gloom” in the second verse, for instance, I probably wouldn’t have a clue what he’s saying because he basically turns the word into a gaaaaaahhhhh, … that is, feeling comes at the expense of intelligibility … though I also get the sense on the Reunion video that he’s out of shape vocally and so attempting to let style cover where lack of stamina can’t take him). But sloppy or lazy though he could be, there was such confidence and brio to his style of delivery that it was hard not to be captivated by it – there was an urgency and immediacy there that a lot of people simply wanted a lot more of.

But clearly the key to his success (and decline) had as much to do with the context in which people encountered his voice – that is, as part of the Cathedrals – as it did with Funderburk himself as a performer. And unlike Talley, Trammell, Wolfe, Bennett, Fowler and especially Haase, Funderburk simply never figured out how to make it work without George and Glen. What is “it”? I think it varies from performer to performer, but it might have had something to do in Funderburk’s case with leaving to undertake an endeavor that wasn’t really “his,” the way it was (or seemed to be) with Wolfe and Trammell, or Bennett and Fowler, or Talley, or Haase. Each of these guys in their own ways launched enterprises that were either explicitly undertaken as continuations of George and Glen’s legacy or implicitly seen to be such.

But not Funderburk. Instead, he hooked up with what was, by any objective measure even at the time, a longshot proposition for someone to sign on to at the pinnacle of southern gospel success. Perfect Heart was bankrolled by someone else other than a former Cathedral, and Funderburk was pretty clearly joining up as the hired gun or the franchise star or whatever. In all this, and unlike the other former Kittens who left the mighty Cats, Funderburk never really positioned himself as a disciple or protégé or descendant of George and Glen. That doesn’t necessarily amount to an overweening view of his own ability, but it certainly was a strategic blunder. Operating out from the under the auspices of the Cathedrals, Funderburk seems to have been viewed as just another tenor we really used to like to hear when he was a Cathedral. Which is why Funderburk has spent the past two decades being a fringe figure beloved for stuff he sang a quarter century ago.

Compare that to Haase and it’s hard to see how a debate about who sings a few songs from the 80s better isn’t of the “angels on the head of a pin” variety. To be sure, Haase has a trump card – he’s family by marriage to the Younces – but still. Credit where it’s due and all that. Musically he has done a lot more with a lot less than Funderburk. Vocally, Haase is basically high and loud – and mostly the latter, which gives off the impression of being more of the former than he actually is, as some of you have noted. IOW, you wouldn’t necessarily have heard a young Ernie Haase twenty years ago and say, “that guy has the voice of someone who will wind up headlining his own enormously popular quartet someday.”

All smart entertainers have to figure how to minimize their weaknesses and maximize their strengths, but Haase has taken this maxim of showmanship to an altogether different level of branding genius in Christian entertainment. This probably shouldn’t go without saying, even or especially coming from someone who, as you know, is at best periodically pleased by EHSSQ’s music.

Also, notice that  there are icons to the right for most of you* if you want to follow Avery on twitter or friend the site on facebook.

*The interns are still puzzling over why Chrome decided to disappear the sidebar since some time in the past week or so. We’ll get back to you on that … intern work is notoriously shoddy around here.

• Three items for the gospel-immigration department: Chuck Peters reports this a.m. that the Freedom Singers’ bus exploded on the side of the road. The singers themselves are uninjured. They’ve posted a youtube clip of the van being reduced to a charred pulp. Meanwhile, Sweet Honey and the Rock has released a song that addresses itself to the immigration debate sparked by Arizona’s recent SB-1070. The song is streaming at the group’s facebook page. At the complete other end of the spectrum, Ray Stevens has weighed in on the immigration issue as well (via DBM).

• More recording oddities!

• I generally think that the excessive adoration of Danny Funderburk is more a product of his having been part of the Cathedrals than any objective enthusiasm for his singing, so what I’m about to say isn’t some blind fealty to the Cult of Danny. But if you want to know why so few people can recall Ernie Haase covering Funderburk’s signature tunes with the Cathedrals, just check this out. I cringed through the entire thing. (BTW thanks to Grigsby for posting the video as part of another discussion thread)

• Via DBM, Sonya Isaacs was on Jimmy Fallon’s show.

• From the “Gotta dance with them what brung you” file: Daniel Mount says that Dolly Parton will be awarded the James D. Vaughan Impact Award at the Singing News Fan Awards when the show debuts at Dollywood next month.

• Welcome Steve Eaton to the sg blogosphere.

• Via Burke, there’s a new  Daystar show called Great American Gospel with Ed O’Neal.

Take it away …

Alas, the interns are struggling with the twitter sync. The twitter plug-in is installed but no dice. The consensus opinion now seems to be I need to update my Wordpress framework (I’m still using … well, a really old version) and see what happens. That’s no small ordeal for my interns so it may take a bit. But we hope to live to tweet another day.

Meanwhile, posts should be autopopulating on facebook within a few hours of posting here (long story). Feel free to give us a shout out if you catch posts on either forum in the nearish future.

And of course if anyone has any ideas about the twitter situation, feel free to weigh in.

Now, I hasten to add that I’m not one of those gym monkeys who need a 150-mm tune to work out to (”I Rest My Case at the Cross” got me through the last few minutes the other day). And it need not even be new (though newer would probably be more interesting). In general, I’m just looking for stuff that keeps your attention and moves you along toward the mark of the high calling … or, barring that, the finish line. In particular, I’d love to stumble onto something that gives the equivalent experience of what, say, First Love’s debut and only album provided when I popped it into the mix for the treadmill years ago. I wanted to run somewhere … and did!

PS: of course I’m a musical omnivore so I’ll take non-sg recs too.

If you want a round up the cross section of opinion about the Doves’ move to Atlanta, check out the comments section on the Tennesseean’s story (h/t, SS). There’s race-baiting, some Sister Bertha Better than Youing, some praise and excitement, some inside baseball critiques of the GMA and its utility and function, and one gloaty post about NQC’s success compared to the Doves’ perpetual self-embattlement and constant attempts to reinvent itself, to not much avail. You can almost see that last commenter giving the raspberry while typing. But the most insightful take might well be the theory that the GMA’s alliance with the Gospel Music Channel is as much behind this as any attempt to shore up the black (”traditional” in the GMA’s parlance) gospel audience. At least this seems among the more plausible things I’ve heard.

I don’t know CCM that well and have only a cursory knowledge of the GMA, so I’ll stick to what I know and say that the comparison to NQC seems to me both right and wrong. Right, in that, while it has its problems and faces some structural challenges to its sustainability, NQC obviously knows how to maintain a strong bond with its base in a way and to an extent that the GMA obviously has not, and probably can’t.

Which gets us to the wrong part. NQC is a niche event. Probably any one of the major genres included under the GMA heading could draw a similar crowd by itself (and of course a few of the major CCM artists can draw as big a crowd as any single night at NQC alone), but put them all together under one umbrella organization and you’ve got an impossibly diverse range of sounds and (sub)cultures intermixing in a way that inevitably tries, as one commenter notes, to be everything to everyone … and so leaves nobody terribly satisfied.

Not every genre within GMA has southern gospel’s fractious history with the organization (David Bruce Murray provides a useful summary if you’re just joining us; I have a lot more to say about this sordid past but I’ll save for it the book). But with the exception of the reigning pop Christian kings and queens who always get plenty of face time on the Doves, I’m sure fans and artists from most subcategories represented in the televised portion of the show have beefs with how “their” music is treated.

I don’t have a beef with how southern gospel is treated. If it sold more, it’d get better treatment. It’s that simple (plus, so much of the sg industry acting like southern gospel is owed something by the GMA because James and J.D. were founders of the organization half a century ago doesn’t really help, I’m sure).

No, my beef with the show is that it’s the Christian music equivalent of what would happen if you tried to combine the MTV Awards, the Country Music Association Awards, the Tonys, the Delilah Show (she actually has been a presenter at the Doves!), and a Sunday morning service at Joel Osteen’s church all into one two-hour broadcast of awards and performances and hosty chatter. In other words, the Doves are weirdly but reliably dissatisfying, and I say that as someone who always goes ready to be blown away or at least entertained by whatever … and yet I always leave feeling glad I got my overpriced tickets comped. That is, if you were someone not really sure what Christian music is about or wondering if you might like all or some of it, the Dove Awards would probably be a great introduction. But since the Doves’ audience is actually people who already have established tastes and allegiances within Christian entertainment, it’s almost destined to fail for the same reason that southern gospel artists consider a Singing News Fan Award more important than a Dove Award.

Moving to Atlanta will not change any of this. But it may make some sponsors and a core fan constituency of the GMA happy, and that’s not nothing  if you care about that little gold pigeony statuette.

Update: Jim Cumbee, former big wig at Salem Communications (Singing News’ parent company)  and a former NQC board member (among other things), writes with some salient insights on this issue:

Your instinct is right, in part.  The GMA does not have an “alliance” with the Gospel Music Channel, the Gospel Music Channel is — right now, anyway — the LIFELINE of the GMA.  The CCM industry has been absorbed in getting the Dove Awards on TV, otherwise the record companies wouldn’t force the artists to appear, and with no star power there can be no ridiculously high ticket price, and with no high ticket prices, the show loses even more money. It’s a vicious cycle from which the GMA could never extricate itself. Bottom line, getting the show on TV has always been the prerequisite to even having a show.  So when GMC says jump the GMA has to say “how high?”   The costs to tape in Nashville are ridiculously high and GMC is moving its programming away from music, so GMC has less financial incentive to stretch to make it work.  I imagine the message was something like this “if you want us to broadcast the Doves on GMC, you have to come to Atlanta where our cost to tape the show are much less.”  I am a huge fan of Ed Leonard; he’s the smartest guy in the SG business and he’s built a very fine company over at Daywind.  But, I can’t figure why he didn’t just say we are accommodating our TV partner.  In that context, going to Atlanta makes perfect sense.