Four New Compilations From Join Legacy’s Essential Series

ESSENTIALS follow-up 2006-2007 Praise & Worship collections by Yolanda Adams, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Twinkie Clark, Daryl Coley, Commissioned, and Richard Smallwood, plus first two multi-artist volumes
of The Very Best Of Praise & Worship

Four collections arrive in stores September 25, 2007, on Verity/Legacy

Contemporary Gospel soars into the Legacy catalog on the wings of the Zomba Gospel Group’s Verity Records imprint, and a quartet of double-CD Essential Series collections on four of the most prominent figures in the entire genre: Fred Hammond, Pastor John P. Kee and his New Life Community Choir, Pastor Donnie McClurkin, and Pastor Hezekiah Walker and his Love Fellowship Crusade Choir. All four packages – with separate liner notes on each written by Bill Carpenter, author of Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia – will arrive in stores September 25th on Verity/Legacy, a division of SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAIN­MENT.

Legacy’s growing catalog of Contemporary Gospel titles got off to a righteous start in June 2006, with six Praise & Worship compilations from the works of Yolanda Adams, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Twinkie Clark, Daryl Coley, Commissioned, and Richard Smallwood, along with the first volume of The Very Best Of Praise & Worship (16-songs). Exactly one year later in June 2007, Holla: The Best Of Trin-I-Tee 5:7 and the 14-song The Very Best Of Praise & Worship, Volume 2 both arrived in stores.

Contemporary Gospel now joins the prestigious double-CD Essential Series with these four new collections. Individual details are follows:

The Essential Fred Hammond

Detroit native Fred Hammond was destined to be a major catalyst in bringing rhythmic R&B and Gospel grooves to the formerly white bread Praise & Worship field, as Bil Carpenter notes. Former bassist for the Winans in the early ’80s, Hammond was a founding member of the Urban crossover Gospel group Commissioned in 1984, and stayed with them a full decade – though the beginning of his solo career on Verity took place with 1991’s I Am Persuaded album (with “Mender Of Broken Hearts”). Three years later he left Commissioned and formed the Radical for Christ Choir, an innovative shot in the arm for P&W. Hammond made deep impressions as one of the triple head­liners with Yolanda Adams and Rev. Hezekiah Walker on 1996’s Shakin’ The House – Live In L.A. (“Unconditional”), and his fourth solo album that same year, Spirit Of David (“When The Spirit Of The Lord”).