Gospel
Although Apollo is known today primarily for its work in R&B and doo-wop, Gospel was Apollo's main bread and butter during its years of peak production, from 1948-1952. In addition to Mahalia Jackson, established by 1948 as Apollo's biggest seller and the artist they recorded the most often overall, Apollo also issued recordings by the Roberta Martin Singers, The Dixie Hummingbirds, The Robert Anderson Singers, The Professor Alex Bradford Singers, Rev. B. C. Campbell and his Congregation, The Daniels Singers and the Two Gospel Keys, among others. Rev. James Cleveland made some of his first recordings with Apollo in a group called The Gospelaires and in The Gospel All-Stars, a session he led and arranged. As a result, while Apollo continued to record R&B throughout this period, before 1950 the label had little contact with secular vocal groups of the kind that were becoming popular elsewhere.
Read more about this topic: Apollo Records (1944)
Famous quotes containing the word gospel:
“Love is both Creator’s and Saviour’s gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“This is the gospel of labour, ring it, ye bells of the kirk!
The Lord of Love came down from above, to live with the men who work.
This is the rose that He planted, here in the thorn-curst soil:
Heaven is blest with perfect rest, but the blessing of Earth is toil.”
—Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933)
“He has the earnestness of a prophet. In an age of pedantry and dilettantism, he has no grain of these in his composition. There is nowhere else, surely, in recent readable English, or other books, such direct and effectual teaching, reproving, encouraging, stimulating, earnestly, vehemently, almost like Mahomet, like Luther.... His writings are a gospel to the young of this generation; they will hear his manly, brotherly speech with responsive joy, and press forward to older or newer gospels.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)