(RNS) — Gospel composer Andraé Crouch sang, played the piano and preached for decades — often all at once.
Ten years after his death, a new biography aims to capture both the genre-defying range of Crouch’s music — as well as his ability to build bridges through his evangelistic ministry. Co-authored by a white former Billboard gospel music editor and a Black gospel musician, the book chronicles how Crouch’s music, rooted in the historically Black Church of God in Christ denomination, became popular among white evangelical audiences.
“Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch,” by Robert F. Darden and Stephen Michael Newby, is a 400-page narrative of the life of Crouch, who died in 2015 at the age of 72, that reviews more than a dozen of his albums, with popular selections such as “Jesus Is the Answer” and “Take Me Back.”
“We didn’t figure we could understand the man without doing a deep dive into the music, and we couldn’t understand the music ’til we did a deep dive into the man,” said Darden, emeritus journalism professor at Baylor University and founder of its Black Gospel Music Preservation Program, in a joint interview with Newby days before the book released on Monday (March 31). “He is so part of his music, more than anybody I’ve ever experienced through a lot of interviews.”
The a …