Jesus Music

Topic: Religious Folk Music Revival
At the time mainstream religious denominations were attempting to reach the Now Generation with folk music, Jesus music was developing among Jesus Movement churches on the west coast.

Church-sponsored coffeehouses were incubators that provided opportunities for local artists to perform. [1]  The most important was established in 1968 by Don Williams as a ministry of First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.  The idea came from members of a Bible study group he was directing for college students. [2]

Many of the coffeehouses featured acoustic music.  In some cases, that was because the rooms  were too small for loud music. [3]  In other cases, churches simply didn’t have the funds to buy the equipment needed for amplified instruments. [4]

Money wasn’t a problem for Williams.  His church board agreed to renovate a space and buy the best available sound equipment.  The Salt Box cost $15,000 to open, and that was with volunteer labor. [5]  A dollar cover charge went toward repaying the church. [6]

Perhaps the most important artist to begin at the Salt Box was Larry Norman.  He had a gift for writing lyrics and melody [7] that led him to work with the People! [8]  When his relations with the group deteriorated, [9] Capital Records asked him to work on other projects. [10]  This gave him the contacts and studio experience necessary for Capital’s gamble on an album in 1969.

Its most popular song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” [11] borrowed from Simon and Garfunkle’s tone and style to describe the Rapture. [12]  It used an acoustic guitar and strings. [13]

A more influential song on the album was “Sweet Sweet Song of Salvation.” [14]  It used electric instruments, drums, and a female back-up group. [15]  The theme was essentially the same as Fannie Crosby’s “Blessed Assurance.”  Phoebe Palmer Knapp’s melody had been as important as the text when the Holiness song was written in 1873. [16]

Coffeehouses effectively isolated Jesus People from adults in congregations.  Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, [17] still held traditional Sunday morning services.  Chuck Smith reserved the newer forms of music for Bible study classes. [18]

The usual weekday meeting began with “the entire youthful congregation [. . .] singing ‘Pass It On’ [19] or a similar song that often includes swaying with the music, arms interlocked.” [20]

When Smith began his Bible classes in 1968, the groups sang “songs as silly as ‘The Lord told Noah to build him an Arky Arky.’)” [21]  The associate pastor remembered it was “more of a sing-a-long, camp songs, singing Scripture, taking the Coca Cola song and making it about Jesus.  So it was really like camp singing’.” [22]

Then, some began to reconsider what they were doing.  John Higgins said the groups “banned the singing of the songs like “It’s a Small World’.” [23]  Instead, they decided they should write their own songs that came from their personal experiences with Jesus. [24]  Marsha Stevens explained they “had the specific purpose of relating one’s heart to another person or sharing one’s heart with others and with Jesus.” [25]

Two months after Norman’s album was released, Love Song introduced electric guitars in a Calvary Chapel Bible study meeting. [26]  The rock group was what attracted the large crowds that led to the ocean baptisms [27] publicized by Time [28] and Look magazines in 1971. [29]

This marked the transition from sending Lonnie Frisbee out looking for Hippies [30] to performing in local high schools to attract middle-class youth. [31]  It was a move away from rebels, [32] like Norman who had been raised in a Southern Baptist family [33] that had refused to let him listen to Elvis Presley in 1956, [34] and towards adolescents who remembered when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan’s television show in 1964.

As other bands joined Love Song at Calvary Chapel, [35] Smith organized a record company, [36] concerts, [37] and a local tour circuit [38] to provide the musicians with income. [39]

So far as I know, none of the Jesus Music performers recorded a version of “Kumbaya.”  This, in part, may have been a result of marketing concerns that albums provide new and original material.

More important, “Kumbaya” did not fit the Calvary Chapel aesthetic.  It wasn’t written by a convert, but some unknown person.  It used “Lord” instead of “Jesus” and “somebody” instead of “I.”  It was a request for intercession by the Holy Spirit, not a testimony that such contact had occurred.  It lacked the immediacy of “Sweet Sweet Song of Salvation.”   

It was part of the old world converts were leaving behind.

End Notes
1.  Ronald M. Enroth, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., and C. Breckinridge Peters.  The Jesus People. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eermans Publishing Company, 1972.  83.  “Virtually every coffee house and church has its indigenous musical attraction.”

2.  Larry Eskridge.  God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.  60.

3.  Enroth.  145.  “Music styles have changed from the handclapping rhythms of hepped-up versions of ‘Do Lord’ to a subtle, more sophisticated, reflective blues.  There is still little hard rock, due to the small confines of the performing room.”

4.  Eskridge.  165.
5.  Eskridge.  60.
6.  Eskridge.  61.

7.  Gregory Alan Thornbury.  Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?  New York: Convergent Books, 2018.  33.

8.  Thornbury.  32–33.
9.  Thornbury.  42–45.

10.  Thornbury.  46.  Norman was working for Beechwood Music, a subsidiary of Capitol Records.

11.  Larry Norman.  “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.”  Upon This Rock.  Capitol Records ST-446.  1969.

12.  The Rapture was discussed briefly in the post for 27 September 2020.

13.  Several copies are available on YouTube including one uploaded by Rick Vaughn and one uploaded by Greg Murray on 8 January 2013.

14.  Larry Norman.  “Sweet Sweet Song Of Salvation.”  Upon This Rock.
15.  Greg Murray uploaded a copy to YouTube on 29 February 2012.
16.  “Blessed Assurance” was discussed in the post for 1 March 2020.
17.  Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel were introduced in the post for 27 September 2020.

18.  Charles E. Fromm.  “Textual Communities and New Song in the Multimedia Age: The Routinization of Charisma in the Jesus Movement.”  PhD dissertation.  Fuller Theological Seminary, 2006.  184–186.  This was brought to my attention by Wen Reagan.  “A Beautiful Noise: A History of Contemporary Worship Music in Modern America.”  PhD dissertation.  Duke University, 2015.

19.  Kurt Kaiser.  “Pass It On.”  Copyrighted by Lexicon Music in 1969.  It is mentioned in the posts for 15 December 2017, 13 December 2020, and 20 December 2020..

20.  Enroth.  87.
21.  “Rise and Shine” was one of the case study songs in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

22.  Kenn Gilliksen.  2005 interview.  Quoted by Fromm.  175.  The skills adolescents learned singing in camps were transferred, even if the songs were not.  Wen Reagan noted the texts relied on repetition.  “With such simple songs, song sheets and books proved unnecessary—Smith and the congregation could sing them from memory—while the simple melodies proved more accessible to people with little or no musical ability.” [40]  Fromm noted on Sunday nights, “the majority of the congregation would know the songs or they could be rapidly learned once introduced. [41]

22.  Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman.  “It’s a Small World.”   Copyrighted by Wonderland Music Company on 4 October 1963. [42]  It was written for the 1964 World’s Fair, and subsequently used for a ride at Disneyland and Disneyworld. [43]  The Mike Curb Congregation recorded it in 1973. [44]

24.  John Higgins.  2000 interview.  Quoted by Fromm.  176.  Higgins worked with Frisbee at the House of Miracles half-way house mentioned in post for 27 September 2020.

25.  Marsha Stevens.  2005 interview.  Quoted by Fromm.  183.  She wrote “For Those Tears I Died” for her younger sister when she, Marsha, was in high school. [45]

26.  Fromm.  190.
27.  Fromm.  195.
28.  “The New Rebel Cry: Jesus Is Coming!”  Time 57:56–63:21 June 1971.

29.  Brian Vachon.  “The Jesus Movement Is upon Us.”  Look 35:15–21:9 February 1971.  Fromm said the photographers, Jack and Betty Cheetham, “had been tasked with taking pictures of appealing teenagers.” [46]

30.  Frisbee was discussed in the post for 27 September 2020.
31.  Fromm.  219.

32.  Norman’s rebellion wasn’t against society, but the strictures of organized religion. [47]  His vocal denunciations of denominations became more than Williams could tolerate and the two parted ways. [48]

33.  Wikipedia.  “Larry Norman.”

34.  Thornbury.  26.  He didn’t give a date but said the song was “Hound Dog,” which Presley RCA released in July 1956. [49]

35.  Children of the Day preceded them at Calvary Chapel, but Love Song was “the catalyst that got others to develop groups.” [50]

36.  Fromm.  217, 220.  Fromm became the CEO of Marantha! Music in 1975. [51]  Smith was his uncle. [52]

37.  Fromm.  222.
38.  Fromm.  229.
39.  Fromm.  218–219.
40.  Reagan.  171.
41.  Fromm.  186.
42.  “It’s a Small World.”  Copyright Encyclopedia website.
43.  Wikipedia.  “It’s a Small World.”

44.  The Mike Curb Congregation.  It’s A Small World - Walt Disney’s Greatest Hits.  Buena Vista Records 5006.  1973.

45.  Fromm.  182.
46.  Fromm.  250.
47.  Thornbury.  Chapter 3, “Jesus versus Organized Religion,” especially 58–59.
48.  Enroth.  80.
49.  Wikipedia.  “Hound Dog (Song).”
50.  Fromm.  194.
51.  Fromm.  10.
52.  Fromm.  21.