For the remaining weeks of February, I’ll be focusing on African-American contributions to independent Christian music, in celebration of Black History Month. Both rock and roll in general, and Christian rock/indie/whatever music owe a huge debt to the African-American experience. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to overstate this.
Andrae Crouch is one of the most influential Gospel artists of all time. In fact, he has often been known as the “father of modern gospel music.” And while the connection between traditional Gospel music and Christian indie/punk rock might not be obvious, it’s not as distinct as one might think. If you are looking back at Crouch’s music from this point in history, it’s difficult to see how radical and influential he was, because nowadays his music might sound ‘standard’ for Gospel music. But what we miss by looking back in this way is that Gospel music sounds the way it does largely because of Crouch.
Crouch integrated traditional black gospel sounds with rock and roll and soul, and even integrated into spaces dominated by us white folks as early as the 1970s. Historically speaking, this is only a few short years after the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights movement. John J. Thompson talks about Crouch’s influence in his book Raised by Wolves, and his efforts to tear down racial barriers in Gospel music–barriers, which unfortunately continued to exist for decades more and still to this day.
For our Song of the Day, we’re digging deep in Crouch’s early catalog and picking one of his more rock/soul songs, “Everything Changed.” Can’t you see hear that opening guitar riff sampled for a modern hip-hop track? Such a powerful tune! Andrae’s music and influence was so widespread that his tunes were covered by artists as diverse as Paul Simon, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Little Richard. Yes, artists of this caliber wanted to record Crouch’s tunes!
Thank you, Andrae, for doing what you could to work towards racial reconciliation. Yes, we still have a lot of work today but thank you for your pioneering efforts! Crouch died in 2015 at the age of 73.