Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments - Charles Fold

Gospel choir innovator Charles Fold, recorded several memorable songs with the Gospel Messengers, including "He'll Fight Your Battles". 

Click to listen to this episode:

Listen to the featured song:

2136_charles_fold_and_the_gospel_messengers_-_he_ll_fight_your_battles.mp3
Charles Fold and the Gospel Messengers - He'll Fight Your Battles

Welcome to Shout! Black Gospel Music Moments. I'm Robert Darden.
 
 When Charles Fold died in 2006, he left behind a legacy as one of the great innovators in the gospel music choral tradition... right up there with Mattie Moss Clark and James Cleveland. Beginning in the 1970s,
Fold would release 14 well-regarded LPs, mostly for Savoy and Peacock Records. Three of them, incidentally, would eventually go gold. He also received four Grammy nominations and won in 1981 for the LP, Lord, Let Me be an Instrument.
 
Today, he's probably best-known for his many collaborations with Cleveland and the Charles Fold Singers, as well as his long affiliation with the Gospel Music Workshop of America. And that's Fold and his singers on backup vocals on Cleveland's hit version of "Jesus is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me".
 
A celebrated singer, pianist and arranger, Fold also had several smaller side projects where he tried to capture the rich choral sounds he heard in his head, including this one, Charles Fold and the Gospel Messengers singing "He Will Fight Your Battles". Fold was just in his 60s when he died... the night before his passing, he had led choir rehearsal for his beloved Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Choir! 
 
MUSIC:
 
I'm Robert Darden. SHOUT! Black Gospel Music Moments is produced by KWBU, the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor University Libraries and is funded by generous support from the Prichard Foundation.