Tony Cummings embarks on a personal pilgrimage to locate the 1001 greatest Christian tracks ever recorded.

As published in CR1, 1st May 1990
Dave Marsh was a colleague of mine; way back when hair was long and party-nights were longer. We didn't know each other too well though well enough, through sharing the same book publisher, to have a lot of respect for someone who, as they used to say in the music biz back then, had 'good ears'.

That meant he knew the difference between the brilliant from the merely good and could find songs, out of the hundreds and thousands of records that pour into the lives of professional rock journalists that had that glimmer of creative genius. Sometimes Dave was even able to locate and codify in words (always a frustrating mode of expression when dealing with music!) why they were brilliant. A good reliable reviewer of Dave was.

Now 20 years on he's gone rock music legit and got a book of rock reviews, published by Penguin. It's called The Heart Of Rock And Soul. What you get are Dave's reviews of a thousand and one tracks hyped on the book cover as 'the greatest singles ever made'.

All lovers of pop music should investigate the book. Dave's ears are as good as ever and though there's just a touch of the portentous about some of his writing, the veteran journalist does do a good job in flagging down plenty of classics in the millions of songs recorded in the post-war years. But what is sorely missing in Dave's tome, as the author himself admits, is gospel music. "There are no gospel singles in The Heart Of Rock And Soul quite simply because I could find no way of contextualizing them without trivializing them," he writes.

Dave is right in admitting his omission. Like just about every other rock music historian, he has little or no familiarity with the thousands of post-war black gospel records, which not only represent one of the richest veins of music but are also a root source of the rock and roll beat and the southern soul music Dave loves with such passion.

THE DEVIL STOLE THE BEAT
But the flaw in Dave's perspective goes deeper than his black gospel blindspot. Dave rightly accredits rock music classics as being permeated with a transcendent joy, a kind of life-enhancing spirit, which goes way, way beyond the simple musical forms of the genre.

Dave is much taken to musing about teenage rebellion, creative energy and the elevating power of rock'n'roll music as he seeks to codify the nature of the magic, which lifts humble ol' pop and rock records into timeless works of art. But Dave, with no Christian faith, and no particular reverence for the church save the standard, slightly idealised benevolence towards black and hillbilly churches common among liberal rock historians, fails to recognise the spiritual dimension of all good art.

In a nutshell Mr Marsh fails to recognise that God speaks to us through creation and where the creative gift, which is quintessentially one of the ways man is made in the image of the creator God, is used effectively it speaks of God.

The joy, the surging power, the very essence of life itself which Dave finds at the centre of rock and soul music, is an echo, a reflection, of the source of all creativity and the giver of all life. Dave doesn't recognise that of course. But committed Christians, by the grace of God, do. And we can also clearly identify the despoiling influence of the Enemy in the history of rock'n'roll. As the great black gospel singer Mahalia Jackson observed when asked for her comments on rock 'n' roll music, "the Devil stole the beat." The Devil did indeed steal the beat and some of the songs, championed by Mr Marsh, though they vibrate with life-loving-energy, are marred by lyrics of lust and fatuous rebellion.

Since my Christian conversion in 1980, and my switch from 'secular music journalism' to 'Christian journalism' in 1981, a conviction has grown steadily within me that because Christians have received, in part at least, a revelation of the source of the life and joy which is at the centre of music, many of the finest examples of music are those where this realisation is expressed in a song's lyrics.

At first this conviction was limited to a long-term sphere of interest in African American gospel. To me it was easy to hear, that however effective and soulful Tina Turner might sound as she asked "What's Love Got To Do With It?" the essential lie within the lyric limited it's effect. Only when a singer of similar vocal proficiency (for instance Tata Vega) brought in a world view that love has got everything to do with it, was popular music taken to a new level of perfection.

My taste for black gospel superseded my taste for soul music as it became clearer and clearer to me that the Swan Silverstones could have sung any Motown act off the stage and that Vanessa Bell Armstrong still has the gospel fire Aretha Franklin had, in part, capitulated to showbiz. But then came my immersion into the best kept secret in Britain's music business - the world of contemporary Christian music.

Here was music that couldn't claim, as black gospel could, to be a creative wellspring from which secular sources had drunk deep. As those within Christian music with creative inferiority complexes are so fond of reminding us, contemporary Christian music (or Jesus rock as it was in those formative years in the mid-'60s/early '70s) comes after the Lord Mayor's show. It is said to have been developed, in part at least, by spiritually naive and aesthetically stinted musicians pouncing on to the world's music (the Beatles et al) to 'use' it for evangelism and other ministries. Though that's true as far as it goes it fails to take account of Christian music pioneers and later exponents who display the musical chops to have 'made it' on the world's terms if they'd been prepared to bow the knee to the Top 20 (Larry Norman through to the Choir, the list is surprisingly long).

It fails to take account that few artists - be they Phil Collins or Phil Keaggy - in a movement as vast as popular music, are true stylistic originators anyway. The key consideration is not how 'original' is the artist's recording but does it have that 'better felt than tell't' magic which rises above the mountains of competent but ordinary pop, rock and soul.