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

23 CYNTHIA CLAWSON - I'LL BE HOME. From the album 'Finest Hour', Triangle, 1981.
There's no mileage in toting middle of the road music. Your colleagues think it's tangible evidence of creeping senility, your youth group will laugh at you and every cliché about elevator music and saccharine coatings will come up if you admit to enjoying a Sandi Patti or a (perish the thought) Dave Pope track. But really music is less about genres and markets, than singers and songs. When you've got such a technically superb vocalist as Ms Clawson (one of a bevy of Nashville-based lasses whose squeaky clean and very American image makes her a difficult singer to market UK despite US popularity) and a song as fine as this, I find myself having to bite the bullet and saying this is a brilliant track. A ballad (what else?), with a delicately acoustic guitar giving it a slight country-cum-folk feel. The three things which push it to the top of the stack are a liltingly beautiful melody, some poignantly understated vocalising from Cynth (not for her the hand-wringing melodrama which can make Ms Patti so unlistenable) and a lyric which speaks of eternity hope with stark, poetic simplicity. Whoever you are David Henson (words and music man for "I'll Be Home") you sure know how to craft a song.

24 TRAMAINE - FALL DOWN (SPIRIT OF LOVE). Extended Vocal Version, 12" single, A&M, 1985.
A single further from the controlled sweetness of Cynthia Clawson than Tramaine Hawkins would be hard to find. Here's a singer who subscribes to the hallowed black gospel belief that the only way to sing a song is to shriek it into shreds and proceeds to savage Robert Wright's exhortation for the Spirit to descend. As if Tramaine's screams, gasps and gargles weren't electrifying enough, the track, a full-tilt piece of dance funk, is something else. Synth bass and percussion positively crunch the bones, though to get the full effect you need to search out this 12-inch (the mix on "The Search Is Over' just isn't as hard). No wonder this was a US dance monster in '85. Gospel funk rules.

25 D-BOY - WHEN I STRUT. From the album 'Plantin' A Seed', Frontline, 1989.
It took a "secular" producer in Robert Wright to pump up the bass on Tramaine's mighty dance jam and for the next five years nothing has been quite as heavy again in Christendom. But this comes close. A mighty, mighty bass line which trundles like an unstoppable train, a drum sound which sounds like hammer hitting anvil and a slyly witty rap from D-Boy Rodriguez. "My lyrics are my music," he exhorts and after this hip-hop monster who'd argue.

26 SHIRLEY NOVAK - THE LIAR. From the album 'Beyond Your Eyes', Pulse, 1987.
A great example of how poor, impoverished Brit gospel artists can sometimes compete even when their recording budgets would be pushed to cover of the costs of one Amy Grant song demo. Shirley is a mighty talent, a singer/songwriter with a compelling original singing style who sounds not a lot like anyone else around. And here she performs one of the most chilling songs ever committed to tape, an awesome eerie ballad about the Devil which is helped in part by some of the most effective digital delay ever to emerge from a recording engineers box of tricks, sears itself into the mind. Not a comfortable listen but a quite brilliant cut.

27 STAPLES - GOD CAN. From the album 'The Staples', Warner Bros, 1983.
After their move to soul music most gospel buffs wrote the Staple Singers but this wondrously soulful gospel ballad turned up on a decidedly ordinary pop soul album track in the early '80s. What makes it is a lovely harmonised hook and a sermonette from Pops where he compares the operation of God with a boy flying a kite far in the clouds "you can't see it but sometimes you can feel it trembling on the string..." A wonderful throwback to those Chicago gospel roots.

28 STAPLE SINGERS - UNCLOUDY DAY. From the various artists album 'Jesus Is The Answer', Charly, 1985.
What roots Pops, Mavis and co had. This chilling spine-tingling hit is a black gospel classic, Pops' reverberating swamp-blues guitar droning, and Mavis swooping and gyrating like she has 20 years of storefronts behind her rather than being the gauche teenager that she was back in 1956. And as a bonus you can get it on the wonderful compilation album as the Harmonising Four's "When Tears Are Falling".

29 SAINT - ISLAND PRISONER. From the album 'Times's End', Pure Metal, 1986.
Metal is still for many Christians the musical equivalent of a Black and Decker through the cranium yet once you've learnt its own ferociously wall-of-sound rules, it's a music that no other genre can equal for a primeval excitement. Best heard in the moshing steam-heat of a gig it's deceptively difficult to capture on record. This blast from '86 when white metal was emerging from the obscurity of US underground movements to force the Christian music moguls to pay attention is as heavy a piece of metal as your ears are likely to tolerate. With a vocalist who specialises in shrieks loud enough to create their own sonic boom and a guitar sound overdriven to the limit, it's clearly not music for every occasion. But if you feel born to boogie or want to ensure that Satan knows his place in the pit of hell, this thunderous lump of white hot metal will get you there.

30. TERRY TALBOT - WHO IS HE/HE IS JESUS. From the album 'On Wings Of The Wind', Sparrow, 1983.
It's been his brother John Michael who's rather cornered the market in contemplative worship songs which subtly fuse medieval church music, fulsome classical orchestration and delicate harmonies but Terry's album did it best of all. Aided by the London Philharmonic, Terry sings some exquisitely beautiful compositions of which this is the most haunting. And the multi-tracked harmonies resonate with a mood of devotional purity. After a year or two few albums retain their listenability let alone their intended role of drawing the listener into communion and adoration of God. The fact that for me and my family. 'Wings Of The Wind' does that in 1990 helps me believe that long after many of those American sickly-sweet worship banalities pouring out have been forgotten - this album, though long deleted, will still be touching the hearts of those fortunate enough to possess a copy.

As published in CR4, 1st November 1990
31. TIM MINER - DID I FORGET TO SAY. From the album 'I Know You Think You Know', Sparrow, 1988.
One of CMM's most understated talents, its as a blue eyed soulman that the so-gifted Californian neatly grabs the attention - Tim's efforts as a purveyor of rock gospel are deadly anonymous. The killer on an uneven album is this gem, a beautiful mid-tempo 'floater' (as a soul jock I used to know would say) which dreamily eases along while Tim soulfully glides across a song so catchy that it is only when you study the lyric the penny drops it's a song about repentance not soppy romantic 'lurve'. If you thought Tim hollered good and soulful on the recent D-Boy rap gem, catch this delicious slice of slinky soul-gospel.

32. JUDSON SPENCE - HOT AND SWEATY. From the album 'Judson Spence', Atlantic, 1988.
Songs about sex in Christian music circles are as common as fleas on a Dove Award winner so it is hardly surprising that this wonderfully up front song about the forbidden topic should come from a 'secular' album. Judson is another Tim Miner, a major blue-eyed soul talent whose brilliance remained unrecognised in CCM circles. Ol' Jud got his one moment of recognition with the release of this big-budget stone killer of an album. This is the choice cut, a hard funk rhythm track which is downright wicked (just catch those spurts of rhythm guitar), an engagingly catchy hook and plenty of room for Judson to purr, growl and rasp. Judson is as black sounding a honkie as ever hollered "Lord have mercy" into a microphone while the track, supplied by the kind of creme-de-la-creme sessioners most CCM singers can only dream about, still generates heat to the feet in as fast moving a genre as contemporary dance. But what lifts the cut above its compatriots is the lyric, addressed to a girl who thinks Judson is a "wham, bam, thank you mam" kind of guy. With no trace of coyness the singer tells his would-be lover that "there ain't no need to get hot and sweaty" because "there's more to love than sex." Yep, your pastor would find this song beyond-the-pale but in reality this is New Testament theology presented in the context where the issues really take on relevance - in the steam heat lust of the disco.

33. HEAVENLY GOSPEL SINGERS - THE PRODIGAL SON. From the album 'Heavenly Gospel Singers', Nugrape, 1985.
As the authoritative sleevenote on this album rightly points out "whenever a modern gospel singer makes his way down the aisle of a church, wringing his hands, contorting his body, and wrenching an emotional reaction from his listeners, he pays tribute, however unconsciously, to Gospel Jim, the Heavenly Gospel Singers' Jimmy Bryant. But Mr Bryant was more than a pioneering lead singer who brought acrobatic histrionics into the pre-war gospel circuit. His was a voice every bit as soulfully declamatory as the leather-lunged leaders of the Dixie Hummingbirds (who Jimmy joined briefly in 1939) and the Sensational Nightingales. This tough and soulful-piece of black gospel acappella is compellingly fresh 40 years on from its recording. One wonders if Sandi Patti will fair as well.

34. KEITH GREEN - THERE IS A REDEEMER. From the album 'Songs For The Shepherd', Pretty Good, 1983.
There are few more powerfully anointed albums than the one Keith recorded months prior to his tragic plane-crash death. This classic contemporary hymn is surely the artistic culmination of a brilliant talent and a heart which gave its utmost for his highest. In all the much deserved criticism levelled at the banality of many current worship songs let us not forget the rare but very real high spots, like this glorious God-directed anthem. The arrangement as on all the songs on this album is superb too.

35. WHITES - DOING IT BY THE BOOK. From the album 'Doing It By The Book', Canaan, 1988.
Country gospel has been poorly served by British record companies in recent years. Cash and Hamilton IV apart, few country gospel albums find their way across the pond. When the full and complete History of Gospel is finally written (don't look at me, mate!) a good few chapters are going to be needed to chronicle the seminal hillbilly pioneers who not only gave gospel much of its early creative impetus but also were a key ingredient in the cultural collision that was rock 'n' roll. All this of course is as water off a ducks back to those who put down country music as a jolly knee-slapping anachronism or who find the glossy outpourings of showbiz-Nashville the musical equivalent of a glass of salt water. But if like me you do like eerily-voiced ladies whose nasal harmonies sound American as a plate of Mom's apple pie, and an acoustic picked so fast you can almost feel the wind created by the flying digits, this is for you. Both Sharon and Sheryl White sound wonderfully down home, this mid-tempo bouncer is as infectious as measles and Ricky Skagg's picking (he also co-produced) is a joy to the ear.

36. LUST CONTROL - RACE. From the album 'We Are A Condom Nation', independent, 1988.
Such is the genius of rock'n'roll that sometimes timeless classics can be recorded by musical incompetents while the most technically brilliant musos can sometimes produce nothing more than yawns. This bunch of weirdo's from Austin, Texas play their very occasional gigs in masks, sing songs of staggering effrontery and judging from the evidence of this bedroom/ basement tape made for a budget of 5p, can barely play their instruments. But what these guys have is ENERGY and as they career into a full tilt punk-throwback one doesn't just get a blaring excuse to pogo-one-more-time one gets a chance to smile. The song? The words 'I'm saved by grace' repeated ad infinitum with wonderfully effective unison bawls of "GRACE!!" The US Christian underground's finest hour.