Shoutin' Down the Aisles Introductory Offer
Features 30 traditional gospel classics sung by today's gospel greats! Includes songs from Shirley Caesar, Gladys Knight, Kirk Franklin and the Family, Vickie Winans and more!

Shoutin' Down the Aisles Introductory Offer

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • Born Blessed
  • Jimmy Hicks and the Voices of Integrity
  
  
• • 2
  • God Did It
  • Evelyn Turrentine-Agee
  
  
• • 3
  • Church Medley
  • Carlton Pearson featuring Donnie McClurkin
  
  
• • 4
  • I Know the Truth (Lies)
  • Shirley Caesar featuring Tonex
  
  
• • 5
  • If You’re Talking about Jesus
  • Bryan Wilson & the Bapolstogic Band
  
  
• • 6
  • All Night
  • Alvin Darling & Celebration
  
  
• • 7
  • Shut Up and Start Praying
  • Candi Staton and Dottie Peoples
  
  
• • 8
  • O Lord, I’m Asking You One More Time
  • H. E. Dixon and Truth Tabernacle
  
  
• • 9
  • Saints Medley: Just a Little Talk with Jesus/By and By/When the Saints Go Marching In
  • Gladys Knight
  
  
• • 10
  • Miracle Worker
  • The Rance Allen Group featuring Fred Hammond
  
  
• • 11
  • Mighty God
  • Coko featuring Lady Tibba
  
  
• • 12
  • He Can Handle It
  • Kirk Franklin and the Family
  
  
• • 13
  • Clean Up (Live)
  • The Canton Spirituals
  
  
• • 14
  • Long as I Got King Jesus
  • Vickie Winans
  
  
• • 15
  • If You Come to Him
  • Edwin Hawkins Music and Arts Tri-State Mass Choir III with Carolyn Ransom
  
  

Shoutin' Down the Aisles Introductory Offer

• • Track
  • Title
  • Artist/Composer
  • Time
  
  
• • 1
  • Jesus Be a Fence around Me
  • Fred Hammond & Radical For Christ
  
  
• • 2
  • My Everything
  • The James’
  
  
• • 3
  • You Brought Me
  • Marvin Sapp
  
  
• • 4
  • Praise Medley
  • Tamela Mann
  
  
• • 5
  • Battlefield
  • Norman Hutchins
  
  
• • 6
  • Holy Ghost Power
  • Chicago Mass Choir
  
  
• • 7
  • God Is a Good God
  • Bishop Paul S. Morton
  
  
• • 8
  • He’ll Answer Prayer
  • The Loving Sisters and Love Act
  
  
• • 9
  • Still Here
  • The Williams Brothers
  
  
• • 10
  • I’ve Learned to Lean
  • Lee Williams & the Spiritual QC’s
  
  
• • 11
  • Holding On
  • Pop Winans
  
  
• • 12
  • Let Go and Let God
  • Keith Wonderboy Johnson
  
  
• • 13
  • Call Him Jesus
  • Mary Mary
  
  
• • 14
  • Power of the Holy Ghost
  • The Mighty Clouds of Joy
  
  
• • 15
  • Medley: Is My Living in Vain?/You Brought the Sunshine/Hallelujah
  • The Clark Sisters
  
  

Songs can make us smile or make us sad. Some remind us of our pain and how faith in God has helped us triumph over the rough patches. A Pentecostal camp meeting or service is different from any other church experience. When the spirit hits, somebody in the choir loft may sing a certain line of a song that resonates with somebody in the pews, and that person leaps to his or her feet to shout, prophesy, or maybe even run around the sanctuary because he or she identifies with the words of that song.

Two and a half minutes into Tamela Mann’s Praise Medley, she utters these simple words in her booming alto: “Oh, how I love Jesus,” and the audience instantly starts to stir just because of the way she bends her notes. By the time she starts testifying about what He’s done for her, the congregation is talking back at her with thunderous claps and shouts of agreement.

Shoutin’ Down the Aisles features thirty songs that make people think and shout, though not always in that order. We divide the shouting songs into four categories: quartet, Low Country, revival, and what reggae icon Bob Marley might have termed redemption songs.

The set opens with the pulsating country bass chords of the rocking quartet ditty Born Blessed by Jimmy Hicks and his Voices of Integrity choir. In the song, Hicks and his sister, Diana Hicks Hay, joyfully trade lines witnessing of God’s healing Diana of seizures and shielding Jimmy from a gunshot during a barbershop robbery.

A recurring theme in quartet music is learning to depend on God to solve man’s problems. For 32 years, quartet king Lee Williams struggled to have a career as a singer while driving a big rig to put food on his family’s table. Then, in 1996, he had his first monster hit with I’ve Learned to Lean. The late David “Pop” Winans (daddy to BeBe and CeCe Winans) also came to fame later in life. He was 65 years old when he cut his first solo CD, Uncensored, which won a Grammy nomination in 1999. His tune Holding On speaks of learning to submit to God in every situation. Keith Wonderboy Johnson echoes the same message in Let Go and Let God.

When it comes to shouting, the loudest may be from down south. Along the coast of South Carolina in cities like Charleston, a former slave port, there’s a Low Country sound. Many of the blacks from this area call themselves Gullah because they are descendants from West Africa and have maintained their African traditions. They even have a distinct parlance that makes them speak English with a foreign-sounding accent. This Geechee creole can be heard on the rousing O Lord, I’m Asking You One More Time by Cordeville, South Carolina’s H. E. Dixon and Truth Tabernacle.

The notorious evangelist Manuel da Graca (aka Sweet Daddy Grace), a West African native, brought some of that Gullah funk to the church denomination he founded in 1919, the United House of Prayer for All People. A key component of the church service was the shout band (similar to a Dixieland band, but grittier). Danville, Illinois, native Bryan Wilson tackles that genre on his festive If You’re Talking about Jesus. In the early ’70s, Alvin Darling got his professional start with a group in Columbia, South Carolina, called the Southland Singers, and one can hear that Low Country soul on his call-and-response groove All Night. Southern songbirds Candi Staton and Dottie Peoples debate the wages of gossiping on the country boogaloo of Shut Up and Start Praying.

It’s been said that it is the Holy Ghost who provokes people to shout and get their second wind during revival meetings. The Book of Acts cites the Day of Pentecost as the day on which the Holy Ghost fell upon Jesus’s disciples, giving them the gifts of healing through the laying on of hands and speaking in tongues. Rance Allen sings about those healing powers on the funky Miracle Worker, featuring Fred Hammond. The wide-eyed Lemmie Battles is an advocate for tarrying and speaking in tongues on the Chicago Mass Choir’s bustling Holy Ghost Power.

Arguably, the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) espouses the gifts of the spirit and the Holy Ghost more than any other Protestant denomination. Ever since the 1906 Azusa Street Revival, the church’s music department has become known for its acrobatic vocalists and its freestyle approach to worship. At least half of the artists on this project hail from the COGIC tradition, including the Clark Sisters, Kirk Franklin, Vickie Winans, Mary Mary, the James’, and Bishop Carlton Pearson.

The final type of song covered on this project is the redemption song. The very essence of Christianity is the ability of man to reform himself by renouncing his sins and following Christ. Edwin Hawkins of Oh, Happy Day fame wrote the Tri-State Mass Choir’s 1995 hit If You Come to Him. The lead singer confesses to living in a “world of sin” until she found salvation and then says, “He will pick you up and turn you around.” On the Canton Spirituals’ Clean Up, lead singer and song composer Harvey Watkins introduces the song by saying, “A few years ago I made a lot of mistakes, and I made up my mind that I was gonna do something about it.” He then breaks into song with, “I’ve gotta clean up what I messed up / I’m starting my life over again,” and the audience begins shouting.

And the shouting really never ends. “C’mon, clap your hands, let’s give God some praise for the good things He’s done,” says Evelyn Turrentine-Agee on the opening of her song God Did It. She ends the rollicking blues—which won a BMI award as the most played gospel song of 2001 (20 years after it was initially recorded)—with the observation that Jesus “makes me want to dance a holy dance, makes me want to shout…shout, hallelujah!” Amen.

—Bil Carpenter

Bil Carpenter is the author of Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia (Hal Leonard Books).