“I want to remind you that you are in church and this is a religious service.” So sayeth the Rev. James Cleveland of the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles as he introduces Aretha ...

You know those songs that you just kind of know? You sing along without even thinking about the lyrics. Well, we're going to explore the history of one of these songs today. It's heard around the ...

Amazing Grace might be the ultimate song of redemption, steeped in two centuries of black history, but its writer had also been a slave ship captain. There is no shortage of versions of Amazing Grace.

Aretha Franklin sings in a scene from "Amazing Grace." Courtesy of Al's Records and Tapes Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” documentary was long held up from release due to technical and then legal ...

Amazing Grace. By James Walvin. University of California Press; 216 pages; $19.95 and £16.99 A short but fascinating book by James Walvin, a professor at the University of York and an expert on ...

Landon Jones was the Managing Editor of People magazine from 1989 to 1997. When President Obama turned to the soaring lyrics of Amazing Grace to comfort the grieving families in Charleston, South ...

Amazing Grace was penned by a former slave trader, but only many decades after he’d left slave trading and seafaring behind and had become a minister of God. What's False It is not true that he wrote ...

Aretha Franklin was at the peak of her career and her creative powers when her gospel album “Amazing Grace” was released in 1972. (It sold more than two million copies and became her best-selling ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It has endured for more than two centuries, offering hope to those grieving or searching for meaning to life. With its simple melody and message of salvation, “Amazing Grace” is a ...