April 9 , 2008
For Immediate Release

WKNO Presents a New Season of Classic Gospel

The long awaited third season of Classic Gospel will premiere Saturday, May 10 at 8:00 p.m. on WKNO/Channel 10. Each episode in this third season visits one of the Gaither Homecoming Gospel Concert cities and features some of the best singers in this popular American genre of inspirational and uplifting music. Classic Gospel also airs on public television stations nationwide, presented by WKNO.

Classic Gospel is produced by Gaither Television Productions – the same people who brought you He Touched Me: The Gospel Music of Elvis Presley, ELVIS LIVES: The 25th Anniversary Concert, and The Gospel Music of Johnny Cash. This popular series features the pioneering and contemporary greats of this distinctly American music genre.

Season three, with thirteen episodes, of Classic Gospel features many great artists like Jake Hess, Ernie Haase and Signature Sound, the Isaacs, The Happy Goodmans, Jessy Dixon, the Homecoming Friends and – of course – The Gaither Vocal Band.

In 1991, Bill Gaither had decided he was, at age 55, in the twilight of his long and distinguished career in gospel music. As the founder of one of gospel’s most successful groups, fashioned in the best southern gospel quartet tradition, the bass singer and songwriter, who grew up listening to southern gospel on his radio in the small farm town of Alexandria, Indiana, had one more dream to fulfill.

From that inauspicious beginning, a phenomenon was born, and the spirit flowed from a recording studio in Tennessee around the world, to venues as diverse as New York’s famed Carnegie Hall to Washington’s magnificent Kennedy Center, from the majestic Red Rocks of Colorado to a campground in Indiana, from the spires of the Sydney Opera House to the theatres of England and churches of South Africa. The Homecoming Friends (as Gaither called them), often numbering in the hundreds, became television fixtures and as beloved as favorite family members.

Over the past fifteen years, Bill Gaither has produced more than 9,000 hours of gospel music, spotlighting some 5,000 songs and providing insight into the songs, the performers, and the songwriters. The Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter/producer has selected some of his favorite performances from fifteen years of specials for the weekly series, Classic Gospel.

Classic Gospel has sparked a revival of interest in a music genre that was in danger of being lost in a world of glitz and dazzle, and contributed to the unparalleled growth of gospel music in 2000. But, as Bill Gaither sees it, “The music will always be, in its simplest form, people coming together as friends to celebrate the human voice.”

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