Cleveland, James

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Cleveland, James

December 5, 1931
February 9, 1991

Born in Chicago, gospel singer James Edward Cleveland was educated in public schools and began piano lessons at the age of five. Three years later he became a soloist in Thomas A. Dorsey's Junior Gospel Choir at Pilgrim Baptist Church. At age fifteen he joined a local group, the Thorne Crusaders, with whom he remained for the next eight years. He began composing, and at age sixteen wrote "Grace Is Sufficient," recorded by the Roberta Martin Singers and now a part of the standard gospel repertory.

After leaving the Thorne Crusaders, Cleveland served as pianist and arranger for Albertina Walker's Caravans and recorded with them. He later joined the Gospel Chimes and the Gospel All-Stars, and eventually organized the James Cleveland Singers. In 1963 he joined Rev. Lawrence Roberts and his choir at First Baptist Church in Nutley, New Jersey, to make a number of recordings beginning with "Peace, Be Still" (1962). Cleveland liked a treble sound and dispensed with the bass voice in the gospel choir. He also preferred the call-and-response delivery to singing in concert, and on choir recordings he played the role of preacher to the choir as congregation. He felt that gospel needed a congregation present and made all his choir recordings live.

During the 1950s and 1960s Cleveland wrote over five hundred songs, including "Oh, Lord, Stand By Me" (1952), "He's Using Me" (1953), "Walk On by Faith" (1962), and "Lord, Help Me to Hold Out" (1973). He continued to compose into the 1980s and scored a success with the Mighty Clouds of Joy recording of "I Get a Blessing Everyday" (1980).

The Cleveland style was one of half-crooning, half-preaching the verses and then moving into sung refrains. His hard gospel technique of singing at the extremes of his register created a contrast with the falsetto he employed. He was fond of the vamp—a section of the song, usually toward the end, when the choir repeated one phrase, over which he extemporized variations. Like Dorsey, Cleveland wrote and sang in the everyday language of his audiences, dealing with such common subjects as paying rent and buying food.

In August 1968 Cleveland formed the Gospel Music Workshop of America, an organization with several hundred thousand members by the mid-1980s. Each year's convention released a recording; one of the better known was with his protégée Aretha Franklin ("Amazing Grace," 1971), who studied his style when he was director of the Radio Choir at Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church, where her father, Rev. C. L. Franklin, was pastor.

Known as the "Crown Prince of Gospel" and "King of Gospel," Cleveland won several gold records and three Grammy Awards, appeared at Carnegie Hall, worked with Quincy Jones in the TV production of Roots, and recorded the opera Porgy and Bess with Ray Charles and Cleo Laine. In 1980, along with Natalie Cole, he starred in the television special In the Spirit, filmed in England for Grenada Television (BBC). In November 1970 Cleveland organized and became pastor of Cornerstone Institutional Baptist Church in Los Angeles, with sixty charter members. At his death in 1991, membership totaled over seven thousand.

Bibliography

Boyer, Horace Clarence. "A Comparative Analysis of Traditional and Contemporary Gospel Music." In More than Dancing: Essays on Afro-American Music and Musicians, edited by Irene V. Jackson, pp. 127–146. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Heilbut, Anthony. The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971. Reprint, New York: Limelight Editions, distributed by Harper & Row, 1985.

horace clarence boyer (1996)

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History