Oral History Interviews as Primary Sources
While conducting the research for God Rock, Inc., I was fortunate to interview many current and former Christian music industry executives and musicians. I also used the archives at MTSU’s Center for Popular Music, and I was thrilled to find several relevant interview transcripts available through Baylor’s Institute for Oral History. In this post I discuss these components of my research methodology and approach to oral history interviews.
Larry Norman Primer and Discography (1968–1981)
Larry Norman, the “father of Christian rock,” released several albums in the 1970s after contributing to two records by the Bay-area psych-rock band People! in the late 1960s.
Keith Green Primer and Discography (1965–1982)
Keith Green released several general (secular) market singles as a pre-teen artist in the 1960s, followed by 4 Christian albums between 1977 and 1982.
Amy Grant Primer and Discography (1977–2013)
Amy Grant released 15 studio albums between 1977 and 2013, plus several Christmas albums, live recordings, and greatest hits packages. She has recorded for Myrrh and Word, and has been signed to Sparrow since 2007.
“God told me to give my records away”: Keith Green and the Ethics of Commerce in the 1970s U.S. Christian Music Industry
SAM conference presentation (2021). “God just told me to start my own label and give my records away.” So spoke Christian songwriter Keith Green to Billy Ray Hearn, his record label’s founder and owner, in 1979. Green was convicted that his music could not minister to those who most needed to hear God’s message unless it was freely available. In this paper, I examine Green’s career to illustrate how one artist navigated the delicate balance of ethical and commercial imperatives. I argue that ethical objectives can be just as important as aesthetic or commercial ones, particularly in their ability to establish markets’ boundaries.
Archival Research Methods and Music Industry Pedagogy
Proceedings of the 2018 MEIEA International Summit (2018). In this article, I discuss the value of archival research and primary document sources to pedagogy in music industry education. I describe the archival methods I have employed in a research project documenting contemporaneous discourse about the corporate consolidation of Christian record labels within (secular) major record labels in the early 1990s.
Concentration, Diversity, and Consequences: Privileging Independent over Major Record Labels
Popular Music (2018). A meta-analysis of popular music literature on record labels reveals an ‘indie prejudice’: a preference for (and even a bias in favour of) independent labels coupled with a dismissive approach to the study of major labels and musical mainstreams that impacts our ability, as a scholarly field, to speak with authority about the largest segments of the commercial record industries. What larger implications for our scholarship might confronting this prejudice reveal? What master narratives have structured popular music studies’ preference of independent over major record labels?
Selling Out or Buying In? Archival Research of Consumer Discourse about Christian Record Label Consolidation
MEIEA conference presentation (2018). In this paper I consider the role of archival research in music industry studies to address fan discourse as a barometer of anxieties over corporate consolidation. As a result of MEIEA-funded research into CCM magazine (at Middle Tennessee State University’s Center for Popular Music), I discuss methodological approaches for discerning the diverse range of opinions expressed by committed fans (as a kind of historical ethnography and reception study) and present my findings not only in light of their importance to the historical record but also in terms of their practical significance to music and entertainment industry decision-makers considering an acquisition today.
Christian Popular Music, U.S.A.
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, Canterbury Press (2013). Christian popular music is an umbrella category for a sonically diverse repertoire of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century evangelical Protestant commercial popular music. It encompasses several distinct subcategories based on musical genre, industrial context, or function including, but not limited to, Jesus Music, Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), Praise & Worship music, and Christian rock.
Billy Ray Hearn
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, Canterbury Press (2013). A visionary and innovator in the Christian music industry, Hearn is primarily known as the founder of Sparrow Records, currently a part of the Capitol Christian Music Group family of record labels and distributors owned by Universal Music Group, a subsidiary of media conglomerate Vivendi.
Christian Rock
Encyclopedia of Popular Musics of the World, Continuum (2012). the emergence of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) in the early 1970s as the dominant category of popular music marketed to white evangelical Christians, there have been Christian recording artists whose music has failed to meet the aesthetic, contextual, economic, ideological, lyrical, stylistic or theological requirements of the US CCM recording industry. Early ‘Christian rock’ artists’ theological message located them on the periphery of the secular popular music recording industry, while their aggressive sound—heavily influenced by contemporary rock music—located them on the periphery of the existing Christian music recording industry, which focused primarily on sacred music and hymnody.
The Price of Profit? Changing and Challenging Priorities in the Christian Recording Industry
SEM conference presentation (2011). In this paper, I examine EMI Christian Music Group (CMG), a major Christian record label (and division of EMI Ltd.), headquartered near Nashville, Tennessee. I provide a value-neutral analysis of the intersections of commerce, aesthetics, and theology. As with Keith Negus’s (1992, 1999) ethnographic research within the recording industry, my study illustrates that major record label practices and priorities are more nuanced than may be visible to outside observers.
We Are the Music Makers: Converging and Diverging Practices among Christian Major and Independent Record Labels
SEM conference presentation (2010). Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Christian music recording industry “cultural intermediaries” in 2009–2010, this paper’s nuanced study of Christian record labels contributes to a broader center-periphery perspective on the mediation of popular music in the United States.
What Would the Community Think: Communal Values in Independent Music
voiceXchange (2006). An enthusiastic post on a website, a supportive audience in a smoky club, an animated conversation at a local music store—every interaction between fans of independent music binds them in a community. This paper presents my initial research into the ways in which the independent music community’s boundaries and values are expressed and shared in evolving social networks by means of interactions that authenticate participants into this community.
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