Gospel Music Quotes

I always loved Sam Cooke, because he seemed very versatile. He sang gospel, soul, blues, pop music

And different traditions stress different - so then there's that. I talked to an African American who says before she goes into an interracial church, she sits in her car and she listens to gospel music to get her fill, and she goes into an interracial church where they don't do gospel music, and she's ready to accept the other sorts of ways of worshipping. So there's that.

There are rooms for traditional and contemporary and hip hop Gospel music.

My family was into music. My dad was into music down south. My mom and grandmother were into gospel music so there were all types. That was my inspiration.

Personally I prefer Gospel music.

My interest in gospel music and liturgical art and Biblically-inspired literature has nothing to do with organised religion and everything to do with human beings trying to figure out their place on this planet.

When I think about a Chicago sound, I think about the Great Migration from the South. Many of Chicago's black artists are from Mississippi, Arkansas, and with them was brought blues and gospel music.

A lot of the commercial expression of hip-hop leaves a lot to be desired - but then, there's a lot of whack gospel music, but I'm not leading a crusade against it. Of course, the vices of hip-hop are far more influential, I understand. But the good that hip-hop transmits, the power of the culture to rally the best of our protest, and uplift, and resistance, traditions, is often unfairly overlooked.

I used to listen to so much doo-wop, and I've talked a lot about gospel music, but I realised a lot of that language came from doo-wop music. You know, "I Asked the Lord Above," "Heaven Sent Me an Angel." That's rock-'n-roll, and that's where a lot of this language is coming from. Also, I've said before that as soon as you start having a conversation with Jesus in a song you know you're dealing with issues of morality and how fragile it is to be human. It's a shortcut to putting those ideas across.

I've always said that if I could have made a living someway in gospel music, I would have loved to had that break, but it never was offered to me, a job in that field, so naturally, I got lost on that other road.

My raps are a decision, rabble rousing, spiritual, like gospel music. I don't want to dance. We have so many things to deal with, we need to talk straight up and down.

Since I was two years old, all I knew was gospel music. That music became such a part of my life it was as natural as dancing. A way to escape from the problems. And my way of release.

I feel most alive when I'm singing along to old gospel music.

To me, Gospel music is really any music that's a testimony and tells a story of what God has done in your life.

Gospel music is the purest thing there is on this earth.

I listen to gospel music.

I'm associated with gospel music in the minds of millions of people.

There is a sound that comes from gospel music that doesn't come from anything else. It is a sound of peace. It is a sound of, 'I'm going to make it through all of this.

My direction has never really changed, because I don't think that you can really work gimmicks in gospel music. With gospel music, there is this central theme that always comes around about the love of God, the love of Jesus and the power that you have through Jesus Christ. You don't need a gimmick when you have that.

Why is it important for you to know the real God? Because your identity is found in Him.

It just took the right time. I was fully confident that I was going to see Sam Phillips and to record for him that when I called him, I thought, I'm going to get on Sun Records. So I called him and he turned me down flat. Then two weeks later, I got turned down again. He told me over the phone that he couldn't sell gospel music so - as it was independent, not a lot of money.

I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old, gospel music felt familiar, like I had heard it in the womb or something. A lot of those old gospel songs still give me that feeling, that it's older than time and there's actually music that can tap into a universal subconscious, or whatever word you want to put on it.

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

My influences were mostly gospel. So I was playing my twisted Jewish equivalent of gospel music over his twisted equivalent of rock and roll music. And it was a very excellent marriage.

I used to turn to nature and animals a lot. And fishing. I spend time still with my Bible and the gospel music, and I still have to feed the animals! But my wife and daughter have brought me a world of perspective when I'm feeling just a little "extra important."

I'm not ashamed, or embarrassed. I'm happy that I grew up listening to gospel music and came from where I came from. I feel like I have a history and a story. That's what I am and that's what I'll always be from. I was never running away from it.

If you don't die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.

I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.

I was asked to sing with Mavis Staples on a gospel compilation called 'Oh Happy Day.' And, you know, other than being totally intimidated at the prospect of singing with Mavis, I was honored. I don't really have much of a background in gospel music.

I was definitely inspired by gospel music, or old-school R&B; I got into some Good God gospel compilations.

And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.

Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.

My childhood was limited to mostly gospel music. We didn't have, like, a lot of records in our house, you know. It was like my grandparents who raised me. They were pretty old-fashioned in their religious ways, so it was like church, church, church, school, school, school.

I think that one of Elvis' charms was that he could sing almost any kind of music. I am sure that in his heart, which I don't know what was there, but just from his singing I could feel that he was very partial to gospel music.

My greatest desire is that you would encounter His presence; and everything about your life would be different.

It's quite interesting that in my growing up I had several influences. We had gospel music on campus. R&B music was, of course, the community, and radio was country music. So I can kind of see where all the influences came from.

I wrote 'Turn Your Radio On' in 1937, and it was published in 1938. At this time radio was relatively new to the rural people, especially gospel music programs. I had become alert to the necessity of creating song titles, themes, and plots, and frequently people would call me and say, 'Turn your radio on, Albert, they're singing one of your songs on such-and-such a station.' It finally dawned on me to use their quote, 'Turn your radio on,' as a theme for a religious originated song, and this was the beginning of 'Turn Your Radio On' as we know it.

My heart is still there in gospel music. It never left . . . I'm gonna make a gospel record and tell Jesus I cannot bear these burdens alone.

Gospel music is so ingrained into my bones. I can't do a concert without singing a gospel song. It's what I was raised on.

A lot of blues music seems like it's moving away from God, or the center, and Gospel music is moving towards it. It's embracing a higher reality. When you look a little closer, the way that I define it or explain it, is that the blues is the naked cry of the human heart, apart from God. People are searching for union with God. They're searching to be home. There's something in people that seeks this union with their creator. Why am I here? Where am I going? What's it all about? Who am I? All this kind of stuff.

I would like to involve myself in some black music. I would like to do some blues and some gospel music. I want to try stuff from other genres and try to widen my musical base.

I'm very interested in religion and different religions, and I know quite a lot about it. I love gospel music, and I love going to churches, but the one drawback is that I don't actually believe in God. And it is quite a handicap, you know.

In spite of calamity, He still has a plan for me, And it's working for my good, And it's building my testimony.

From the church I received a spiritual foundation that has kept me balanced. From the gospel music I learned the importance of singing with emotion- authentic emotion- not contrived- which has made my music endearing.

It's always made me feel odd when I'd get a Dove Award for an instrumental album that has nothing to do with gospel. When I think of gospel music, I think of spreading the Good News with words. But maybe it's just because I was heralded once upon a time as one of theirs. The category of instrumental music seems sort of important to the big picture, but I felt a little embarrassed at the same time.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt, who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson and a few others.

At first I didn't understand what [Thelonious Monk] was doing, but I went back again, and what I can say about Monk is that I heard ancient Africa in his music. When he played, it was like a ballet. He captured the sound of the universe. Monk could take a triad, a simple chord, and make it sound dissonant. I'm sure that element he had in his piano was part of the two years he spent traveling with his mother in gospel music in the tent shows.

I think the amazing thing about Gospel music is that not only does it lift up the death and resurrection of our Lord, which is consistent with the Gospel, but it is uniquely communicated depending upon the generation.

When I did the Abyssinian mass, I went through the whole history of the church music and the gospel music, even with the Anglo American hymns, the Afro American hymns, the spirituals and how it developed, up to Thomas Dorsey and the Dixie Hummingbirds, going through the history of the music, jazz musicians.

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.