Review: Peace Be Still: How James Cleveland and the Angelic Choir Created a Gospel Classic by Robert Marovich
“Master, the tempest is raging
Oh the billows are tossing high
The sky is o’er shadowed with blackness
No shelter or help is nigh…
The winds and the waves shall obey my will, peace be still, peace be still, peace be still, peace be still…”
-“Peace Be Still”, James Cleveland and the Angelic Choir (1963)
It was said that James Baldwin was “thrilled” when he heard James Cleveland say the opening word “Master” in the song “Peace Be Still”. That one word was so powerful that Baldwin believe Cleveland “could kill him with the simple reading” of it. The song was originally published in 1874 by Mary Baker and Horatio Palmer and was very popular in the 19th Century, it was even sung at the many funerals of President James Garfield; but then Black folks got a hold of it and made it into a gospel hit in 1963. In that year it became a single and the title track of Volume 3 of the Sunday Service Series, making James Cleveland and the Angelic Choir into national stars. Peace Be Still by Robert Marovich tells the story of how one album that was recorded live in a Newark, NJ church days after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, changed the way gospel music was recorded. The album led Billboard’s Top Spirituals charts for a couple of years and sold between 450,000 and 800,000 copies, a rare occurrence for a gospel album at that time.
This amazing book reads like you’re watching a documentary. It includes interviews with Angelic Choir members and music historians. In one of my favorite chapters (Chapter 7), Marovich gives a song by song breakdown of the album. He explains the history of each song, the music theory behind it, and their overall legacy. 11 songs were recorded but only 9 were included in the actual album (the other two songs were included in later albums). This chapter was so good that I listened to original recording of each song after I read Marovich’s descriptions.
Marovich ends the book by chronicling the album’s immediate reception as well as its lasting legacy. Marovich reveals that 50 versions of the title song “Peace Be Still” were recorded between the 1950s and 1990s. After the 1963 album, the most popular version was recorded by Vanessa Bell Armstrong in 1983. Cleveland enjoyed her version so much that he adopted her arrangement for himself. However, the album’s greatest legacy, according to Marovich, is that Peace Be Still showed that recording live gospel albums can be successful and to this day live gospel albums are still being recorded. Without Peace Be Still there would have not been an Amazing Grace by Aretha Franklin and James Cleveland, which later surpassed Peace Be Still as the best selling gospel album of all time.
If you grew up on gospel music then you must read this book, even if you have never listened to this album before. Once you read it you will have no choice but to listen and revel in the genius of James Cleveland, the Angelic Choir, and the work of art they created together called Peace Be Still.
Thanks to NetGalley, University of Illinois Press, and Robert Marovich for a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. This book will be released on December 14, 2021.
