Southern Gospel In The South

Southern Gospel Music has vastly changed it's sound, it's brand, and it's marketing appeal over the past two decades.  It's not the same music that I learned from Mama's living room piano, and it's not the same music that stirred my soul to receive Jesus as my Savior as a young boy in small town USA.  Maybe it's because I just turned "50" and the aging thing has begun to creep up on me -- but, I think I have a point here.  Bear with me.

Southern Gospel, as a musical genre, has it's roots in middle Tennessee with the appearance of the James D. Vaughn Music Publishing Company and radio broadcasts. circa 1900

Recently, the 'Gospel Giant' radio station which had broadcast to our beautiful Gulf Coast region for more than 40 years, sold to a mega-talk radio giant from upstate, and with sound fiscal reasoning given the owners' aging and health issues.  The Coopers who founded and broadcast from WOSM 103.1FM are personal friends and will very likely receive a plethora of crowns in Heaven when they meet our Heavenly Father.

Those crowns will be quietly and humbly laid at the feet of Jesus.  I have a hunch there will be thousands upon thousands of redeemed souls in Heaven alongside the Coopers whose lives were forever changed by the Gospel they heard from the airwaves on WOSM radio's broadcasts.

It is now Fall 2013.  More than 100 years since Southern Gospel was discovered in America.  On our beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast -- there exists less than a half dozen recognizable and reasonably well-marketed Christian radio formats.  Most of the 'gospel' music that permeates today's airwaves is geared towards middle-age and young adult 'soccer moms' who demand Family-Friendly programming as an alternative to the onslaught of hedonistic 'reality' TV and near pornographic Pop/Rock and Hip-Hop/Rap music.

Men and 'dads' are consumed with the ever-growing Talk Radio industry, which now fills the airwaves 24/7 with everything from 'no-spin' Conservative viewpoint blah-blah-blah to hometown rants over Big Government, to local high school sports scores, to the latest local scandal or controversy.

I must be honest with you.  I LOVE Southern Gospel Music.  And, I miss hearing that music most days.  Call me mushy sentimental.  Call me Bible-belt super-spiritual.  Call me old-fashioned.  I LOVE Southern Gospel Music.  And, I don't think I'm alone.

Recently, I asked a couple of buddies who love Southern Gospel to come alongside me and sing some of our favorite tunes for our church families and for a few community events.  We quickly realized that we are not alone!  There are still a few hundred folks like us who LOVE Southern Gospel.

I am reminded each time I sing 'the old songs' that Granny taught me as a child, just how beautiful the words and melodies were then, and how incredibly relevant they are NOW.  In an increasingly dark and gloomy world of famine, war, corruption, wicked behavior, and yes -- sin -- outright rebellion towards God -- I will declare it from the mountaintops ... I LOVE SOUTHERN GOSPEL MUSIC!

Keep listening ... you're gonna hear more of it on your Gulf Coast!  With God's Grace, a little help from my friends, and a few hundred supporters of the cause ... Southern Gospel Music will survive on the Mississippi Gulf Coast!