Mighty Clouds of Joy performing at a pop music festival
Gospel quartets enjoyed great popularity from the late 1920s through the 1940s. With lead singers using a falsetto voice and an often flamboyant delivery, groups such as the Swan Silvertones, Sensational Nightingales, and the Dixie Hummingbirds had an enormous influence on American pop culture.
The Mighty Clouds of Joy was formed in late 1959 when 17-year-old Willie Joe Ligon, a Los Angeles high school student, organised a group of his peers into a gospel group. The original members of the group were Ligon, Elmore Franklin, Johnny Martin, and Richard Wallace. Paul Beasley joined in 1980.
By 1962 the Mighty Clouds of Joy had become one of the leading male gospel quartets, having negotiated a recording contract with Peacock Records. Peacock promoted them actively, and they enjoyed ten years of success with the label before moving on to ABC. (After the demise of ABC, they moved to Epic/CBS.) Their original sound was characteristic of hard gospel, with loud, rhythmic singing at the extremes of the vocalists’ ranges. Later, they adopted the softer sound associated with rhythm and blues, and were influential in moving the male quartet sound into contemporary gospel.
The repertoire of the Mighty Clouds of Joy included many traditional gospel songs, plus songs with lyrics that can be interpreted as either sacred or secular—an example of this is “You’ve Got a Friend.” They were also the first gospel group to carry an instrumental rhythm section and electric amplification. Their later recordings incorporated an orchestral accompaniment to their usual backing of two guitarists, an organist, and a drummer.
The Mighty Clouds of Joy won six Grammy Awards, including the 1992 award for the best gospel album of the year (Pray for Me), and the 1996 award for the best traditional soul gospel album (Power). In addition to their recording successes, they also performed worldwide, appearing everywhere from the Arsenio Hall Show to the Montreux Jazz Festival, as well as in Washington, D.C. at the White House.
Mighty Clouds of Joy performing at a pop music festival
During more than three decades of singing, Mighty Clouds of Joy recorded over 25 albums and were one of the first gospel acts to cross over from gospel radio into mainstream pop. Popular with multiracial and secular audiences, they appeared with many groups and artists including Earth, Wind and Fire, the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Smokey Robinson. In 1993 they teamed up with Paul Simon to appear in a month-long engagement at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Donna Cox
SEE ALSO:
FESTIVALS AND EVENTS; GOSPEL; SOUL.
Young, Alan. Woke Me Up This Morning
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1997).
Best of the Mighty Clouds of Joy,
Memory Lane; Night Song;
Power, Pray for Me.