rhapsode

by Sha Frasier.the Continuing Education Project.New York.

Source

Darden — People Get Ready!

Cited in 3 notes
Gospel, Heilbut — The Gospel Sound, Jackson — A House on Fire

Find it in a library:WorldCat·Open Library

Author: Robert Darden
Title: People Get Ready!: A New History of Black Gospel Music
Year: 2004
Type: Book (Continuum)

People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music is a book by Robert Darden, a journalism professor at Baylor University and formerly the gospel music editor of Billboard, published by Continuum in 2004. It traces Black gospel as one continuous tradition, from African music and the spirituals through minstrelsy, the jubilee singers and Thomas A. Dorsey to Kirk Franklin, and its publisher describes it as covering the often forgotten era between the Civil War and the rise of jubilee singing. Its context chapters run from West African roots to the Great Migration, and its chapters on individual figures run from Charles Albert Tindley to the 2000s. It won the Association for Recorded Sound Collections’ 2005 award for research in rhythm and blues, soul or gospel music, and Teresa L. Reed’s review found its detail inconsistent and its storytelling strong. After it appeared, Darden’s op-ed in the New York Times on the loss of old gospel recordings led to Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Preservation Program, which has digitized more than 60,000 songs.

Continuum published the book in October 2004.1 Darden, a professor of journalism at Baylor University, had become Billboard’s first gospel music editor in 1984. He has also been a Baptist deacon, an R&B drummer and the senior editor of the satirical Christian magazine The Wittenburg Door.2 Reed quotes the book’s aim as to “put it all in order, find the connections, and tell the stories of some of the most fascinating people on the planet,” and reports that Darden presents it as neither a musicological study nor a theoretical treatise.3 The introduction describes the spirituals as “religion with rhythm.”3

The publisher describes the book’s arc as running “from Africa through the spirituals, from minstrel music through jubilee, and from traditional to contemporary gospel,” including what it calls the often forgotten era between the Civil War and the rise of jubilee singing.4 The context chapters run from West African roots to the Great Migration, and the chapters on individuals run from Tindley, the Philadelphia Methodist minister and hymn writer, through Dorsey to Donnie McClurkin, Fred Hammond and Franklin.5

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections gave the book its 2005 Award for Excellence for the best research in recorded rhythm and blues, soul or gospel music.6 Reed, reviewing it in The Cresset, found the detail inconsistent enough to compromise “an otherwise enjoyable reading experience” and wanted more on holy hip hop, but wrote that “Darden’s mastery of story-telling more than compensates for whatever omissions might be perceived.”7 The historian Claudrena Harold wrote in 2020 that Darden’s book and Anthony Heilbut’s The Gospel Sound both extend past gospel’s golden age of 1945 to 1965, but give the later years less attention than the earlier period.8

In 2005, after covering the Grammy Awards, Darden found that much of the recorded gospel of the golden age was unavailable, and his New York Times op-ed of February 15, 2005, “Gospel’s Got the Blues,” ended by calling the possible loss of the music a sin.9 The investor Charles M. Royce read it and offered to pay for a solution, and Baylor launched the project that became the Black Gospel Music Preservation Program. Publishers Weekly dates its founding to February 2005, and Baylor’s own collections page to 2006.10 By 2025 it had digitized more than 60,000 songs, and its materials are part of the Musical Crossroads exhibition at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.10

Key contributions

  • A single-volume history of Black gospel from African music and the spirituals to Kirk Franklin.
  • Coverage of the era between the Civil War and the rise of jubilee singing, and chapters on figures before Dorsey, among them Charles Albert Tindley.
  • The spirituals described as “religion with rhythm.”

See also

Footnotes

  1. The Open Library record for the first edition (accessed October 21, 2026). ↩

  2. The first gospel editorship per Henry L. Carrigan Jr., “For the Love of Gospel Music: Robert Darden,” Publishers Weekly, November 19, 2014; the 1984 start and the Wittenburg Door editorship (1987–2007) per his Baylor faculty biography; the deacon and drummer per the Dallas Observer’s profile (all accessed July 7, 2026). ↩

  3. The aim as quoted, and the book’s description of itself as characterized, in Teresa L. Reed’s review, The Cresset (Valparaiso University), Trinity 2005; “religion with rhythm” from the introduction, per the book’s Goodreads description (both accessed July 7, 2026). ↩ ↩2

  4. The publisher’s description at Google Books (accessed July 7, 2026); verbatim. ↩

  5. The structure per Reed’s review (accessed July 7, 2026). ↩

  6. “Journalism Professor Wins Award for Book on Gospel Music,” Baylor University, 2005 (accessed October 21, 2026). ↩

  7. Reed, The Cresset, Trinity 2005 (accessed July 7, 2026); verbatim. ↩

  8. Claudrena Harold, “When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-Hop Eras,” Southern Spaces, November 20, 2020 (accessed October 21, 2026). ↩

  9. The Grammys and the unavailable catalog per Publishers Weekly, November 19, 2014 and WXPN’s Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul project page; the op-ed’s date per Baylor University Libraries’ digital collections page; its closing lines as quoted in Texas Highways (all accessed July 7, 2026). ↩

  10. Royce’s offer per Texas Highways; the February 2005 founding per Publishers Weekly, November 19, 2014; the 2006 launch per Baylor’s digital collections page; the program’s name and the Musical Crossroads placement per Baylor Libraries; the 60,000 songs per NPR, February 28, 2025 (all accessed July 7, 2026). ↩ ↩2

Published July 12, 2026