Changing gospel music
BOOKS | The music and ministry of Andraé Crouch
Soon and Very Soon Robert F. Darden & Stephen M. Newby

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No contemporary musician has needed a comprehensive biography more than the late Christian-music pioneer Andraé Crouch. Now, thanks to Robert Darden and Stephen Newby, that book has arrived. Soon and Very Soon (Oxford University Press, 440 pp.) is really two books in one. One is Crouch’s life story, written mostly by Darden. (Full disclosure: Darden was my editor at another outlet, and he quotes from a 2015 WORLD piece of mine.) The other is Newby’s song-by-song, musicological breakdown of almost every album that Crouch recorded. The former relies on in-depth interviews with the musicians who played with Crouch throughout his career, the latter on Newby’s knowledge of the theory at work in black-gospel music in general and in Crouch’s work in particular.
Crouch began playing piano at 11, shortly after his father, a preacher, had asked God to give him the “gift of music.” In high school, he led a group called the COGICs (after his denomination, the Church of God in Christ). In his 20s, he signed with Light Records and became one of the label’s bestselling acts, releasing a series of increasingly sophisticated gospel albums that united fans of black gospel and Jesus music alike. When his solo career wound down in the mid-1980s, in part from a drug bust in which charges were dropped, Crouch landed high-profile gigs with pop stars like Michael Jackson and Madonna. He died in 2015 at 72.
Soon and Very Soon contains many interesting details—some small (Crouch’s adding an “é” to his given name, Andra), some not so small (his love for Steely Dan, his unrequited love for Tramaine Davis [later Hawkins]), and some large (his budget-busting perfectionism in the studio; his spontaneous, Spirit-led approach onstage; and his seeming inability to stop writing songs rooted in genuine evangelical zeal).
The book’s strength lies in its persuasive way of fleshing out its implicit theses: that it’s impossible to understand the history of popular Christian music apart from Crouch’s role in it and that the Christian music industry as we know it might never have existed without him. The chapter examining his triumphant performance at the watershed evangelical conference Explo ’72 is itself a revelation.
But apparently no one at Oxford University Press proofread the manuscript. The numerous errors in syntax and grammar (mostly in the densely technical song-analysis sections) needn’t deter the curious or the faithful, but if even Oxford won’t uphold standards anymore, who will?
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