TELL ME THE STORY OF JESUS...MUSIC

Larry Norman was on the right track. "The devil should not have all the best tunes.” In 1844 Reverend Rowland Hill, pastor of Surrey Chapel in London, intoned these words within his Sunday sermon. The concept reflected by those words are the germ, the reason, the driving force behind the inception and continued growth of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM).

I’ve never taken the words of Larry’s popular song Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? at face value. It’s a fun tune and easy to dance to but can be taken too literally. I believe we’ve sung and played some terrific lyrics and tuneful hymns in Christendom over the centuries. I grew up on hymns and occasional choruses from the little blue and white spiral-bound Singspiration booklet. Do Lord and V Is for Victory are a couple of catchy ditties that jump to my Sunday School saturated mind. But by the time we baby boomers reached “The Summer of Love,” the times they were a-changing. Those who were coming to the faith and hearing Christian music for the first time were scratching their heads of plentiful hair and saying “Whoa, dude…this stuff is ancient sounding…too mellow, man.”

By then we 20-somethings were ready to explore a new way of expressing our faith and using it to reach others our age who were listening to some pretty cool stuff by then. Hundreds of those early participants in CCM became part of what I used to call “The Christian Underground.” People in motion are the people I want to know, to borrow a phrase from an early Michael Omartian tune. People from the very root groups of CCM, who with their friends formed other groups, helped the music evolve by moving into record company leadership, becoming recording artists, writers, session musicians, arrangers, and taking positions as pastors and music and youth directors. The pioneers of Jesus Music became the glue that held together this new genre called CCM.

Without turning this into an obvious “where are they now?” piece, I’d like to re-visit the story behind why I and my cohorts, active participants in CCM, look so fondly out the big back window of the bus and reflect on where we’ve been and our life on the road .

Here’s a handful of well-known story starts. “Come listen to my story ‘bout a man named Jed,” or how about “Here’s the story, of a lovely lady,” or even
“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.” Those tunes set the stage for some of the best story lines in television’s archives. Music is used in entertainment for dramatic effect, to embellish the emotional high and low points in stories. The following story is about music and its makers at a particular time in their lives. As Bob Dylan said, “We were so much older then…we’re younger than that now.” The music we were making was about Jesus.

It would make a great story, for those of us who’ve worked with him over the years, to paint Cam Floria as the inventor of the genre we now know as CCM. He and his contemporaries, Ralph Carmichael, Kurt Kaiser, Thurlow Spurr, Sonny Salsbury, even Andre Crouch, and oh…say, Larry Norman and Michael Omartian all coming at CCM from several directions, forged a more acceptable, palatable Christian music for young people and the hip adult churchgoers in the late 1960s. Cam, founder and president of Continental Singers Inc., was not the inventor but the purveyor. He spread the word. Long before there was an American Idol, he originated a Christian teen talent search that crossed denominational lines. It was part of his long-running Seminar in the Rockies, currently owned and produced by the Gospel Music Association. Cam’s groups were formed under the umbrella of the now 42 year old Continental Singers organization (originally not CCM because the term didn’t exist then but producing youthful aggregations just the same). Continental concerts around the world were instrumental (no pun intended) in getting music about Jesus out to the people. As of 2008 approximately 65,000 young people worldwide have toured under the banner of one Continental Singers tour or another.

Shortly after relocating to Los Angeles from Portland, Oregon, where he had taken his Continentals from Portland Youth for Christ to a YFC National Championship and secured a WORD recording contract, Cam saw a need for an uber-group. This group would be customized to make “Jesus Music” palatable to the churchgoing public of the day. His vision was for a group that was music ministry oriented but not a church youth choir; teen friendly but not Jesus Rock; well produced musically but not studio singers; and appealing to older church audiences but not Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. What he produced in the fall of 1968 was Light recording artists The New Hope Singers and Tambourine Band, a dynamic, visually appealing, pop-sounding group of musicians whose legacy created a tremor like a Southern California earthquake still being felt in Christian music today.

This now geriatric group of original members is coming together in Houston in August of 2009 for a reunion. Reuniting with them will be the casts that followed them onto the road, all produced by Floria’s company during the 1968-72 time frame: the professional band Renaissance, New Hope Singers (having dropped the Tambourine nonsense), and New Hope.

Like a fly on the wall, this writer witnessed the germ of the idea that became the New Hope Singers, etc. I’m an Original Portland Youth For Christ Continental (1962-65), and I also toured with Cam in 1967. I was passing through Los Angeles while changing Army duty stations in the spring of 1968. Five friends (all originals) went to San Diego for Mexican food and while returning were stuck in traffic on the I-5 listening to the radio. The song Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers came on the radio.

Cam listened a bit and commented he wanted to start a group that fall with a light pop sound to perform in churches, schools and even open for various secular artists such as Henry Mancini or Andy Williams. It would be a clean-cut, fresh, harmonious guy-girl group. Vocal groups, pop but not edgy rock, were doing well in the music business,The Mamas and Papas, Fifth Dimension, Association, and so on. All of the TV variety shows had guy/girl groups. Cam would audition talent and/or use some of the top Continental kids. We all felt a gimmick was needed. We also wanted one of those long “hip” names like Big Brother and the Holding Company or Quicksilver Messenger Service.

I told Cam about a record by a Gospel group called the New Jerusalem Singers and the cover showed them all playing tambourines…and the conversation went from there. Sheepishly I now admit I suggested “and Tambourine Band,” which I lived to regret. We continued talking concept, potential members, and even advertising, right down to the idea of putting each member’s face in a tambourine around the edge of the initial promotional flyers. That was the group I joined in the fall of 1969 after they had completed their first tour.

I don’t think Cam ever thought of us, at least the first two years, as a “rock” group or a band whose members could and eventually would create original material. He would attempt that by positioning New Hope’s sister group Renaissance (1969-70) in the secular market. New Hope, however, was out there on the front line in hundreds of schools, churches, coffeehouses, and colleges, even if we weren’t officially “Jesus rock.”From Christian schools such as Baylor University and Wheaton College to Stanford and University of Washington, we met the anti-war and drug culture head on. We are talking old-school touring here. No whistles and bells…no down-to-the-last-detail rider or concert financial guarantee…no monster lighting, stage, and sound setup…just a bus, an itinerary, and twelve willing people.

Yes, there were other collections of musicians around the country just starting to shake up the Christian music norm. But think of this time frame. When Larry Norman’s first album Upon This Rock was released by Capitol in 1969, New Hope Singers had been touring for a whole year already. A handfull of years before Love Song, Petra, Second Chapter of Acts, and Keith Green appeared on the CCM scene, the New Hope Singers were wearing out their Rand McNally atlas while crisscrossing the country. Decades before Nashville became a home base for CCM artists, producers, and labels, New Hope Singers were recording in Los Angeles with a talented cast gleaned from many different home states.

To my recollection we genuinely loved what we were doing as well as each other. We were brothers and sisters of the bus. Linking arms, we believed our cause was noble, honorable, and pure. We were indeed innocents abroad. We were using our God-given talents in ministry. We were representing our own church youth programs and towns. We were shining examples of Christian leadership. We were warriors on a holy mission. We were…oh, let’s face it. We were fellow human beings, earning a miniscule per diem, sweating together in dressing rooms and on buses with over-taxed air conditioners and on church platforms in America’s fly-over country. We poured out our hearts and voices, overused our lips, bandaged blistered fingers to make chords, whatever… in a symphony of song. We tempted ill health night after night at the potluck tables and risked life and limb staying in homes of possible would-be-Manson families. Among us were pew jumpers, Bible thumpers, high church, low church, no church…even a healthy smattering of Baptists! Whether reading, sleeping, or jamming to music, the hundreds of travel miles each day were spent pouring out our lives and perspiration on each other. As we traveled America’s asphalt ribbons, the dotted lines that divide coming from going and east from west drew us together as friends. Life-long relationships were started between those seated in our bus seats.

A person traveling on just one nine-month tour would have performed well over 600 concerts. Many days it was more than once, and because we played churches sometimes it was twice on the Lord’s Day. Sunday was not a day of rest. The time spent on stage or a church platform is really just a small part of the total, body-punishing, brain-stretching, heart-tugging commitment to being involved in a ministry. The touring lifestyle, no matter how long you do it, impacts your whole life. It shapes how you look at music, people, friendships, and your relationship to God. That time you spend in front of an audience and the lives you see changed is worth the bus breakdowns, truck stop bathrooms, pot-luck meals, overnighters, and the challenge of staying with host families.

It would have been one thing if the church folks would have understood that our “new music” was an alternative method of bringing kids into the church, by playing the music they really liked laced with Christian principles but many times the opposition throughout the land was formidable. Once the amps were plugged in though and the guitars unleashed, there was a rumble of response. Kids were sitting in the audience saying, “Hey, I can sing…I can play…I can write. Maybe I can put a group together right here in my own church.” Christian music artist Steve Camp was one of those kids. Music directors were picking up ideas, starting their own traveling aggregations. And I believe it is safe to say that church music has never been entirely the same.

And today? Those shaggy, hip travelers, pioneers in contemporary Christian music have, for the most part, integrated into mainstream society. Some are “reformed musicians,” but many have stayed in music for the last 40 years. One L.A.-based trumpet player/arranger/sought-after session player is with the Les Brown Band of Renown. A Chicago–born bass trombone player/educator
and arranger plays with a Grammy-nominated big band and can be heard on many blockbuster Disney movie soundtracks. Both of these session musicians play with Ralph Carmichael’s Big Band. Another trombone player is a well-known independent Christian television producer. A keyboard player started writing in the group, played with Pat Boone and Waylon Jennings, and is now one of the top writers of Christian children’s songs. A soprano/keyboard player double-threat is well-known in the jazz field and another soprano in operatic circles. Among our alumni are a famous daytime soap performer and a tenor with a gold record. One guitar player has a full service sound, lighting & video and concert production company, and was Vice President of the Gospel Music Association. Dozens are still writing, performing, and producing today. Organizations and ministries such as Focus on the Family, Compassion International, WORD Records, Light Records, Lexicon Music, the C.S. Lewis Institute, World Vision, Gospel Music Association, Youth With a Mission, American Entertainment Productions, The Spurrlows, and Continental Singers, Inc. have benefited from the experience these post-war babies gleaned while participating in the above-mentioned traveling aggregations. Professional songwriters and arrangers, pastors, teachers, youth directors, choir members, symphony players, dedicated family men and women (grandparents), company CEO’s, community and church leaders…we are they…four decades later.

Here’s a news flash, music has changed in forty years. Are we, the follicly- challenged travelers of old, now just archaic relics of CCM? I think not. My research shows that aside from the 40th reunion, where we will definitely revel in the past, the majority of the alumni still in music are performing, writing, and arranging relevant viable music for today’s ears. No retro sounds here (although I think a retro CCM band, touring with well-known songs from the major music groups of the first ten years of CCM would be a hit in churches where those our own age are now in charge).

So…a reunion is at hand. Will we be able to recognize these geriatric friends from our 20’s with whom we toured the U.S. raising the rafters of churches and auditoriums with infectious energetic music? Will the stories and routines we’ve repeated to our spouses and kids hold the same fascination for us now as when we first regaled each other in the basement dressing rooms of the Third Baptist Church of Flat Rock, Montana? Let’s dig into our suitcases and hang-up bags full of memories and share our unique touring experiences. We’ve put on our glasses, looked at the shining faces in the photos, and to our amazement we see they are us! Now, feeling the aches and pains of my 60’s, I finally feel like a CCM pioneer.