Andraé Crouch

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• Top 6 Gospel Artists of All Time

  Currently #3 · score 0

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• Mahalia Jackson

  Mahalia Jackson, widely regarded as the greatest gospel singer in the genre's history, refused throughout her career to record secular music despite lucrative offers, insisting on performing exclusively religious material even as that decision limited her potential commercial crossover earnings compared to peers willing to cross into pop or blues. Her deep involvement in the civil rights movement included performing at the 1963 March on Washington immediately before Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and Jackson reportedly encouraged King during the speech itself to depart from his prepared remarks and "tell them about the dream," a moment some historians credit with shaping the speech's most famous passage. Jackson's 1947 recording "Move On Up a Little Higher" became one of the first gospel records to sell more than a million copies, helping establish gospel music's commercial viability as a genre capable of reaching audiences well beyond traditional church settings. Her combination of technical vocal power, unwavering commitment to gospel's religious mission over secular commercial opportunity, and her direct personal involvement in the civil rights movement made Jackson one of the most significant and respected figures in American gospel music history.

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• Kirk Franklin

  Kirk Franklin's 1997 song "Stomp," incorporating hip-hop and funk production elements alongside traditional gospel vocal arrangements, helped pioneer contemporary urban gospel and brought the genre significant mainstream crossover attention it had rarely achieved previously. His willingness to incorporate secular musical production techniques into explicitly Christian lyrical content drew some criticism from more traditional gospel purists, even as Franklin's commercial success helped introduce gospel music to significantly younger and more mainstream audiences than the genre had typically reached. Franklin has won numerous Grammy Awards across his career, and his combination of contemporary urban production and traditional gospel message has made him one of the most commercially successful gospel artists of the past three decades, bridging traditional church audiences and mainstream urban music listeners. His continued influence on subsequent contemporary Christian and gospel artists, many of whom have directly cited Franklin's willingness to blend secular production styles with gospel content as foundational to their own approach, has made him one of the most significant figures in gospel music's modern commercial evolution.

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• The Clark Sisters

  The Clark Sisters, a group of five siblings from Detroit, became one of the most influential and commercially successful gospel vocal groups in the genre's history, and their intricate, layered vocal harmonies significantly influenced the development of contemporary urban gospel and R&B vocal arrangement more broadly. Their 1981 song "Is My Living in Vain" became one of the most enduringly popular songs in gospel music history, and the group's combination of technical vocal complexity with genuinely soulful, emotionally direct delivery distinguished them from more straightforwardly traditional gospel choir groups. The sisters' mother, Mattie Moss Clark, was herself a significant figure in gospel music as a choir director within the Church of God in Christ, and her direct musical training of her daughters gave the group a foundational vocal technique built on deep institutional gospel church tradition. The Clark Sisters' influence on subsequent R&B and secular vocal groups, several of whose members have directly credited the group's complex harmony arrangements as a formative influence, has made them one of the most musically significant vocal groups in the broader history of Black American gospel and R&B music.

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• Thomas A. Dorsey

  Thomas A. Dorsey, widely known as "the Father of Gospel Music," coined the term "gospel music" itself and is credited with founding the genre by blending traditional Black spirituals and hymns with blues musical structures, a fusion that was initially controversial among more conservative churches resistant to blues' secular musical associations. His 1932 song "Precious Lord, Take My Hand," written in the immediate aftermath of his wife and newborn son's deaths during childbirth, became one of the most significant and widely performed songs in gospel music history, and it was reportedly Martin Luther King Jr.'s favorite hymn, performed at his own funeral. Dorsey served as music director at Chicago's Pilgrim Baptist Church for decades, and his role there let him directly train and influence a generation of gospel musicians and choir directors who went on to spread his blues-influenced gospel style across Black churches throughout the country. His combination of founding the gospel genre's core stylistic template and his sustained institutional influence through decades of direct church music leadership have made Dorsey the single most foundational figure in the entire history of American gospel music.

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• CeCe Winans

  CeCe Winans, part of the extensive musical Winans family, has won more Grammy Awards than any other female gospel artist in history, reflecting a recording career spanning more than three decades that includes both her solo work and her collaborative recordings with brother BeBe Winans. Her combination of technically precise vocal control and genuinely warm, emotionally accessible delivery has made Winans one of the most consistently commercially successful gospel artists to cross over into mainstream contemporary Christian music audiences without abandoning her core traditional gospel roots. Winans's continued active recording career, including chart-topping gospel albums well into her fifties and sixties, reflects sustained commercial relevance across multiple distinct eras of the genre's stylistic evolution, from her earlier duo work with her brother through her extensive solo career. Her combined record-setting Grammy total and her sustained multi-decade commercial success have made Winans one of the most significant and enduringly popular figures in contemporary gospel music, and the broader Winans family's collective influence on the genre remains one of the most significant multi-generational musical legacies in American gospel.

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More in Music

• Naftule's Dream

  Naftule's Dream grew out of the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, a Boston-area group that had already been playing traditional klezmer for 14 years before Newton, Massachusetts-born clarinetist Glenn Dickson and accordionist-songwriter Michael McLaughlin spun off a more adventurous, improvisation-focused outlet from within it. The band released two records on their own, "Search for the Golden Dreydl" in 1997 and "Smash, Clap" in 1998, before going on to record three further albums for composer John Zorn's Tzadik label under its Radical Jewish Culture series, a significant marker of downtown-avant-garde credibility. The Boston Globe praised the group for fusing "klezmer music, Phish-like improvisation, and radical Yiddish poetry," a description that captured how directly the band pushed past traditional acoustic klezmer instrumentation and arrangement. Their combination of their roots in a 14-year-old traditional klezmer orchestra and their three albums on John Zorn's boundary-pushing Tzadik label has made Naftule's Dream one of the most musically adventurous bands in the klezmer revival movement.

• Brave Old World

  Brave Old World formed in 1989 with members drawn from California, Chicago, New York, and Berlin, an unusually international lineup for a klezmer band, originally featuring clarinetist Joel Rubin, drummer Ben Bazyler, multi-instrumentalist Stu Brotman (a former member of 1960s rock band Kaleidoscope and a sideman for Canned Heat), keyboardist Alan Bern, and violinist Michael Alpert. Rubin was later replaced by Kurt Bjorling, musical director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble since 1984, bringing another deeply credentialed klezmer specialist into the lineup. The Washington Post called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup," noting that "every player is a virtuoso," and the band won first prize at the 1992 International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel, a significant early validation from within the genre's own community. Their combination of their genuinely international, virtuoso-level lineup and their 1992 Safed festival win has made Brave Old World one of the most artistically respected bands in the klezmer revival.

• Kapelye

  Kapelye was assembled in 1979 when ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik organized a group of musicians to perform at a klezmer lecture at Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island; the November 18, 1979 debut went well enough that the musicians agreed on the spot to keep performing together as a full-time band. The group took its name from the Yiddish word for "a band" and began actively researching and collecting turn-of-the-century klezmer recordings, drawing several members, including fiddler and vocalist Michael Alpert, from the overlapping Balkan music community. Their 1981 debut album, "Future & Past," mixed traditional Yiddish folk ballads with labor and political anthems and songs pulled directly from Yiddish theater, and the band followed it with "Levine & His Flying Machine" in 1985 and "Chicken" in 1987, before "Old-Time Jewish American Radio" became their most successful release. Their combination of Sapoznik's foundational archival research and their genre-launching 1981 debut album has made Kapelye one of the most historically significant bands in klezmer's modern revival movement.

• Andy Statman

  Andy Statman, born in New York City in 1950, started on banjo and guitar at 12 before switching to mandolin, which he studied briefly under lifelong friend David Grisman, and by 1970 he was playing in the experimental bluegrass group Country Cooking, followed by stints with David Bromberg's band. In 1975, Statman sought out klezmer clarinet legend Dave Tarras and became his protégé; Tarras wrote melodies specifically for him and eventually bequeathed Statman four of his own clarinets, deliberately passing the older master's living klezmer lineage directly to him. His late-1970s album "Jewish Klezmer Music" became a touchstone recording for that decade's klezmer revival, released alongside his mandolin-focused "Flatbush Waltz," and the National Endowment for the Arts later named him a National Heritage Fellow, the nation's highest honor in the traditional arts. His combination of his direct mentorship under Dave Tarras and his rare parallel mastery of klezmer clarinet and bluegrass mandolin has made Statman one of the most historically important figures in klezmer's modern revival.

• Giora Feidman

  Giora Feidman was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to a family of klezmer musicians spanning his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and by 18 he was already leading clarinetist of the orchestra at Argentina's Teatro Colón before joining the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957 on the recommendation of conductor Paul Kletzki. He played with the Israel Philharmonic until 1974, then launched a solo career and was crowned "the King of Klezmer" in New York already in the 1970s, well before klezmer's broader American revival movement took hold in subsequent decades. In the early 1990s, Steven Spielberg invited Feidman to record alongside violinist Itzhak Perlman on the score for "Schindler's List," and Feidman's solo clarinet became a defining voice on that soundtrack, which went on to win the Academy Award. His combination of a multi-generational klezmer family lineage and his solo clarinet performance on the Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" score has made Feidman one of the most significant ambassadors for klezmer music worldwide.