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

9. VINEYARD MUSIC (vocal by Kelly Willard) - OH LORD HAVE MERCY ON ME, 1986. From the album 'You Are Here", Mercy.
Praise and worship is a notoriously difficult ministry to capture on tape. For many years the vast majority of praise and worship albums fell into the recorded-live-somewhere-in-a-tent zone of aural mush or the seamlessly smooth MOR-choirs-and-strings type pioneered by California's Maranatha! Music. The distinct musical limitations of both can drag down the most anointed of worship songs even after the prophetically pioneering worship songwriters (Graham Kendrick, Dave Bilbrough, etc) had elevated the best worship songs of the '80s out of the trivial banalities of the early years of the charismatic renewal. Recording these songs was for years a problem though. Songs which must be relatively simple to fulfil the function of congregational singing, need a great deal of skill in arrangement to make them interesting while the temptation to record them sung by a crowd, either a genuine congregation (live) or session singers (MOR) lead to musically dull recordings. The pioneers in breaking the mould of dull worship albums was John Wimber's Vineyard series. Although later recordings tended to revert to the dull MOR-chorus approach a la Maranatha, the early Vineyard albums were classics of their kind with the backing track arranged and produced with at least a bit of a contemporary pop sensibility and lead singers who were not bogged down with unison choruses. This is a gem, a simple plea for God's mercy sung by one of the most haunting and most underrated voices in Christian music, and one of the pioneers of Jesus music, Ms Kelly Willard. A gem.

10. STEVE TAYLOR - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SIN? 1982. From the album 'I Want To Be A Clone', Sparrow.
Since his devastating debut with his gob-smacking six-track mini-album Steve Taylor flourished for a while as Christendom's enfant terrible though the cold shoulder that the Christian Music Establishment has shown towards this most thought-provoking of rockers and the incomprehension dished out to him by many Christian audiences during his 'I Predict 1990' tour, show the Church has sadly a long way to go in learning to deal with a prophetic satirist. All Steve's album's are good, though if he has a fault it's his increasing tendency to big-budget over-production which give his albums a parity with non-Christian Big Rock Buck opuses but which tended to deflect attention away from his rapid-delivery lyrics. For it's Steve's lyrics which bristle with the blackest of humour and the most telling of brickbats which were the singer's greatest asset. A miniscule budget meant that 'I Want To Be A Clone' had a raw, garage rock sound full of thrashing drums and booting sax while the lyric on "Whatever Happened To Sin" was stunning. Never has theological liberalism been so adroitly savaged: "A Christian counsellor wrote, quote/It's the only human choice ahead/If you can't support it/Why don't you abort it instead/He said you pray to the sky/Why when you're afraid to take a stand down here/'Cause while the holy talk reads like a bad ad lib/Silence screams you are robbing the crib/Say it ain't none of my business huh/A woman's got a right to choose/Now a grave-digger/Next you pull the trigger/What then?/ Whatever happened to sin?"

As published in CR2, 1st July 1990
11. STREETLIGHT - HOW COULD YOU SAY NO? 1984. From the mini-album 'Streetlight', Sparrow.
I remember sitting in a radio studio trying to record a country music programme for a short-lived Christian radio station. I'd pulled this out of some dusty corner of my collection because the station had no country gospel albums to speak of. As its eerie, utterly haunting tones echoed from the studio monitors all conversation stopped and the engineer leaned across to deliver the ultimate accolade... "what a voice!" What a voice indeed. A desolate, mournful, impossibly nasal instrument which wrenched every inch of pathos from a most haunting ballad which asks how could anyone ignore Christ's sacrifice, set against Appalachian Mountain-style harmonies. Later that voice would be 'discovered' by America's contemporary Christian music industry and Julie Miller briefly metamorphosized as a Cyndi Lauper-style rock gospeller. Julie even recorded a new version of this part-composed number on her solo debut 'Meet Julie Miller'. But this is the classic rendition, blessed with the ability to move even those whose tastes don't normally run to country music pathos.

12. DION - THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE, 1983. From the album 'Inside Job', Dayspring.
To my ears Dion Dimucci has always been able to sing R&B better than nearly any white boy I've ever heard. His whining, slurred delivery made riveting doowop music (I'll never forget his definitive version of the Drifters' "Ruby Baby"). When he got heavily into smack and all but disappeared from the Big Time, many fans regretted his passing. But then in the '80s there he was bouncing back, born again of the Spirit of God and producing on this debut gospel album one of the greatest testimonies-in-song ever. Backed by a laid-back band with some of the bluesiest Hammond this side of Memphis and a guitarist who could show Knopfler a lick or three, Dion ran through his life...playing stickball on the streets, calling girls dirty names, being cool at the candy store, until darkness descends. But then he finds the One who can make sense of his dizzy kaleidoscope of memories. "Over my shoulder and back through the years/I can see my Father's eyes in my memory/Jesus died upon the cross/All was won and nothing lost/Oh how the truth will set you free." Dion's finest musical moment.

13. GRAHAM KENDRICK - THE SERVANT KING, 1988. From the album 'We Believe', Star Song.
On balance, Graham deserves his reputation as one of the great composers of worship songs. Surely no church in Britain has failed to have been enriched by his ministry. On record of course it's a different story. Possessing a corncrake of a voice with decidedly suspect pitching and recording numerous album whose budgets would have been inadequate if they'd been demos has meant Graham is ill served by albums - his genius being encountered through songbooks rather than recordings. The 'We Believe" album was the exception to the rule on Kendrick's '80s output. Flying Graham to America and giving him a sympathetic producer, top session musos and enough time to iron out the cricks from his vocals produced an album musically head and shoulders above his others while taking a retrospective look at some of his best songs down the years meant there was no substandard material. "The Servant King" has always been a beautiful worship song and hearing it outside the aural limitations of the Spring Harvest Big Top celebrations truly brought it to light.

14. RUSS TAFF - I STILL BELIEVE, 1988. From the album 'Russ Taff', Myrrh.
That surge of joy when you put your stereo up to full throttle and let that wall of rhythms that is great rock music envelop you in an adrenalin-pumping charge, is still one of the great mysteries of the creative experience. Judging from the large numbers of potbellied oldsters leaping around their living rooms to Led Zep, Dire Straits or U2 it has little to do with age. If this had been a single, and had got past the BBC selection panel, this stunning revival of the song originally recorded by those mainstream rockers The Call would have charted. As it is it's the choice cut on a classic album, which was to prove to be the pivotal recording for Russ, who has now returned to his Southern gospel roots. Over a reverb-boosted drum kit thunderous enough to shift the wax from any eardrum, power chords thunder and keyboards propel an anthemic mid tempo song, which surged forward in a relentless gallop. The inspired arrangement fits the words perfectly..."through the pain...and the heat...I still believe". The lyrics have the unmistakable ring of authenticity while Russ' strangled, soul-edged voice has never whooped and wheezed to better effect.

15. SPIRIT OF MEMPHIS QUARTET - THE DAY IS PASSED AND GONE, 1947. From the album 'The Spirit Of Memphis Quartet', King.
Black quartet music have produced few groups as brilliant as the seven-piece led by the mighty voiced Jethro Bledsoe. This team could 'upset' any black congregation, leaving the saints quaking and shaking under the sheer Spirit-wrought power of these much loved church-wreckers. This 78 from the Eisenhower era is one of the most spine-tingling otherworldly recordings ever put out for popular music consumption. Acappella, it consists of three awesome elements: lugubrious lead bluesily intoning a blunt declaration of faith with enough melisma and blue notes to make your average blues enthusiast go ga-ga; a rasped sermonette hoarsely exhorting Christians to keep going over "the rough side of the mountain"; and an eerie drone of precisely-harmonised 'oohs'. Call it superb folk art or anointed ministry it doesn't really matter though it would be good if Christians, black as well as white, could begin paying attention to the rich musical heritage of groups like Spirit Of Memphis. Incongruously, it's non-Christian, white, matrix-number collectors who are currently keeping the memory of classics like this 1949 recording alive.

16. TAKE 6 - A QUIET PLACE, 1987. From the album 'Take 6', Reprise.
The '80s sound of acappella. This team won more awards and rich acclaim for their debut album than any of the thousands of storefront harmonizers could have dreamed of. It was all deserved too. Seldom have human voices been taken to such levels of musical complexity, harmony laid on harmony to build intricate, lightly swinging, jazz-gospel creations of dazzling virtuosity. But Take 6 were not just exercises in vocal technique. Their lyrical sound, which can at times sound rather like '50s middle of the roaders the Four Freshmen and at times like how a Temptations performance might come over if the band never showed, always keeps you listening and grooving with its jazz pizzazz.

17. DON FRANCISCO - TOO SMALL A PRICE, 1982. From the album 'Got To Tell Somebody', Newpax.
Nobody could tell biblical stories in song better than this country-tinged troubadour. Don managed to build a big following in Britain without any help from the usual Festival showcases thanks to his willingness to tour constantly and this utterly compelling re-telling of the pain, despair and final glorious moment of faith of the thief on the cross is, even today, a constant of his stage performances. Musically Don had his limitations but here a nicely abrasive rock guitar and some engagingly dated synth effects perfectly fit the doomy mood of the song. He continued the story (the thief's arrival in Heaven no less!) on another album but it's this vivid saga which bites the deepest.

18. KIM HILL - UNSPOKEN LOVE, 1988. From the album 'Kim Hill', Reunion.
The simplest of productions, a piano, and a voice, a husky contralto which is surely one of the most characteristic in Christendom, was all that was needed when the song is of this quality. An achingly sad ballad which was the most poignant of warnings to every husband or wife not to miss the God given opportunities to express and demonstrate love; "Unspoken Love" was a gem.

19. AMY GRANT - LEAD ME ON, 1988. From the album 'Lead Me On', Reunion.
I remember Stewart Henderson telling me how banal he though the video of 'Lead Me On' was. (I loved that too - Amy walking through canyons and standing under waterfalls might have been clichéd to his superior aesthetic perspective but for me it seemed perfectly to fit the mood and message of the song). Of the single though we both agreed, here was a perfect pop record, its glorious anthemic swirl sounding as good on Radio One (who almost made it into a hit) as it did in all its high tech state-of-the-art majesty when crashing from your stereo. Amy's captivating bittersweet voice whispered soft and intimate then soared strong and strident while a morse-code guitar figure and interlocking synths propel her forward. A timeless track.

20. LARRY NORMAN - I WISH WE'D ALL BEEN READY, 1982. From the album 'Upon This Rock', Dove.
I've lost count of the renditions Larry's recorded of this song, not mentioning old Harry Webb's, but this is still the best. Larry's voice is high, fragile and almost breaking with world-weariness. A string quartet and piano produced an accompaniment as sonorous as a sigh and a lyric which left in the hands of your average white metaller would have come across as hectoring rant, in the hand of this laureate of Christian rock becomes a warning, more sad than chilling, of what will happen on the day of the Rapture. Who will ever forget Larry's imagery of disappearing husbands and dining-demon? Some believers may have a different Rapture theology but few can argue that this classic from the Jesus music days still hits home with prophetic power.

As published in CR3, 1st September 1990
21 HARMONISING FOUR - WHEN TEARS ARE FALLING. From the various artists album 'Jesus Is The Answer', Charly, 1983.
The Harmonising Four clocked up 40 years of recording with only one personnel change, so when I tell you these guys' harmonies were tight it's clear I ain't jivin' junior. The oiliest most lugubrious sound ever to ooze from an hi-fi loudspeaker it was the inspiration for a thousand doowop group though, as usual, black gospel's pioneers never saw the paydirt. This cut for Vee Jay Records stems from 1962 and is a classic for every delicate flight of lead singer Thomas Johnson (listen to the way wiley ol' Tom stays just behind then just in front of the death march beat) and that oohing, aahing chorus which rises and falls in uncanny effect. No wonder black gospel's tiny but vociferous band of matrix-number collecting devotees are prepared to swop vital organs for a mint Harmonising Pour on Decca (circa.1943). Art as timeless as that produced by these veterans has no price.

22 REZ - LOVE COME DOWN. From the album 'Between Heaven And Hell', Sparrow, 1986.
Heavy rock started with blues riffs and when you've got a singer as competent with gravel-voiced blues hollering as Rez's Glen Kaiser all it needs is the right riff for the sparks to fly. Rez have never had a meatier axe riff than this, a series of explosive surges of grated distortion in between which Glen can rasp staccato interjections. Pumped up to nosebleed volume it's got to be one of the most energising rock tracks ever and though the storyline of the accompanying video left me baffled this is still blues rock, tough and heavy enough to appeal to all but the most lobotomised heavy head.