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SHOUT! Black Gospel Music Moments - The Cogics

The teen-age COGICs’ “It Will Never Lose Its Power” is the earliest recording of Andrae Crouch’s beloved “The Blood (Will Never Lose Its Power.”

The greatest unknown supergroup in gospel music history was the COGICs. Along with his sister Sandra, Andrae Crouch’s first ensemble, way back in early ‘60s. The teen-age COGICs featured the incomparable Billy Preston on Hammond B-3 organ and three vocalists who would all go to varying degrees of fame in popular music: Sondra “Blinky” Williams, Gloria Jones, and Edna Wright.

The COGICs lone album for Vee-Jay got caught up in the label’s bankruptcy hearings, so the producer, Richard Simpson, released the group on his own short-lived Simpson Records label. Their 45, “It Will Never Lose Its Power” is the earliest recording of one of Andrae’s best-loved songs, “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power” ... and one of the rarest songs in the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project!

MUSIC: The COGICs, “It Will Never Lose Its Power,” 45, May 5, 2024

2418 The COGICs - It Will Never Lose Its Power.mp3

Robert F. Darden is the author of two dozen books, most recently: Nothing But Love in God’s Water, Volume II: Black Sacred Music from Sit-In to Resurrection City (Penn State University Press, 2016); Nothing But Love in God’s Water, Volume I: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement(Penn State University Press, 2014); Jesus Laughed: The Redemptive Power of Humor(Abingdon Press, 2008), Reluctant Prophets and Clueless Disciples: Understanding the Bible by Telling Its Stories(Abingdon Press, 2006); and People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music(Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2004).