Five 30-minute Sets

79 Year Old Songwriter Gets First National Cut

I wanted to pass along this story. Hopefully it will be an encouragement to some of the aspiring songwriters out there.

It's never too late to start a career writing songs. Frieda Rockett of Enfield, IL is 79 years old and has been singing gospel music all her life. She has written a grand total of 13 songs. One of her compositions titled "Oh What A Feeling" was recently recorded by the North Carolina based Tarheel State Quartet.

Rockett's story is written up in the Courier & Press News of Evansville, IL, and can be viewed online HERE for the moment. Her song is on the Tarheel State Quartet's recording titled Southern Harmony, which you can buy HERE. Unfortunately, there's no sound clip of the song on their site, but maybe they'll have one up soon.

Quote Of The Day

For a long time, I placed a quote by the Cathedral Quartet's original tenor, Bobby Clark, below my signature whenever I posted to a message board. Clark's quote was "I know a pagan piano riff when I hear it," and it got a lot of laughs.

Today I ran across one that might even top that. Unfortunately, the person who made it was anonymous, so I can't give proper credit and the website where I saw the quote doesn't allow for direct links.

Here's the quote: "I'm no fan of gossip either, just wanted to know if anyone had heard anything."

Isn't that great?

2006 Singing News Fan Awards Round Two

Will this CD ever be in stores?

The Real Imperials Stood Up

Last month, I blogged about the confusion surrounding the three groups calling themselves the Imperials. Today, there's a new interview with the Imperials and Armond Morales posted at Sogospelnews.com. Click HERE to read it.

This article is great. It tells how the current group came to be the official Imperials and also how and why the Classic Imperials exist. While it doesn't delve into the third group that's using the Imperials name, it more or less answers the questions people might have.

There's only one statement I disagree with in the article, and it's relatively minor. Near the end of the interview, Armond is asked if he sees any potential conflicts with two groups using similar names. He says: "No - not as long as we are clear in our communication with the public. This world and the Kingdom are bigger than that. We do want to be sure that there is no confusion in the minds of the fans and I will say again what I said before: These young guys are The Imperials! We are The Classic Imperials."

Calling attention to the differences through an interview like this is certainly a great first step towards achieving that goal. Despite their best efforts to publicize the history of each group, though, too many fans are still not going to realize the difference or even that there are two groups.

Also, promoters are sometimes going to bill the Classic Imperials simply as the Imperials. It happened in North Carolina a couple of weeks ago, in fact. I know one man who said he would have gone to the concert if he'd known it was Armond's group, but since he thought it was the younger group, he chose not to go.

I do think all of that will change over time, though, as each group grows in popularity in their new territory. The more popular each group becomes, the less confusion there will be on the part of fans. Still, I have to wonder...wouldn't it have been a whole lot simpler for Armond's group to choose a different name? Say...Classic Voices? Then there would be no confusion at all even if a promoter went so far as to put "former members of the Imperials" underneath their name.