James Cleveland: the “King of Gospel” who built the modern choir sound

When Aretha Franklin recorded Amazing Grace at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles in January 1972, the man at the piano beside her was her old mentor, James Cleveland. The live album became one of the biggest-selling gospel records of all time. For Cleveland, it was one moment in a career that shaped the sound of the modern gospel choir.

Chicago

Cleveland was born in Chicago in the early 1930s, when the city was the capital of gospel music. As a boy he sang in the choir at Pilgrim Baptist Church, where Thomas A. Dorsey, often called the father of gospel music, directed the music. Dorsey’s influence on him lasted a lifetime. Cleveland’s voice was rough and gravelly, nothing like the smooth tenors of the time. He made it work. His preaching, half-sung delivery became a style of its own, and he became known as a songwriter, arranger and pianist as well as a singer.

The choir sound and GMWA

Cleveland’s great innovation was the mass choir recording. He worked with choirs such as the Angelic Choir of Nutley, New Jersey, recording live albums that captured the energy of congregational worship. “Peace Be Still”, recorded with the Angelic Choir, became one of his signature songs and helped make choir albums a major part of the gospel market.

In the late 1960s, most sources say 1967, Cleveland founded the Gospel Music Workshop of America. The GMWA brought choirs, singers and musicians together each year for training, worship and performance. It grew into one of the largest gospel organisations in the world, with chapters across the United States.

Amazing Grace

Aretha Franklin had grown up in the church of her father, the Reverend C.L. Franklin, in Detroit, and Cleveland had known her since her youth. For Amazing Grace, she returned to gospel with Cleveland leading the Southern California Community Choir. Footage of the recording sessions was finally released as a concert film in 2018, more than four decades after it was shot.

Cleveland won several Grammy Awards over his career and was the first gospel artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was known as the “King of Gospel” and the “Crown Prince of Gospel”.

Pastor and legacy

Cleveland moved to Los Angeles and founded the Cornerstone Institutional Baptist Church. He was a pastor as well as a musician, and the church became the base for his ministry. Cleveland died in 1991. Many of the leading gospel artists of the next generation came out of the world he built, including the workshops and choirs that trained young singers. Ghanaian and Nigerian mass choirs that record live worship albums today are using a format Cleveland helped create. His voice was rough, but the tradition he left behind runs smoothly through Christian music around the world.