Continuing our “A Look Back” series, let’s once again ‘turn back the clock’, and this time we’ll journey back 35 years to April 1990. We’ll take a look at the southern gospel music scene, using Singing News Magazine as our guide…
Gracing the cover of Singing News that month was one of the ‘first families’ of gospel music, the Speers. In 1991, they would celebrate an unprecedented 70 years of southern gospel music ministry. But, here in 1990, the Speers were enjoying the success of two number-one songs on the Singing News Southern Gospel Top 80 Chart – in fact, two number-ones in less than one year: “Saved To The Uttermost” (#1 June-July 1989) and “He’s Still In The Fire” (#1 March-April 1990). As part of their upcoming 70th anniversary celebration, the Speers would soon release a live recording featuring many former members of the group, including Harold Lane, Charles Yates, and Sue Dodge, performing their ‘signature’ songs from years past.
Singing News also ran a feature story on the “new” J.D. Sumner & The Stamps Quartet. Of course, many will recall the Stamps as backup singers for Elvis Presley in the mid-to-late 70s. The group continued even after Presley’s death in 1977, but fell into a bit of obscurity. In 1980, J.D. Sumner joined forces with Hovie Lister and James Blackwood to launch the Masters V. This was a “dream come true” for fans of 1950s/1960s gospel music, as a number of ‘legends’ (including Jake Hess and Rosie Rozell) had come together to pay homage to classic southern gospel music. The Masters V quietly disbanded around 1988, and J.D. Sumner subsequently re-formed the Stamps Quartet. Here in 1990, this ‘revived’ Stamps included J.D. Sumner, joined by Jerry Trammell (tenor), Ed Hill (baritone), Jack Toney (lead), and C.J. Almgren (piano). They had just released a new recording for RiverSong records, Victory Road.
The April 1990 issue of Singing News also included an Official Nominating Ballot for the 20th annual Singing News Fan Awards. Directly to the left of the ballot was an article written by Editor Jerry Kirksey: “I Can’t Believe Singing News Didn’t Nominate My Favorite!” Kirksey noted, “for about the 20th time I am going to try to explain that the Singing News does not nominate anyone.” These were – and still, to this day, are – fan awards. Therefore the nominees are selected by fans (subscribers to Singing News), and then voted on by fans.
The awards would be given later in the year at the National Quartet Convention in Nashville. A few of the winners included Peg McKamey Bean (favorite female singer), Ivan Parker (favorite male singer), “Here I Am” (song of the year, recorded by the Hoppers), Gold City (favorite group), and Kim Greene Hopper (favorite young artist).
For many years, the Singing News Trade Review (geared towards industry/radio professionals) was included in the magazine (it would later become a standalone publication). One of my personal favorite articles was the ‘Radio Forum’, written by the late Paul Heil, longtime host of the syndicated The Gospel Greats radio program. Heil gave insight into the southern gospel radio market, which was still growing here in the early 1990s. In this issue, Heil stressed the advantages of opening AM/PM ‘drive-times’ to music. A number of stations across the country were airing talk/preaching programs in these time slots. Heil acknowledged the reasoning – these 15 or 30-minute programs were ‘paid’, and provided much-needed income to stations. However, Heil offered an alternative. He suggested that stations offer the opportunity for these local preachers to produce shorter programs (4-to-5 minute ‘mini-sermons’ or even 1-minute daily messages) that could be aired within music blocks. He indicated, “According to the ratings services, stations…find that periods of the broadcasting day when music is featured have significantly better ratings – larger audiences – than do the times when preaching programs are aired. This has less to do with the content of the programs than it does with the fact that today’s lifestyles tend to make listening to long-form programs, especially during the day, difficult.”
Perhaps you can see why I enjoy Paul Heil’s articles – that information that was valid in 1990 still rings true to this very day!
