Mike Rimmer had a lengthy face-to-face with one of the pioneers of contemporary gospel, ANDRAE CROUCH.

Andrae said he prayed that while he didn't want 'Mighty Wind' "to be so laid-back you (feel like you) are going to a funeral service," he didn't want to alienate traditionally-orientated listeners. "So many times I've taken songs that we could have funked up, but I knew that the message would have only gotten to the R&B cool people," he said. "So I thought, what do I have to do to bring this to a level where everybody will hear this message and be drawn to this message?"

Andrae is adamant that 'Mighty Wind' has a very serious spiritual intent. "I'm just looking for a real move of the Holy Spirit," he said. "This album isn't just an array of the 'acrobatic' voices of my friends, but it's trying to get to the meat of the songs. The Lord told me, 'I don't want you to give me buffet food. I want you to give me gourmet food. It's not all about skills and the way you can train your voice, I want it to be from your heart.'"

Songs on the disc include the title track, "We Give You Glory" featuring Crystal Lewis, "I Was Glad (Reprise)" featuring Tata Vega, and a new version of Crouch's classic "Jesus Is Lord" featuring Karen Clark-Sheard, an "incredibly energised" remake, Crouch said. "It's smokin'," he stated excitedly. "I did a Latin salsa feel and I brought a keyboard player from Brazil who's only been in American for two years. The background vocals are almost the same as the original, but the music goes a different way."

Many gospel fans take it for granted today that their favourite artists mix modern music influences into their work. But it wasn't always that way. Back in the '70s, Crouch was a front runner. Before Commissioned's funk and all the releases from The Winans family, Crouch was already making a path for contemporary artists to stretch the genre of gospel music in a similar way to Larry Norman on the rock scene. Along the way, he came in for a lot of criticism. However, there is no denying that in the '70s he was the most popular gospel artist on the planet, drawing both black and white audiences and travelling to perform shows in more than 50 different countries around the world. These days he's self-deprecating when thinking about his '70s success. Did he think that level of success would go on forever? "Well, I think really the excitement of Andrae Crouch was more with the people than it was with me. I never 'got it'. You know what I mean? I never really felt the hoopla of it. Maybe at an awards programme people would tell me, 'You're the father of contemporary music' and I'd go, 'I am?! When? When did I do it?' Because the music seems so much a part of me."

Flashback to 1979 and Andrae and The Disciples are on tour in the UK promoting the 'I'll Be Thinking Of You' album. It's March and Newcastle City Hall is packed as Andrae, singers and band work through a mixture of classics and the songs from his new album. It is a seriously funky performance and for those who think that the idea of gospel praise is a new phenomenon, there's one song that seems to take the audience higher and higher into praise as the tight funk backing drives it along. "Jesus Is Lord" is a magnificent moment and like the album it's from, it seems to highlight the fact that Andrae was getting closer in sound to the biggest band of the day like Earth Wind And Fire. Around me in the audience, hands are raised, bodies are swaying and voices are singing along.

Reflecting on those times in 2006, Crouch observed, "In the black culture my music wasn't really accepted at first. I think that was because of the content of the lyrics more so than the music style. Although when it came to Caribbean influences, people found that more difficult. The sound of reggae represented the Rastafarian religion, so when we played something like that people associated us with Rastafarians and we weren't that way at all. We just loved the rhythm and the style of the music. I think pushing that type of thing made an impact but I didn't think anything was wrong with that and I think I was the first one that did the Latin thing. I creeped in a reggae style because I'd been to the Caribbean and they told me they weren't allowed to do anything reggae. I thought, 'Well that's a hip groove.' So I went back and wrote this little tune that would give you just a little taste. It was 'Bringing Back The Sunshine'. I just creeped it in. I would put it even in some other songs that some people would never ever be able to recognise unless I told them. So I tried in some instances to bring in that style and then when I went back over to the Caribbean I would hear some other songwriters and recording artists that were suddenly doing the same thing like Bill Gaither stuff and they'd say, 'Hey Andrae listen to this!' And I heard that little pulse and I thought, yeah, that's it!"

Most of his classic recordings of the '70s were recorded on the Light Records label, however in the early '80s Crouch crossed over into the mainstream and signed with Warners for the 'Don't Give Up' album. The resulting album is a masterpiece which mixes songs with a gospel message with songs of social commentary all wrapped up in a thoroughly contemporary 1981 funk style. Yet the album wasn't the huge success that was anticipated. Church audiences were suspicious of his crossing over to the mainstream.

I can still remember tracking the album down in the racks of a Virgin records store in Leeds and excitedly taking it home. Even today, it's still one of Andrae's favourites. "I love that record," he admitted. Already causing controversy because of going mainstream, there was a further scandal that was to rock Crouch's ministry. Stories emerged from Los Angeles that Crouch had been stopped by the police who discovered an empty vial which had contained drugs on the floor of his car. The vial had belonged to one of Crouch's non-Christian friends who had been temporarily lodging with him.

It seemed that although he was innocent people wanted to think the worst of him in the middle of it. What did it feel like to be going through that scenario? Andrae remembered, "Well it was devastating at first because I didn't know how many people really would support me. Everybody hates to be lied on, you know? But with my ministry I think the thing that has made me persevere is that I can be transparent.
A lot of the music that I was hearing and that we grew up on was only about getting saved and going to Heaven. We knew nothing about how to deal with stuff, you know? We would not address certain issues in our music. If you go through a songbook it's either, you're going through despair and you're going to go and get out of here, or God is going to take us to Heaven right away, or how wonderful it is to be saved. But what do you do when you feel like nobody loves you? Or what do you do when you've been really hurting and you're praying and praying and nothing happens? What do you do then? How do you tell the truth about how you're feeling? Or is it just, 'Praise the Lord I'm feelin' alright!' all the time? So I think with the situations I went through God just let me know, 'I just want you to be real.'"

Andrae believes that his songwriting has become more honest as he's got older. "It's taken me all these years," he shared, "to want to try and express the way I feel inside. I just want to be real, to walk in his favour. I want to be real because do you know what? We got kids that are doing praise and worship music and they know nothing about the Lord really. It's like God is just a magic box. Everything's gonna change as soon as they say, 'Heal me Lord!' But you know what? Your healing may not be until you get to glory, for real. Because he's not this magic card - credit card - that we can just say, 'Hey!'"

He continued, "But it's all that I might know him and the power of his resurrection and to see his face and the countenance of his face and be blessed by that through my trial. That's the part that's hard to learn because we want this instant God. But sometimes our healing is not going to be 'til when we see him face to face because it's not about this," he points emphatically to his body, "and it's hard for us to realise that we're not about this, we're eternal. So your healing may not be this side of Jordan as they say but it's on the way, you know? He just wants us to desire to see his face and for us to please him when he wants to look upon us. It's deep but it's simple once you realise it."

Deep and simple at the same time. That could be a description of a lot of Crouch's songwriting output. He has spent 40 years writing and recording songs that have been taken up across all sectors of the Church. Some of his early songs are considered traditional these days and appear in hymnals! He's touched on deep truths, tried to inspire listeners to engage with God and been unafraid to take his place in the mainstream, working on sessions for others. It's been quite a journey for the kid writing his first song at James Cleveland's house to the world renowned artist and church pastor he is today. Perhaps for a living legend, it's only apt that he's the only living gospel singer to have a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame!