The album was certified 2x platinum and earned Franklin his first Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album. Two years later, after releasing a 1995 Christmas album entitled Kirk Franklin & the Family Christmas, the group released Whatcha Lookin' 4 in 1996. It was the first gospel music album to sell over a million units. 1 on the Billboard Top Gospel Albums chart for 42 weeks. It spent almost two years on the gospel music charts and charted on the R&B charts, eventually earning platinum sales status. In 1993, the group, now known as "Kirk Franklin & The Family," released their debut album, Kirk Franklin & The Family. In 1992, Vicki Mack-Lataillade, the co-founder of fledgling GospoCentric Records label, heard one of their demo tapes and was so impressed she immediately signed up Kirk & The Family to a recording contract. In 1992, Franklin organized "The Family", which was a 17-voice choir, formed from neighborhood friends and associates.
This led to Biggham hiring Franklin, just 20 years old at the time, to lead the choir at the 1990 Gospel Music Workshop of America Convention, an industry gathering. Impressed, Biggham enlisted him to lead the DFW Mass Choir in a recording of Franklin's song "Every Day with Jesus". He also co-founded a gospel group The Humble Hearts, which recorded one of Franklin's compositions and got the attention of gospel music legend Milton Biggham, musical director of the Georgia Mass Choir. When he was aged 15 he witnessed the death of a friend by shooting, after which Franklin returned to the church, where he again directed the choir. He continued under her tutelage and ultimately became the pianist for the choir. įranklin studied music with Jewell Kelly and the Singing Chaparrals at Oscar Dean Wyatt High School. He was accepted, but later he had to deal with a girlfriend's pregnancy and his eventual expulsion from school for bad behavior.
ALWAYS BY KIRK FRANKLIN LYRICS PROFESSIONAL
In his teenage years, Franklin rebelled against his strict religious upbringing, and in an attempt to keep him out of trouble, his grandmother arranged an audition for him at a professional youth conservatory associated with a local university. Rose Baptist Church adult choir at 11 years of age. He did join the church choir and became music director of the Mt. Īt the age of seven, Franklin received his first contract which his aunt turned down. Kirk excelled and was able to read and write music while also playing by ear. Gertrude recycled aluminum cans to raise money for Kirk to take piano lessons from the age of four. I love how at one point the choir changes the volume by turning away from the congregation – there’s a trick Themba might like to explore with us one day.A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Franklin was raised by his aunt, Gertrude, having been abandoned as a baby by his mother. There is a host of videos on the internet of different choirs performing what has clearly become a favourite around the world, but the one I always go back to, partly for its energy but also for the show-stopping ending, is this one by the New Vision Mass Choir, a Haitian-American gospel group seen here performing in a Baptist Church in Stamford, Connecticut. Trivia corner: Emanuel Lambert goes by the performing name of Da’ Truth Jeremy Lubbock is a hugely experienced arranger who has also worked with Barbra Streisand, Joni Mitchell and Whitney Houston. Those same sites tell me the names of the nine singers in 1NC, that Franklin himself played piano, other keyboards and programmed the song, and that the arrangement was by Jeremy Lubbock. They have certainly very cleverly given the melody and 1NC’s performance a very African feel. I had assumed that Franklin had based Be Like Him on a pre-existing traditional African gospel song, but on the various lyrics websites out there the composer credits are always: Kirk Franklin, Emanuel Lambert. It appeared on his 2000 album, Kirk Franklin Presents 1NC – that’s an abbreviation for One Nation Crew, a multi-cultural choir with whom he toured around America and made just the one album. The most famous and, it seems, the original version of Be Like Him is by the American gospel star Kirk Franklin. It’s easy to find the lyrics, and there are countless online versions, but the song’s background or origins? That’s much harder. While last month’s Story Of A Song – Steal Away – was quite easy to research, Kwabona Kala, as we know it, or Be Like Him, as it is more frequently called, is a little trickier. Peter Bacon (tenor) investigates our repertoire.