Gospel Singers Quotes

My heroes were gospel blues players like Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, not whoever was number one.

Well, the first band was at nine, and I was on the road when I was 12 with the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers.

I went out on the road when I was 12 years old, playing with the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers. That was the summer of 1972. We played Pentecostal churches, camp meetings, George Wallace campaign rallies and bluegrass festivals. As a kid, I had grown up watching quartets that were very entertaining.

I've been getting into different gospel artists; Aretha Franklin is someone I've been listening to a lot of.

I've always loved gospel music. Being raised in Mississippi, it was kind of part of the atmosphere down there.

I remember vividly, as a kid, my mother had 'Jesus Was a Capricorn' and used to listen to it over and over and over.

Oh boy, I grew up hearing Sam Cooke, The Soul Stirrers, Mahalia Jackson, sitting on Mahalia Jackson's lap in my dad's church.

Voice of the Spirit' was a project I'd been talking about for a long time. It began as an Appalachian record. But it's a record of all pure Southern gospel.

I grew up on a lot of gospel music.

Women are a key part of the sound of the groups that accompany male singers like Kirk Franklin, Israel Houghton, and myself.

U2 have a lot of religion, also people like Johnny Cash and Elvis. Those people weren't shy about it - it's nice there are people who've come before that were open about it.

I was a big fan of black gospel. As a kid, there were black groups I sang with from my teen years to my early 20s.

The Winans have been some of my favorite people, and Marvin certainly has a real anointing when he preaches and sings; he's a great interpreter of my music.

Every good gospel singer you can hear is a scat singer; they're just using different syllables. There are a lot of jazz singers out there, and more coming out of the churches.

People like Clyde McPhatter who came out of the black churches - like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin - were all church singers who became great pop singers because gospel singing is very close to the blues.

Gospel music in those days of the early 1930s was really taking wing. It was the kind of music colored people had left behind them down South and they liked it because it was just like a letter from home.

I love my family's music because I love it. It's good. I listen to the Winans all the time. I listen to BeBe and CeCe. I listen to Angie and Debbie. I listen to Uncle Daniel. I listen to Phase 2, my two brothers and my two cousins. I think they're incredible.

Most importantly for me growing up, it was a spirituals, it was a gospels, it was James Cleveland, Aretha Franklin, Marion Williams; and then it was Curtis Mayfield - The Main Ingredient, The Whispers, Black Blue Magic, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross - that music helped me preserves my sanity, help me preserve whatever dignity I was able to preserve, helping to keep going. It was a source of tremendous strength in my life.

I used to go to these old tent revivals and listen to the gospel singers. If you think rock and roll is energetic, it pales in comparison to a Pentecostal tent revival.