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

POP SONG MINISTRY
Every since 1968 when Larry Norman sang that most achingly poignant account of the Rapture "I Wish We'd All Been Ready", contemporary Christian music has produced true-classics: few at first then more each year as the surge of albums increased. That, at least, is my strong conviction. As this conviction grew so did my list of personal favourites, my nominations for classic status - first a Top 10, then a Top 50.

It took Dave Marsh's book to push me over the edge and contemplate a 1001 all time Christian music classics. It sounds a massive task...and it is. But I've been blessed with access to a lot of music, (I reckon I've heard about 10,000 different Christian music albums) and somehow have retained and indeed deepened and diversified, my tastes for all forms of music.

Some may view the undertaking of this series a work of monumental editorial eccentricity or worse some misguided attempt to establish myself as some Oracle Of Christian Music. I don't believe it's either.

I believe the value of an ongoing series like The Spirit Of Rock And Soul will be threefold. First it will bring a sense of the rich, rich history of Christian music to readers who still hold the misguided belief that popular music by Christians is always inferior to that of the world's. As I've stated already, I think the Swan Silverstone could out-sing any Motown superstars and I'm equally certain Any Grant possesses one of the most perfect voices popular music has ever produced. Secondly, the series may help record collectors uncover classics in one of the most undocumented and undiscovered areas of popular music (though the obscurity of some of my 1001 favourites may assign you to years of searching!).

Thirdly, a series like this underlines what is at the heart of Cross Rhythms, a belief that artistic excellence, shown by Christians, has an additional dimension - a very real ability to minister the fruits and very life of Jesus Christ.

All of these songs have bought me something life enhancing, some aspect of truth or hint of hope beyond the adrenalin pumping high of great rock'n'roll or deeper-than-deep soul music. All of these songs have brought me blessing from on high. I hope and pray some will for you.

1. ANDRAE CROUCH (Vocal by Tata Vega) - OH, IT IS JESUS, 1984. From the album 'No Time To Lose', Light.
Somehow in my bones, I always knew I'd plump for a black gospel track at number one. Black gospel, the roots of so much of what 20th century music has to offer - black gospel, without which we wouldn't have gotten contemporary Christian music and probably wouldn't have gotten the rock beat period. In many ways this track is the quintessential black gospel track because stylistically it straddles old and new, storefront choir and LA 48-track, timeless folk-art and sweet soul music. Mr Crouch is a post war music pioneer particularly for his intuitive ability in wrenching black gospel form out of the stylised holler-and-scream, call-and-response histrionics of much post-war gospel and bringing in multi-track rhythms tracks and funky backbeats thereby paving the way for BeBe and CeCe Winans, Kirk Franklin and all the crossover gospellers we're going to see in the '90s. But Andrae was also a brilliant composer of memorable, congregational praise choruses, with hooks hummable enough to transcend the grotesque division of 'black church' and 'white church.' This song has yet to gain the popularity of earlier praise songs like "Soon And Very Soon" or "Through It All" but is Crouch at his greatest with an achingly lovely anthem, recounting the tale of the sick lady with enough faith to touch the hem of the Lord's garment in her search for healing. Andrae (never the strongest of singers) allows a hand-picked choir to sing the chorus with quivering poignancy. But what takes the rendition up to utterly sublime heights is the lead vocal of Tata Vega. Brilliant albums both soul (Motown) and gospel (Royal Music) have brought Ms Vega scant recognition but here she sings a lead vocal of such swoopingly soulful majesty, her rich contralto purring, growling and octave-leaping in such breathtaking control that the phrase ' soul music' takes on a whole new dimension. Here is hope, joy and deep, deep faith in the healer of bodies and minds, captured in a popular music work of art. No one who hears her could fail to be moved and uplifted.

2. MICHAEL W SMITH - SECRET AMBITION, 1987. From the album 'I To Eye', Reunion.
When one thinks of what had gone before of Mike's platinum selling 'I To Eye' album, this classic of contemporary Christian pop/rock becomes even more awesome. A promising but lightweight debut album, successful but rather one-dimensional synths pop second, 'The Big Picture' (which the evangelist Jimmy Swagart had subjected to a blustering attack on American Christian TV) for his third. Nothing had prepared us for 'I To Eye,' an album of such tantalising musical textures that if the lyrics had been less overt Michael would now be peering over mega bucks. As it was, the album went platinum (don't believe those myths about young American Christians always buying dross) and no track motors more than this gem. Listen to the drums, punching and kicking with a life of their own. Listen to that wheezing white boy vocal (never Michael's strongest point but so effective here). Listen to those power chords and undulating synth riffs. Or listen to that most memorable of hooks "Nobody knew his secret ambition/He came to give his life away." Seldom has such holy truth been so effectively thrust into the consciousness of all those who enjoy a good pop hook.

3. ADRIAN SNELL - FEED THE HUNGRY HEART, 1984. From the album 'Feed The Hungry Heart,' Myrrh.
It was Cross Rhythms reviewer Rose Taylor who alerted me to the classic status of this one. Like many record buffs enamoured with American music I had in-built prejudice against Brits performing music particularly when they came complete with a classical music grounding (serious music being a field which was until recently a closed album sleeve to me). But here was a track which tore through my resistance to public school accents. With his ability to ease delicate glissandos from the pianoforte, this was a rich and, in a very British way, very soulful track. Maybe it's the haunting solemnity of the melody, maybe it's the power of the lyric, maybe it's the almost Spector-like wall of sound suggested in the production. But however it was achieved this is truly a classic which for me at least, even outstrips the pomp of 'Alpha And Omega'.

4. SWAN SILVERTONES - WHEN JESUS COMES, 1956. From the album 'My Rock', Auvidid.
Claude Jeter, leader of the Swans, was one of the greatest voices in the history of music. Lovers of 'gospel quartets' (black male groups often perversely of more than four members) know that. Paul Simon knows that too (after all Mr Simon used Claude on a session and even ripped off an aside on a Swan Silvertones track, "you're my bridge over troubled water", for a title and mega-selling Simon and Garfunkel hit). But even if the Great Pop Public never got to know about Claude, the reissue albums of classic sides the Swans recorded for King (in '47 to '51), Specialty (from '52 to '53) and Vee Jay (from '56 to '65) have ensured that a handful of white, non-Christians can marvel at a voice which could purr as sweet and soulful as the silkiest of soul leads then descent into a rugged, rough-edged growl which would leave a storefront church congregation in apoplexy. Here this sonorous soulful number, composed by Jeter and recorded in 1956 is sung, nearly acappella all the intricate underpinning to the uncanny oohs and ahs to his intuitive harmonizers. It is a perfect piece of black quartet singing.

5. DENIECE WILLIAMS (with Philip Bailey) - THEY SAY, 1983. From the album 'I'm So Proud' CBS.
If Philip Bailey wasn't the man of God he is he could be excused for being a little miffed when they handed out the Gospel Grammy to Deniece for her duet with Sandi Patti on this song. Four years earlier he and Deniece had recorded the definitive version of the gospel ballad (tucked away on the secular album 'I'm So Proud'). It is a version, which leaves the Deniece/Sandi version sounding pallid and contrived by comparison. The backing track on both versions was all but identical, a moody ballad built on a series of haunting couplets with a sweet soul shuffle in the rhythm stops it getting too stentorian. Niecey's voice was the same too, that spine-tingling musical instrument which can launch awesome notes into the stratosphere with the purity of a lark. What is different is Mr Bailey. Where Sandi over emotes in white girls getting soulful mode, Philip is every inch Deniece's equal in stunning ascent into dog-whistle territory, his falsetto soaring to soul heaven. The extended vamp on the close gave both of them plenty of room to swap acrobatic phrases of assurance that Christ is alive. Breathtaking.

6. KIM HILL - SNAKE IN THE GRASS, 1989. From the album 'Talk About Life', Reunion.
Surely one of the most percussive tracks ever recorded on which no drums are heard. Much of the stunning effect is courtesy of a brilliant arrangement by Brown Bannister, which wraps a set of staccato cellos around Kim's strummed, acoustic. Against this riveting backdrop Kim takes her full and throaty contralto voice, cranks it up an octave and goes for broke on a series of liberties with the bluesy melody line that only the supremely confident would attempt. The lyric too, by Wes King, was fine. "We're gonna reap what we've sown/Cause His light shines on our darkness/But what really troubles me/Is what the seed may be when it is grown/ Hide beneath the weeds/Like a snake in the grass."

7. ZOE - T M AND THE MANTRA (DO YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW), 1976. Single, New Pax.
They don't come obscurer that this. I've got this on a promo 45. Did Zoe ever do an album? And who are they? Only Gary Paxton (the owner of New Pax and the zany character who wrote "Alley Oop" and "Monster Mash", who became a Christian and ended up producing the early Don Francisco albums) knows the answer. But whatever their stakes as one-flop-wonders Zoe (pronounced Zoa) certainly left an attention-grabbing track for posterity. If I tell you it's basically a mid-tempo Jesus music song with a decidedly country tinge you'll probably wonder why the rave. But perhaps not if I tell you that the song begins with a burst of sitar and develops into an explicit denouncement of transcendental meditation with the question, "do you really want to know who's gotten in you?" The answer comes in the climax, "Here's a clue" says a voice and the song suddenly changes to 'The Exorcist' theme and shudders hellishly to a close. As effective a warning against spiritual malpractice as has ever been conceived by a group of pop musicians.

8. BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON - DARK WAS THE NIGHT, COLD WAS THE GROUND, 1927. From the album 'Praise God I'm Satisfied', Yazoo.
Back in the '20s they called them 'jackleg preachers', singing evangelists, part beggar-part minister, ragged itinerants who'd preach on street corners to anyone who'd listen and who sang to get a crowd and make a meagre living. Most lived and died obscurely but some got recorded and one, this one, now rests in a blues singer's Hall of Fame (if such a thing existed). Not that Blind Willie was a blues singer. That was 'devil's music' fit only for bars and whorehouses, Willie stuck to holiness hymns and self-composed songs - blunt metaphors of hard times and spiritual transcendence. He sung them in a voice so gravelly it sounded like he was about to cough up coke and played a bottleneck guitar from which searing blue notes slid and slurred around his guttural exhortations to get right and get God. Of all his many unforgettable, crudely recorded, sides this remains possibly his greatest recorded at his first session back in 1927. Wordless, and with moans - wrenched from his pained soul, backed by torrid guitar licks it is an utterly eery sound, revived once by rock man Ry Cooder, but best left to a creative master who made a timeless gospel blues classic.