Sacred Music Preserved

a web site review

www.sacred-music.org

Sacred Music Preserved "preserves" sacred & gospel audio recordings by providing digital streaming audio of out-of-print vinyl albums.

This web site collection is gospel, inspirational, sacred & southern gospel recordings published before 1970. This period is sometimes referred to as gospel music's "golden age". The music will appeal to people who enjoy conservative Christian music with unambiguous lyrics sung by trained vocalists featuring accompaniment by expert keyboardists, guitarists, string orchestra, concert brass and the like.

The site is a great model for how a music site should be done. Ethan Bank, the purveyor, has painstakingly recorded, digitized, scrubbed and truly preserved old music from vinyl albums that he has purchased or received as donations. Copyright law was a fuzzy thing before 1972, but he ha overcome any problems by only offering streams of the individual songs or entire albums. No downloads are available.

So, why is Modern Disciple reviewing an "oldies" music web site? If you have to ask then you REALLY need to know. Roots, babe. You can't appreciate any of today' Christian music unless you know what has led up to the freedom and variety that Christian artists have today. Until you've heard Pruth McFarlin's sweet, vibrato-laden, tenor voice singing "How Great Thou Art" or "This Ole House", or experienced the raspy, tear-stained, tenor voice of Jack Holcomb lilting through "I'm Going Higher Someday"... how can you even think critically about the homogenous, pop-boy lead singers of today?

Here's a little piece of advice on audio players: GET WINAMP! Okay, so that's just my opinion, but it is definitely the most trouble-free piece of listening software I have used and everything on SMP plays flawlessly with it. Definitely the best for streaming music. So, get WinAmp, go to sacred-music.org, and learn a thing or two. Even if you don't become a big fan of the incredible bass of Thurl Ravenscroft (aka Tony the Tiger), it will still be fun and educational (and much better than Sesame Street :-p )

- Colin Michael