"The Reverend Dr. James Cleveland (December 5, 1931 - February 9, 1991) was a gospel singer, arranger, composer and, most significantly, the driving force behind the creation of the modern gospel sound, bringing the stylistic daring of hard gospel and jazz and pop music influences to arrangements for mass choirs. He is known as the King of Gospel music.
Born in Chicago, he began singing as a boy soprano at Pilgrim Baptist Church, where Thomas A. Dorsey was minister of music and Roberta Martin was pianist for the choir. He strained his vocal cords as a teenager while part of a local gospel group, leaving the distinctive gravelly voice that was his hallmark in his later years. The change in his voice led him to focus on his skills as a pianist and later as a composer and arranger. For his pioneering accomplishments and contributions, he is regarded by many to be one of the greatest gospel singers that ever lived.
The style he pioneered — large disciplined organizations who used complex arrangements and unusual time signatures to turn their massive vocal power to achieve the propulsive rhythms, intricate harmonies and individual virtuosity of the greatest groups of gospel's Golden Age — was still the wellspring for the mass choirs of that era.
Cleveland died on February 9, 1991 in Culver City, California. According to his foster son, Christopher Harris Cleveland, Cleveland had contracted AIDS through homosexual liaisons, and died of AIDS. Cleveland is interred at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California."
Subsequent stories have alleged that his relationship with his foster son was a sexual one and that homosexual child abuse ran rampant at his gospel camps and in his choirs. Both Cleveland and Edwin Hawkins stand accused by many in the black church of creating a haven for homosexuals in the church and more particularly within the Gospel Music industry. You can find links to such discussions of Cleveland's legacy here and another here.
I personally am at a loss to say which I find more troubling, the tales of Cleveland's predatory behavior, or the subsequent judgements expressed in these articles and others like them. I seem to recall that Jesus was quite clear in the bible on more than one occasion that the right to judgement was His and His alone! One thing that IS quite clear to me is that Cleveland was blessed with true and giant genius and at the end of the day I'll choose to focus on that.
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Thanks for this post. I'll judge Cleveland by the quality of his music and leave the gossip and speculation to others. It seems to me that we spend far too much time worrying about others' sex lives in a society which on the one hand seeks to deny expression of sexuality outside of strict often legalized limitations and suppress its expression by consenting adults and on the other readily sexualizes, with no sense of irony or hypocrisy, young women in advertising and popular media. Moreover, we are fascinated by the prurient and too often love to learn every sordid detail about what we hate or denounce.
I was raised in a church that demanded celibacy of its clergy and condemned any expression of sexuality or sexual activity outside of marriage. Worse, I was raised Irish Catholic and one only needs to read the poetry of Patrick Kavanaugh's The Great Hunger to understand the damage that the madonna/whore dichotomy and denial of normal expression of one's sexuality does to a person. Sadly, sublimated and suppressed instincts too often express themselves in harmful ways and I was one of those young boys who attended Catholic high school and knew all too well which priests and brothers to avoid. My father was shocked by the scandals that erupted in the 1990s and asked me if I knew of such things. When I told my father of one incident in which one of his favorite teachers of mine ran his fingers through my hair and told me it was beautiful before I left as quickly as possible, my father said, "You never told me." To which I responded, "You believed in the authority of the church and the school, and would not have believed me. You would have thought I was exaggerating " He muttered that I was right, grew sombre, and, from then on, understood why I avoided that teacher as if he were the plague incarnate. Yet he was a very good teacher in the classroom and such are the contradictions that we so often encounter when we learn of the fallen among those who follow a profoundly repressive faith.
So if Reverend Cleveland went astray, I feel profound sorrow for his victims and to a lesser degree for him because many of those who adhere to rigid beliefs and deviate so greatly live in a nightmarish world of denial and self-torment. It doesn't justify or compensate for the damage done but if we don't try to understand why such incidents occur and why otherwise good people perpetrate harm than we have no hope of foreseeing and trying to prevent future circumstances that foster such actions.
I have a family member, a priest, who has a popular show on Catholic television. It is a variety show and he attempts to recreate a simpler time of the stereotypical neighborhood priest with jocularity, song, and nostalgia for a world that never really was. The popularity of his show speaks to people's hunger for a past that never really existed but in which we were less informed and consequently naively happy. The show helps his viewers forget recent history and regard it as a momentary aberration.
I hadn't intended to make a Sunday sermon but I never feel comfortable judging others. After all, we have seen what happens to sensitive persons like Marvin Gaye and O. V. Wright when they are unable to negotiate the chasm between who they are and who their strict belief system tells them they must be. If there is a higher entity, it is rumored to have all of the knowledge to make an accurate judgment. Me, I'm just swimming as fast as I can in today's whirlpool of a world and trying to teach my children to learn from the many mistakes and transgressions I have made, even if they are minor when compared with the activity attributed to Cleveland and others. What I do know is that we, at least in the United States, have a perverse desire to build icons, worship them briefly, and then delight in their fall. Whether it's Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, or more contemporary personalities we want all of the sordid details to bring them down so we can be as shocked as the commandant in Casablanca was when he discovered gambling.
From such vindictive gloating Rupert Murdoch has made millions. How else to explain the fascination with listening to the dreck from the hapless, mislead, attention-craving panelists on Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, and all of the reality shows who happily mortify themselves for our delight or the ready willingness of the audience in studio and at home to judge and condemn their actions and comfort itself with its smug, if ephemeral, sense of superiority? Perversely we even watch the former Secretary of Disaster Donald Rumsfeld criticize the current occupant of the White House for wanting to engage in military action with what Rumsfeld regards as insufficient evidence and ignore the perverse irony of a media determining that there might be an audience for anything that Rumsfeld might say after his own unrepentant participation in a savage debacle. So it goes, we watch NASCAR for the wrecks and hockey for the fights and persuade ourselves that we instead love the sports, and we used to read Playboy for the articles even though the smudged and wrinkled centerfolds suggested other more prurient interests at work.
Here's the one thing I do know, I'd rather read your words about your beliefs or Poppachubby's words about his faith and how he diligently tries to raise his daughter well in a challenging world than focus on the sordid allegations surrounding those previously held in high esteem. Either side of the pendulum by which we judge them seems based on delusional wish rather than reality to me. But with Poppachubby and others who live as he does, I know that whether I agree with his beliefs or not, I will never doubt his sincerity and integrity in trying to live a good life and provide the same for his children. That seems to me to be the core of what Cleveland was trying to convey through his music even if he might have failed to live it.
Sorry to be so verbose but this is what happens when I no longer sit in a pew listening to others orate about their observations.
Yo Feilimid.
Boy, you are good to read.
Passionate.
I think the exercise of judgement is essential as well as perverse.
Q. How do you make a nun pregnant?
A. Dress her up as an altar-boy.
I don't disagree, Lazz, but I try to be careful 'cause after all there's so much here on the home front with me own self that warrants attention and rectifying so my daughters have a good role model. What I hold in disdain and try to refrain from is that smug sense of superiority that usually holds in contempt folks of a different class or ethnic background. After all, in this ingloriously unequal society, some of us have luckily had opportunities for education; others haven't. Whhhooooppppps, we're not supposed to have class here in The U.S., or let me amend that to social classes for clarification, because during the eight years of the junta it was hard to fine any evidence of class. Then again the very music on which this blog is predicated was created by a class defined racially as well as economically in order to advantage those European descendents who elevated themselves to whiteness during several bleak centuries here. In the meantime the reverend is gone and stones are easily cast but his music remains at that's what I'll focus on.
Well, yes... Feilimid, I agree with what you say about judging others in the public eye - we seldom know all the details and, in any case we're all born in sin and shapen in iniquity (that upbringing's hard to shake).
But the issue of Hypocrisy is a dificult one to ignore. John Major's unlamented Tory government in the UK started a 'back to basics' movement in the 90s centred around sexual morality and ended up getting a well-deserved kicking from media and voters when the sexual conduct of members of the government became public.
They put themselves in that position by pontificating on the conduct of others. Now Cleveland's position is maybe more complex but as a religious leader standing by certain values he can't really avoid being judged by those same standards.
I'm not au fait with Cleveland's views, or public statements, on morality sexual or otherwise but I know only too well how fundamentalist christianity functions in this area and it's not a pretty sight. So how does that affect my approach to him as a musician? Well, David Ruffin was not a nice man but I revere his music. There's almost a sort of redemption to be found in its beauty. I have no problems with Cleveland being a flawed human being and I'll go on listening to his glorious music while lamenting his hypocrisy if that is what it was. Forgiveness can't just belong to the faithful (in my experience it very seldom does) we atheists can do it too.
Oh, by the way KC - great post.
I (deliberately) didn't look at KC's links before posting the above, just wanted to add an honest reaction to the discussion. I've looked now and had to smile at having said that 'fundamentalist christianity...is not a pretty sight'. I think the point is proved.
I agree with you, Ceedee, and I am by no means religious but after twenty five years of living below the Mason-Dixon line and at the girth constrained by the Bible Belt, I have learned to try to temper my initial hostile reaction and understand better what my friends and acquaintances believe if only so I can better negotiate my way through a world in which they are the majority. For that matter, I have been reading a great deal about the Salem witch trials in my home state and how the communities in early New England were seized by a need for rigid conformity to Puritan doctrine, fear of female inheritance and independence, and terror of attacks by local natives, in other words, conditions ripe for that hodge podge of social, economic, and religious terror and fears that usually result in the loss of too many innocent lives. I fear we are not so advanced today as we think we are and I usually try to avoid discussions about folks' religious beliefs but gospel and contemplative Sundays seem to evoke verbosity from my depths.
I'll leave it with this. While living in Texas, I encountered considerable intolerance from those contending that their religious beliefs made them a persecuted minority in this country, a ludicrous delusion given that they were the majority. There was this insatiable need to not only believe but to impose one's beliefs on others and demand conformity. After raising one child there, I resolved to not have my youngest children educated there because education to me entails learning new and challenging ideas and being open to change, rather than indoctrination. Moreover, the notion of the state requiring religious instruction as part of the science curriculum that my daughters would study was repugnant to me. Fourteen years after our departure state officials are once again trying to legislate the incorporation of creationism, a religious belief, in the science curriculum. My point is when people ascribe to rigid systems of belief that negate and condemn the essence of being human and expression of human sexuality, the result is usually not pleasant.
I'll readily concede that I don't understand the reasons for religious intolerance and the belief that there is only one truth for all so when I write that I try not to judge, I mean that the dilemmas that Cleveland and others become embroiled in appear to me to arise from their devotion and attempt to adhere to a rigid belief system that compels then to deny essential characteristics of being human and allows them to rationalize their actions as momentary deviations and lapses from not being sufficiently rigid. Just my thoughts and so I choose, like you, to judge the music and leave the rest for others to sort out. Lastly, if Cleveland committed the crimes of which he has been accused, then more than a few people who knew chose to remain silent out of fear, misguided belief, or the desire to preserve his image. That raises a bunch of other questions and I have opined too much already so I'll end it here.
So, if i just listen to the music, i love her !! Many thanks, KC.
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