Four New Compilations From Join Legacy’s Essential Series

The Essential Donnie Mcclurkin

A singer’s singer blessed with a “booming, nearly-operatic tenor,” as Bil Carpener describes his voice, Donnie McClurkin overcame childhood adversities to rise to the pantheon of Gospel music’s most beloved performers. Several of his recordings, “Stand,” “We Fall Down” and “I Call You Faithful” among them, are contemporary Gospel standards. And all four of his principal albums (which are the source for this collection) – including the Grammy award-winning Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album of 2003, …Again, and Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album of 2005, Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs – have reached the top rungs of the Gospel, Pop, R&B, CCM, and Heatseekers charts. Yet for all his success, which includes tv cameos and a starring movie role, he continually hints at devoting himself full-time to his duties as pastor of the Perfecting Faith Church in Long Island, New York that he founded in 2002, against which all his other activities take second place.

His success began early on, in a church-based household where one of his aunts, a singer with Andrae Crouch, introduced Donnie to the Gospel don, who became a mentor to him. Donnie began on the piano as a teen and organized his six siblings into the McClurkin Singers. Later on, there was the New York Restoration Choir (on Savoy Records in the 1990s), and connections with the Winans that raised Donnie’s profile. This period culminated in a deal with Warner Alliance Records and his self-titled album debut in 1996 – which Oprah Winfrey turned into a home run when she discovered “Stand” and had Donnie sing it on her show.

Ironically, this early success was not immediately followed up. Instead, his next album did not arrive until 2000 – but its release was an explosive event: Live In London And More… (with eight of its 14 tracks included here), recorded at Fairfield Hall, introduced “We Fall Down” and kept Donnie’s reputation intact as one of the genre’s great songwriters and performers. It rose to #1 Gospel, #1 CCM, #1 Heatseekers, and #22 R&B. Another long hiatus between albums was finally ended when …Again was finally released in 2003. Fans rallied to the album which again crossed over on every chart: #1 Gospel, #3 CCM, #12 R&B, and #31 Pop. Six of its 11 tracks are featured on this collection, including the duet with Yolanda Adams on Carol Bayer Sager & David Foster’s “The Prayer,” produced by Foster. (…Again was subsequently issued in DualDisc format with 5.1 Surround Sound and enhanced stereo.) Donnie’s most recent album (which is nearly three years old as of this writing) was a return to live performance, the double-CD Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs. 10 of its 21 tracks are reprised here, including all four extended-length medleys: “Church Medley,” “Blood Medley,” “Jesus Medley,” and “Language Medley,” as well as his climactic version of the Five Stairsteps’ “Ooh Child.”