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Alan Young. Woke Me Up This Morning: Black Gospel Singers and the Gospel Life. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997. 320 pp. $18.00.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, "gospel" music accounts for 4.3 percent of all record sales, or $538 million per year. But the word "gospel" has become an umbrella term that covers a wide range of often disparate musical styles today, from traditional black and white southern gospel to contemporary Christian music (CCM). This book examines a specific strain in the rich AfricanAmerican music tradition through the accounts of the people who sang black gospel and tried to make its message a reality in their lives. In that sense it is less about gospel music than it is about gospel singers. The author, a white New Zealand journalist who developed a fascination with African-American music, employs an oral-history approach to spotlight the careers and experiences of grassroots gospel artists like Elder Roma Wilson, Melvin Mosley and the Spirit of Memphis, Rita Watson, Rev. Willie Morganfield, Huebert Crawford, and many others. Through interviews conducted primarily in 1992, these...