Keith Green Primer and Discography (1965–1982)
Keith Green was something of a phenom Christian artist in the 1970s—one of Sparrow Records’s early major stars who could fill a concert venue, according to Sparrow Records founder Billy Ray Hearn: “He was so electrifying. You’d just whisper his name and he’d fill up a church. It just spread like wildfire in the Christian youth community.” Like many Christian artists, particularly early ones who first came to prominence during or immediately following the Jesus People Movement, Green’s music career had several phases. Initially, he was signed to Decca Records as a pre-teen artist in the mid-1960s, releasing several singles from the age of 11. After being dropped by Decca, he followed these with a handful of singles on indie labels (Era and Rustic). As his widow Melody Green describes in her memoir, No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green, Keith signed with CBS as a staff songwriter in 1974, working together in a co-writing pair with Melody. During this time he was also searching for a meaningful spiritual experience, which he found at Kenn Gulliksen’s Vineyard Christian Fellowship in LA’s Coldwater Canyon neighborhood.* Through Gulliksen’s guidance and his own deep engagement with the Bible, Green committed himself to Christ in 1975; Melody also converted.
Green was so excited about his new faith that he immediately started incorporating it into his music. Southern California, where he and Melody lived, was the perfect place to experiment with writing and performing pop songs that expressed his love for Jesus. As home to the Jesus People Movement—which, admittedly, was waning in the mid-1970s after its apex of Explo ’72—Green was surrounded by songwriters, performers, churches, labels, and listeners who shared a vision of contemporary popular music that led people to Christ and his teachings. This included both the entertainment-oriented popular music that came to be called “contemporary Christian music,” or CCM, as well as the praise & worship music that spawned what is now called “contemporary worship music,” or CWM.**
Billy Ray Hearn first met Green at Mama Jo’s Recording Studio in North Hollywood, where Terry Talbot was leading a recording session for his rock musical project Firewind (1976); Green played him an early version of “Your Love Broke Through” and invited Hearn to a show. When I interviewed Hearn in 2010 he spoke of meeting Green; to hear Hearn speak of this show is to be swept up in the energy and excitement of something new happening:
So I went to this church, about the size of this house or smaller, and I couldn’t get in the door, it was so crowded. I went there, I finally crawled down the aisle—they were sitting in the aisles on the floor, and I crawled up—and I got right up front. He was playing an old, upright piano with no front on it. It was out of tune. He started banging on that thing, and it sounded like an orchestra to me. He started to sing his songs, and it was like the first time I’d heard Second Chapter of Acts: “Man, this is where it is.”
So when he finished, I went around the back, I said, “I’d like to sign you to my label, to Sparrow Records.” He said, “Man, I’ve already promised Pat Boone I’d sign with Lamb & Lion.” “Oh, no!” “Well, I haven’t signed it, I just told him I would.” “Is there any way we could talk?” “Well, let’s have breakfast tomorrow.”
Keith Green with Billy Ray Hearn, 1980
The next morning, Hearn met with Green at a Dennys in Devonshire for breakfast, near Hearn’s home in Northridge, where they sketched out a recording contract on the back of a napkin. Green’s first two albums as a Christian artist, For Him Who Has Ears to Hear (1977) and No Compromise (1978), were released by Sparrow.
As Green was investing in his career as a Christian musician, he was also investing in his ministry to youth and young adults. Through Last Days Ministries, he and Melody supported a community of about 70 members scattered in 7 houses across Woodland Hills. In 1979 they felt God calling them to leave Sparrow, leave Southern California, and build an intentional community. Keith asked to be released from his contract with Sparrow, and then he and Melody, accompanied by around two dozen members of their community, moved to a 140-acre ranch in Lindale, East Texas where they founded an intentional community, available and accessible to any who needed support.
Green had also felt God calling him to offer his music not as a commercial product but instead as a ministry. Doing so, for him, meant removing any financial obstacles that would keep would-be listeners from accessing his music. He already performed for “love offerings” and left copies of his albums at the front door of a venue for a “suggested donation.” But, after Hearn released Green from his contract with Sparrow, he self-released his next two albums—So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt (1980) and Songs for the Shepherd (1982)—on a pay-what-you-will model (27 years before Radiohead did the same with In Rainbows [2007]). Anyone could write to Green in Texas and request an album for free, including postage, or choose to donate to subsidize the costs. Sadly, Green died in a tragic accident on July 28, 1982 (only a few months after Songs for the Shepherd was released) when an overloaded private plane he was riding in crashed on Last Days’s property.
Sparrow had retained half of Green’s publishing and the international distribution rights to his recordings when Hearn released Green from his contract. Although Last Days Ministries survived for another 13 years under Melody’s leadership, she licensed the rights to Green’s self-released music back to Sparrow. All of Green’s posthumous releases—and there are many, including live albums, retrospectives, and compilations—as well as the domestic distribution to his last two albums have been through Sparrow. The discography below includes Green’s general (secular) market singles from the 1960s and 70s followed by his Christian market albums. I have not included compilations and posthumous releases here, although there are plenty listed on Discogs and other items of interest listed on Petraspective.nl (a Petra fansite).
“Cheese and Crackers” b/w “I Want to Hurt You”
Released by Decca Records
Released January, 1965
“A Go-Go Getter” b/w “The Way I Used to Be”
“Girl Don’t Tell Me” b/w “How to Be Your Guy”
“You’re What’s Happening Baby” b/w “Home Town Girls”
YouTube links: A-side
Released by Decca Records
Released July, 1966
“L.A. City Smog Blues” b/w “Fantastic”
“Sgt. Pepper’s Epitaph” b/w “Country Store”
“Pardon Me (Transcript of the 18 Minute Tape Gap)”
Released by Rustic Records
Released 1974
For Him Who Has Ears to Hear
Released by Sparrow Records
Released May 20, 1977
No Compromise
Released by Sparrow Records
Released November 9, 1978
So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt
Released by Pretty Good Records
Released May 7, 1980
Songs for the Shepherd
Released by Pretty Good Records
Released April 12, 1982
Sources: Discogs’s Green page, Last Days Ministries, Petraspective.nl’s Green discography, Wikipedia’s Green page; Keith Green on Spotify
*: Incidentally, it was Vineyard pastors who also led Bob Dylan to convert to Christianity in 1978. Dylan later joined Gulliksen’s church, and then released his three “Christian phase” albums: Slow Train Coming (1979), Saved (1980), and Shot of Love (1981).
**: The historian Larry Eskridge’s God’s Forever Family (2013) presents a comprehensive account of the Jesus People Movement and its music. Historians of worship locate praise & worship’s growth and popularization (if not precisely its origin) to the Jesus People Movement, particularly including Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, Calvary’s label Maranatha! Music, and the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, especially John Wimber’s Anaheim branch (which had originally been associated with Calvary). Along with Eskridge’s work, also see, for example, Worshiping with the Anaheim Vineyard: The Emergence of Contemporary Worship (2017), by Andy Park, Lester Ruth, and Cindy Rethmeier.