Atlanta West Pentecostal Church Choir from Atlanta West Pentecostal Church won Verizon Wireless’ How Sweet the Sound(TM) competition and has earned the title of “The Best Church Choir in America.” During the grand finale, held on Nov. 7 at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Atlanta West Pentecostal Church Choir walked away with not only the title, but a cash prize of $30,000.

Atlanta West Pentecostal Church Choir plans to use the prize money to record a live CD in 2010. This will be their first recording. Brandon Frazier, music director for Atlanta West Pentecostal Church Choir said, “How Sweet the Sound does everything first class. It’s been a once-in-a-lifetime experience participating and to win — I’m still taking it in. It’s an amazing feeling and has already opened so many doors for our choir.”

Atlanta West Pentecostal Church Choir from Atlanta West Pentecostal Church additionally won the V CAST People’s Choice Award and a $5,000 cash prize. During the grand finale, audience members were asked to text their votes for their favorite choir to help decide the Verizon Wireless V CAST People’s Choice Award.

For more information on the competition, which just finished its second year, go to www.howsweetthesound.com.

“I Wanna Thank You” may belong to Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly, but the song’s arrangement on this tribute is 100 percent Clark: bright, high harmonies; solo turns by each singer; and Karen Clark-Sheard’s glass-shattering notes at the end.

Three generations of Clark/Moss singing stars, recording in July 2009 in Detroit with Grammy-winning producer Donald Lawrence at the helm and Chicago’s Daniel Weatherspoon as musical director, take this 1983 song from Maze’s We Are One LP a notch or two higher in inspirational intensity.

The song is part of Silky Soul Music…An All-Star Tribute to Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly. Other album contributors paying musical tribute to Maze include Musiq Soulchild, Avant and Mary J. Blige. The album has been nominated for a 2009-10 Stellar Award in the Special Event CD of the Year category. Surprisingly, it’s the first time in his forty-year career that Frankie Beverly has been nominated for a music award. Talk about long overdue.

When Fred Hammond, original member of the innovative gospel group Commissioned, was developing his own distinctive vocal style, he turned for inspiration to the smooth singing of the Whispers’ Wallace and Walter Scott.

This fall, influence came full circle.

Hammond co-produced Thankful, the Whispers’ first gospel/inspirational album and its first major recording in a decade. The sweet soul group’s crisp harmonies and funky beats on Thankful are as reminiscent of its 1980s hits as they are of the Commissioned sound that Hammond cultivated.

Currently #5 on the Billboard list of Top Gospel Albums, Thankful is, to quote the Commodores, “easy like Sunday morning.” The Whispers in 2009 are every bit as cool, sophisticated and tuneful as it was more than two decades ago, when it turned out such hits as “Lady” and “Tonight.”

The Whispers releasing a gospel album makes sense. In musical terms, the distance between secular love songs like “It’s a Love Thing“ and sacred love songs as “Praise His Holy Name” is not as far as some might argue. And the Whispers traverse the same territory as other gospel groups. For example, on “In the Name of Jesus,” the men sermonize about troubles in the land, such as poverty, hunger and crime. “We Need You” is a sung prayer for those in need, which turns out to be just about everyone.

“For Thou Art With Me,” the album’s current single, best showcases the Whispers’ tight harmonies and their way with a groove. Its bright, uptempo sound is evident on the opening “Walk With Me” and “One More Chance.”

Thankful proves, as a 1987 Whispers song suggests, that some things “just get better with time.”

Four of Five Stars

gPod picks: “Walk With Me,” “One More Chance,” “For Thou Art With Me.”

According to the Associated Press, BeBe Winans has been uprooted from the Oprah Winfrey Show until the legal charges against him based on allegations of him attacking his ex-wife are resolved in court.

Winans did appear on her show last week to promote Still, his new album with sister CeCe, and was seen in promos for upcoming shows. A show focusing on a “karaoke challenge,” bolstered by the debut of the video game Band Hero, was supposed to feature (BeBe) Winans, but will be cut from the show according to show spokesman Don Halcombe.

Amid growing concerns from bloggers about Oprah’s harsh stance against domestic abuse, Oprah responded in a statement: “Domestic violence is something that I wouldn’t tolerate. Period.”

More growing concerns for Winans has sparked surrounding the rumors of his departure as a judge and co-host on BET’s Sunday Best. At press time, BET has not confirmed such a report, but the rumors seem to be true, as reported earlier by Gospel Pundit. BeBe & CeCe Winans are still expected to go on tour to promote their new album.

On “Love Like Crazy,” Kierra “Kiki” Sheard sings, “People want to ask what’s up, what’s up/I say, I’m doing way too much, too much.”

Truer words were never sung.

For the two or three people out there who are unaware of Kierra Sheard, she’s the gospel singing daughter of Karen Clark-Sheard, who is the daughter of the late COGIC choir maestro Mattie Moss Clark. In between live performances, singing on the Maze featuring Frankie Beverly tribute album, working toward a bachelor’s degree in English at Wayne State University in her native Detroit, launching a clothing line, running a youth ministry, and now starring in a feature film, Kierra took time out to record two new songs for a compilation called Kiki’s Mixtape.

Given that kind of schedule (I’m exhausted just writing about it), it’s no surprise that Kiki’s Mixtape is just a few seconds short of a half hour in length. That’s probably all the time she had to devote to it. What is essentially her “greatest hits thus far” project reprises her breakout smash, 2004’s “You Don’t Know,” and also includes a mix of her current single, “Love Like Crazy.”

I found the EP’s two mixes the most interesting, as they inject racing fuel into already energetic Kierra performances. In addition, one of the two new songs, “Sing to the Lord,” co-written by Kierra, is a high-octane amalgam of rock, CCR and power pop clearly aimed at multiple charts and very likely to hit one or more.

Kierra’s duet with Marcus Cole on “This Christmas” is bold and bracing, one of the better of the more recent covers of Donny Hathaway’s holiday chestnut.

The project is exhilarating and would have been even stronger had some of the mixes been extended well beyond three of four minutes, and if the ends and beginnings of tracks were blended together like a professional house party DJ. Perhaps this was not done because the songs are going to go directly into iPods…I mean gPods. Still, it would have been really something had the eight-project EP been double its size: sixty minutes of all-out urban gospel in the exciting Clark-Sheard style…maybe even with samples of some vintage recordings by Mattie, Clark Sisters and the Moss Family in between.

But of course I’m being picayune. In a word association test, Kiki’s Mixtape means “fun interlude.” It’s an opportunity to take stock of this talented young woman’s accomplishments to date and watch her prepare for her next chapter…because as she sings, “I say, I just can’t get enough, enough.” Nor can we.

Four of Five Stars

gPod picks: “Sing to the Lord,” “Love Like Crazy (Extended Mix),” “Wave Your Banner (Monsta Mix).”

After years of recording with, and writing songs for, other artists, Pam English has earned her time to shine. In fact, the Detroiter sparkles on her debut solo project, titled Real Good. And it is. Real good, I mean. In fact, it’s extraordinarily good. Head-shakingly good.

The singer-songwriter and vocal producer’s fascination with recording began in 1977 when she waxed her first disc as a member of the Unity Baptist Church Youth Choir. Since then, she has racked up a stack of appearances on record, television and in live programs with talents such as Virtue, Lexi, Dorinda Clark-Cole, Karen Clark-Sheard, Diana Ross and Take 6. Her song, “Beautiful,” written for the Nevels Sisters, was reviewed in April by TBGB.

Real Good benefits from smart production, courtesy of a stable of strong producers, notably Tommie Walker, Marcus “DaHeatMizer” Devine, Randy Scott and Demetrius “Krayon” Nabors. They provide Pam with a dazzlingly intense, compelling sound akin to fellow Detroiters Damita and Deitrick Haddon, Daniel Young, and J Moss. The tech-savvy urban contemporary wall-of-sound gospel vibe these artists have in common could easily be considered the “New Detroit Sound.”

The album is non-stop energy through track seven. “He Is I Am” is a song of praise for God who was taking care of business long before our problems (e.g., broken heart, lost fights, danger) started. “Wonderfully Made” is known as the “women’s anthem.” It concludes that what does or does not constitute conventional beauty means nothing when one is “perfect in your eyes.” “I don’t want to be the next top model/I don’t want to be America’s idol,” Pam sings in the chorus, because “I’m wonderfully made.” Amen!

Unlike the hymns of old, which praised from a respectable distance, Pam’s lyrics reflect a very personal relationship with her Savior, as if she were thanking her best friend for being there whenever she needed help.

The nearly seven-minute “I Don’t Remember” is the only weak spot in an otherwise superb debut effort, principally because the extended high tessitura pulls Pam out of her vocal comfort zone and strains an otherwise fine and confident voice. But a strong ending, courtesy of the infectious “The Champion,” makes all well again.

Pam English is an artist who truly deserves her season. Real Good is a CD that truly deserves to be played at maximum volume.

Five of Five Stars

gPod picks: “Real Good,” “He Is I Am,” “Wonderfully Made,” “The Champion.”

Kendra Carr is equal parts gospel singer and evangelist, and she puts both to excellent use on her first national CD release, Unexpected Judah.

Unexpected Judah has the energy and timing of a live performance. It comes out of the box strong, waxes traditional, slows into a praise and worship groove, and then turns up the tempo as the CD spins toward its finale. With one exception, the songs were written either by Kendra, album producer Daniel Miree, or the two in collaboration. All of the compositions are polished, tuneful pieces that fit with Kendra’s vocal styling like a cup to a saucer.

Although Kendra tends to wrap her church-filling gospel voice around praise and worship pieces, the current single “Only You” is a traditional program-stopper in gospel waltz tempo. Similarly, “He’ll Deliver” is a hand-clapping, foot-tapping, churchy workout. Like an experienced gospel singer, Kendra uses a pleading, evangelistic, stream-of-consciousness singing technique on the vamp of extended numbers to heighten and stretch out the intensity.

The album’s big surprise is “Reign In Me,” a kaleidoscope of complex chord structures that bubbles with vocal brilliance from Kendra and her background singers, who, by the way, support her professionally throughout the project.

Unexpected Judah advertises diversity in sound and style. To that point, “He Is” has a Brazilian beat and the album’s closer, “Yet I Will,” is pop-oriented, complete with buzzing electric guitar. Both performances demonstrate that Kendra is comfortable with a variety of musical palettes. One constant, however, is the lyric content, which focuses squarely on praise, worship, rejoicing and redemption. Another is the fact that Kendra Carr is a stone singer who can really sell a gospel song.

Kendra Carr cut her musical teeth at the Greater Little Rock Church in Pensacola, Florida, and once was a member of the group Epiphany. Today, she is Overseer of Music and Worship Arts Ministry at The Zion Church in Jackson, Tennessee, an apostolic plant of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Nashville, where Rev. Jerrell T. Beard, Sr. is Pastor.

Four of Five Stars

gPod picks: “Only You,” “Reign In Me,” “He’ll Deliver.”

I smelt this one coming.

At the social networking web site Facebook, one proud Larry Langford supporter put their foot towards the threshing floor to start up a militant campaign of awareness to help free Larry Langford. Since the trial ended, the fan page –Free Larry Langford — has welcomed a staggering following of over 3,000 members.

Since most of the former Jefferson County commissioners have all been persecuted and lost in the court of law – including Gary White, Mary Buckelew, Jeff Germany and Chris McNair – the next in line ended up being former Birmingham mayor and former Jefferson County commission president Larry Langford.

Two of the former commissioners (White, Buckelew) were white. The other two were black. Still a considerable number of black citizens in Birmingham rush to his aid crying out that the trial was racially motivated. The group’s description states that “racism is still in effect, yes he may be have been wrong but those crackers r doing da same thang he was doin n gettin away with it.” *

In his defense, over 3,377 Facebook members have joined the Fan page to express their love and admiration for the embattled mayor. Strange isn’t it. Where was that super large support group when Frank “God’s Gangster” Matthews and SCLC drum major Rev. Calvin Woods initiated a prayer rally the Sunday before his bribery trial? Only 33 supporters showed up.

Goes to show you Birmingham can sometimes be mostly all talk, very little action.

Check out the special key chain Mr. Matthews wants every Langford supporter to have.

*Apologizes for the bad grammar, but we quoted the text from the original fan page. Author’s actual words.

It’s been fifteen years since the Winans brother-and-sister duo recorded together, but they are on a roll: first with “Close to You, and now “Grace,” Oprah’s new favorite inspirational song and the second single from their new album, Still.

Amidst throbbing drums, dramatically swooping strings and a full-bodied gospel choir, BeBe & CeCe sing a testament to the saving power of grace, the lifeblood of the soul, the righter of all wrongs. BeBe suggests in the lyrics that it was a cathartic experience just writing the song.

That’s why they call it amazing.

Hear the song and see the video by clicking here: “Grace.”