Instead, CCM performers and fans came together around a common commitment to reclaim the devil's music for God. Many fans and most observers interpreted her actions and words as a rebuke of a mass wedding of gay and straight couples performed during the broadcast. A notable elision in this storyand it points to more general (mis)understandings about the Gaithers's personaeis the role of Gloria Gaither. A fan's review of The Best of The Martins video on Amazon.com captures this dynamic succinctly: "I wouldn't consider the Martins southern gospel," the reviewer writes, "as their sound is more contemporary but they have a love of the Lord and that comes across strong in their work and their lives. At one point in the interview with The Martins, Gaither describes their music as "sophisticated," and Judy Martin Hess jokes that Gaither was not saying The Martins themselves are sophisticated, only their music. But I'll say this: I've never been more honored to sing about Jesus and for Jesus. However, in light of the subsequent collapse of most of the southern gospel industry not affiliated with the Homecoming Series, Close Harmony offers an overly optimistic view of southern gospel prospects in the twenty-first century (283287). The popularity of Homecoming derives from its emergence duringand its response tothe declension crisis in southern gospel. Her story of brokenness and restoration encourages thousands on social media and from the stage. For a fuller discussion of "southern" as a racial signifier and readings of race and white gospel see Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 96103. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_29', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_29').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); But the development of professional gospel resonates most powerfully as part of white fundamentalist evangelical withdrawal from mainstream secular society over the long twentieth century. For a recording of the set piece associated with Gerald Wolfe's time with the Dumplin' Valley Boys, see. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_23', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_23').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Within commercial Christian music, most white fundamentalist fans and professionals left cold by CCMand committed to traditional modes of evangelistic outreachcoalesced around "southern" gospel. "Fundamentalism" indicates evangelicals for whom militancy in resistance to liberalism is the defining feature of lived religion.22George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 15. Southern gospel's negotiation of them has often manifested in overt racism or a way of thinking, talking, and singing that renders whiteness falsely normative. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_40', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_40').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); while emphasizing cultural texts and discourses. Man, Crosswalk.com. The Martins are a Christian music vocal trio composed of three siblings: Joyce Martin Sanders, Jonathan Martin, and Judy Martin Hess. Joyce Martin-Sanders photos, including production stills, premiere photos and other event photos, publicity photos, behind-the-scenes, and more. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_4', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_4').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); This musical culture subsequently spread across trans-Appalachia, and then later throughout the Midwest, Southwest, and, after the Great Migration of white southerners in the postWorld War II era, into other parts of the United States influenced by southern migration. At the end of the nineteenth century and into the first three decades of the twentieth century, southern white gospel was dominated by convention singings that relied on the regular release of small octavo shape-note songbooks such as Crowning Day. . My use of "evangelical" follows George Marsden's, denoting Protestant thought and action shaped by Reformed theology. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, The Martins performed mostly in the southern half of the Mississippi Delta region and recorded self-financed albums. The Gaither interview invites viewers to imagine them as representing a set of hill-country valuesa love of hunting, closeness to nature, self-sufficiency, and cultural isolationthat Blevins argues have over the course of two centuries come to stand in for all (white) Arkansans.58The cultural difference between the Ozark/Ouachita and Mississippi Delta regions of Arkansas is aptly captured by/in two recent films. When she came out, Mark grabbed her arm and said, "You have to hear these kids sing!" The Martins grew up in Northeast Louisiana, where their parents encouraged them to make a joyful noise. And I've never been more sure of the path I've chosen." tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_46', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_46').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The paradox of The Martins's Homecoming reputation as masters of classic gospel hymnody and their much wider stylistic reach and renown before and beyond the Homecoming stage suggests that there is more to their appeal to southern gospel audiences than can be accounted for by their music. Menu. And both black and white gospel have "borrowed those aspects, reinterpreting them for their own cultures" and purposes. Judy Martin Hess lives in Columbus, Georgia with her husband Jake Hess Jr, and their four children. Spring Hill, 2005, CMD 1807. Before then the music was simply known to its practitioners and fans as gospel. Anthony Heilbut, "Black Urban Hymnody," on, Stephen Shearon, Harry Eskew, James C. Downey, and Robert Darden, "Gospel Music,". . November 13, 2001, accessed September 23, 2013, http://www.crosswalk.com/1108828/. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011. "8Stephen Shearon, Harry Eskew, James C. Downey, and Robert Darden, "Gospel Music," Grove Music Online, July 10, 2012, accessed October 15, 2013,http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2224388. His interview enacts a modern gospel version of the venerable Arkansas Traveler colloquy in which a high-born southerner (the Traveler) engages an Arkansas Squatter in a dialogue about the differences of class and geography.60Bill Clinton's presidential campaign used the Traveler name and image as a way to strengthen his populist appeal running against a Washington insider. Joyce E Martin 1946 Born c. 1946 Last Known Residence Texas Summary Joyce E Martin of Texas was born c. 1946. More deeply, the decline in market share and cultural capital has eroded southern gospel's self-concept and induced a crisis of authenticity. The hottest acts in Christian music appropriated the musical conventions and performance styles of rock, pop, adult contemporary, heavy metal, and later, jazz, R&B, rap, hip-hop, and punk. Harrison, Douglas. Rather, I aim to map a specific hot spot within the psychosocial terrain of contemporary professional southern gospel as an instance of a broader phenomenon that could be explored in US southern and rural imaginaries. Nathaniel Crawford (Eugene: Wifp and Stock, 2011), 84. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_22', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_22').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Southern gospel is overwhelmingly a product of evangelical fundamentalism. Taylor's development of the social imaginary builds on (but also departs from) Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 2006). Just as significantly, while From Kentucky With Love, or From the Smoky Mountains With Love, would probably be received with the same warmth and enthusiasm that greeted The Martins's music, the precise structure of a Kentucky imaginary or a Smoky Mountain imaginary would be located in the meaning-making of those places. Gaither's remark associates a universality to The Martins, who are legitimated by the origins their music is purported to transcend. Directed by Bill Gaither. Clearly this story of The Martins's beginning as Homecoming Friends is important to them because they are depicted in the narrative as so natively talented that Bill Gaither purportedly allows them to perform without ever having himself auditioned them. See ". Though the publication of "He Leadeth Me" predates the popularization of the term of "gospel hymns" (which is most commonly sourced to Philip P. Bliss's, While David Fillingim argues that "home" as a concept in southern gospel allows its participants to imagine and explore a flight from material hardship and social marginalization in this world (in favor of an eternal home of magnificence in heaven), my research suggests that in southern gospel "home" serves to give concrete, graspable shape to abstract theological concepts and spiritual experiences for ordinary Christians in the here and now. Modern Social Imaginaries. Decade. Grammy.com, July 3, 2013, accessed October 1, 2013, http://www.grammy.com/blogs/andy-griffith-dies. Consequently, much of conservative Christian culture challenged secular narratives and norms. Joyce Martin-Sanders is known for Gaither's Pond (1997). Compact Disc. Premillenialists espouse a literalist interpretation of scripture that foresees the imminent return of Christ to earth. The precipitous decline in "Christian/Gospel" has devastated most sectors of the market. So we sang next day on the video [Precious Memories], "He Leadeth Me" . Siblings, Joyce, Jonathan and Judy, collectively known as The Martins, have enjoyed count- less radio hits and performances at concert halls, arenas, auditoriums and churches worldwide. Joyce Martin Sanders is listed in the credits for the following albums: Year Artist Album Role ; 2013: Jason Crabb: Love Is Stronger: Guest Vocals : Joyce Martin Sanders. In addition to being the vehicle through which The Martins received fame, Homecoming marked an epochal shift in the reception and self-concept of southern gospel. The church's leadership believed the approach would attract people searching for answers, bring them into a relationship with Christ, and then capitalize on their contagious fervor to evangelize others" (Matt Branaugh, "Willow Creek's 'Huge Shift,'" ChristianityToday.com, May 15, 2008, accessed May 15, 2014, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/june/5.13.html). tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_15', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_15').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Arkansas has undergone considerable stereotyping in the US imagination.16Brooks Blevins, Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ole Boys Defined a State (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2009), 4. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_16', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_16').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); To speak of an "Arkansas imaginary" in this essay is to conceptualize Arkansas as a siteparticularly among poor and working-class white evangelicals and fundamentalistsfor the practice of religious life, or "lived religion. See Robert K. Whalen, "Premillennialism," The Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, ed. At face value, much of The Martins's stylistically hybridized and contemporary music would seem to commit many of the very musical sins that southern gospel culture has long cited as justification for disparaging most other major forms of Christian music entertainment (except, perhaps, bluegrass).47The history and role of bluegrass, old-time, and mountain musics, particularly songs with pietistic lyrics that have found a home in southern gospel, is understudied. 32 Their success in the late 1980s and early 1990s coincided with the resurgence of cultural separatism that has come to dominate southern gospel discourse. Finally, I'm grateful to The Martins and so many other southern gospel performers for making music that has held me in thrall and demanded to be taken seriously. Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 5. There was no love lost between southern gospel and the "Queen of Christian Pop" to begin with, but after Grant's rise to fame, she became a galvanizing symbol for southern gospel of cultural accommodation run amok in doctrinally compromised music. Martin P. Joyce might be a juvenile justice worker in Youngstown, Ohio. Joyce is married to Paul Sanders, a singer/songwriting musician, currently a member of the country band, Shenandoah where he plays bass and sings harmony. Interested in submitting your work to Southern Spaces. Southern gospel has found itself in alliances with black gospel traditions and the black church. In addition, "many of the characteristics and stereotypes considered [representative of Arkansas as a whole]," Blevins concludes, are "extensions of broader regional and cultural images" applied by others to Arkansans.57Blevins, Arkansas/Arkansaw, 39, 9. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_57', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_57').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Arkansas is not unique in being treated as the home of the benighted white southerner, redneck, or hillbilly, and the Arkansas imaginary is but one sort of white, working class, rurality. July 30, 2013. http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/culture/6221/the_gospel_ church_and_the_ruining_of_gay_lives__an_interview_with_anthony_heilbut/. From Arkansas With Love. This model "avoided conventional church approaches, using . Still, the cultivation and creation of twentieth-century commercial black gospel's golden age (19451960) was largely rooted in Chicago, Philadelphia, and other urban centers in the Midwest and Northeast where many black southerners moved during the Great Migration. Joyce Martin is married to Paul Michael Sanders, who has had periodic jobs as a southern gospel singer. This essay is interested primarily with professional southern gospel, which descends from convention singing but has been distinct from it since the 1930s and 1940s. Southern Gospel's Decline and the Sister-Bertha-Better-Than-You Effect, The Cultural Consolations of the Hillbilly, Tradition, Progress, and Cultural Instability, Music Album Sales in the United States in 2012, by Genre, The Gospel Church and the Ruining of Gay Lives: An Interview with Anthony Heilbut, Natalie Grant Responds after Leaving Grammys Early, National Quartet Convention Ending Long Run in Louisville, Then Sings My Soul: The Culture of Southern Gospel Music. For more on the rise and spread of southern gospel regionally and nationally, see James R. Goff Jr., Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (Chapel HIll: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 50109; Don Cusic, The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music (Madison: Popular Press, 1990), 153162; 171176. As Stephen Shearon has noted, both white and black gospel have "liked aspects of what the other was doing" ever since blacks and whites began singing sacred music near one another in North America. Lower compositional sophistication, more uneven production quality, and rougher cuts by commercial standardsall defining features of the southern gospel sound of the past twenty yearscan function for many evangelicals and fundamentalists as indices of a more real music and catalysts for a more authentic experience of the religious self. So, we're in the little church in Anderson, Indiana, and they are rehearsing for the next day and we're in the foyer. She is divorced and has been for some time, but the date of her divorce is not listed. The Martins's success draws upon an Arkansas imaginary that features a racially unconflicted working-class identity as well as a constellation of musical associations, cultural affinities, and attitudes grounded in piety, rusticity, and close harmony. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_49', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_49').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Even if The Andy Griffith Show had not made small, rural towns with earthy-sounding names synonymous with culturally unsophisticated, plainspoken provincialism,50Toward the end of his life, Andy Griffith recorded multiple southern gospel albums. Morris Arnold, "The Significance of the Arkansas Colonial Experience,". tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_54', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_54').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); connecting their identities, the group's history, and their Arkansas roots with the force of southern gospel music. Many fans and most observers interpreted her actions and words as a rebuke of a mass wedding of gay and straight couples performed during the broadcast. The music remains popular among white evangelicals and many African American Protestants, though its market sharelike that of most sectors of the music industryhas declined considerably.21Sales of "Christian/Gospel" (which consists overwhelmingly of CCM and black gospel music, but also includes some southern gospel) reached a high point in 1998, totaling $836 million; in 2012, total sales in the same category were $24.2 million. The collective effect forms the social imaginary, a way to understand self- and group-concepts in postmodern life.15Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 3. It is in this tradition of pietistic, blood-bought, soul-saving, life-giving harmony of the one true way to Christ that The Martins were raised and trained. Here the Arkansas imaginary is in operation. Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ole Boys Defined a State. "Mom and Dad both instilled that in us that if you had a talent to sing, you should get up. Judy Martin is married to Jake Hess, Jr., the son of the legendary southern gospel lead singer Jake Hess. See Shearon, email to H-Southern Music Network mailing list, March 27, 2009. For an extended discussion of "southern gospel" see, Douglas Harrison. The Fan Who Knew Too Much: Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church, and Other Meditations. Who is martin p joyce? Joyce Martin Sanders: "My Childhood Christmas Miracle - YouTube Following the rapture is Tribulation, a seven-year period during which Anti-Christ reigns on earth, Millennium (during which time Satan is bound), and ultimately the establishment and eternal reign of Christ's kingdom. [5] Jonathan Martin (b. DVD. See Heilbut, "Black Urban Hymnody." The conversation encourages audiences to understand The Martins's music as a cultural practice connected to the Arkansas backcountry. Shearon, Stephen, Harry Eskew, James C. Cowney, and Robert Darden. UrbanaChampaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Jennifer Lena has exhorted scholars of music culture to deemphasize sounds and instead examine "social structures and collective actions. For branding of the natural state, see Arkansas.com, Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, accessed October 15, 2013, http://www.arkansas.com. Their continuing appeal has involved a narrative about their Arkansas identity as proof of authenticity as individual performers and for the genre of southern gospel. Toward the end of his life, Andy Griffith recorded multiple southern gospel albums. See Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford, 2013). Still, the cultivation and creation of twentieth-century commercial black gospel's golden age (19451960) was largely rooted in Chicago, Philadelphia, and other urban centers in the Midwest and Northeast where many black southerners moved during the Great Migration. 'Cause I've waited my whole life. Beyond the style it captures, this clip points to the structures of thought and feeling that underlie The Martins's appeal and southern gospel music more generally. Douglas Harrison is Associate Professor of English and Assistant Director of the Center for Faculty Innovation at James Madison University. Joyce Martin is a well known gospel singer. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_34', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_34').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); For the past fifteen years or so, professional southern gospel groups, including The Martins, regularly dissolved and re-formed, or disbanded outright under the constant pecuniary strain of small crowds and even smaller free-will love offerings, and the upheavals these instabilities introduce into private life. For discussions of the Traveler trope see ". . Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2009. Martin Jarvis; Randy Edelman; David Jason; Michael Hordern; Oliver Williams; Community. The Martins on growing up in gospel and how time apart changed their The overwhelming majority of fans and professionals in contemporary southern gospel are white Christians who are "culturally southern, socially conservative, and Anglo-American. Certainly there are southern and rural imaginaries writ large and available for scholarly scrutiny. Is Joyce Martin. Since at least the late 1970s, southern gospel's fortunes, measured by market standards, have trended downward, a decline attributed to broader trends within commercial Christian music entertainment and more broadly within fundamentalist and evangelical Protestantism.As the fortunes of southern gospel have declined, those of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) have risen. This essay is interested in how the imagining of a place shapes and is shaped by understandings of vernacular sacred music and the shifting identities this music contains. Unlike "northern urban" gospel (a phrase with no currency outside academe), it is the preferred way to self-identify within the culture and the most widely recognized way to describe the music to outsiders. However, a 1993 appearance on the Gaither Homecoming series helped transform The Martins from an avocational regional trio into a professional act with a national following in fundamentalist Christian entertainment. "Northern urban" gospel is the historical forerunner of today's Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_33', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_33').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Southern gospel product sales also experienced what now appears to be a last-gasp micro-surge of popularity, with market shares reaching an inflection point somewhere in the mid1990s, followed by a precipitous sales decline by as much as 90 percent in the decade between 2000 and 2010.34Goff's remains the most extensive and influential account of southern gospel's market decline. She has two children. In this case, we can buy coal protein shakes for weight loss from Russia in keto diet Joyce Martin Sanders: "My Childhood Christmas Miracle" Joyce Martin Sanders: "My Childhood Christmas Miracle"https://www.youtube.com watchhttps://www.youtube.com watch Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009. It emphasizes the unfolding of God's dealings with humanity in phases or eras ("dispensations"). But I'll say this: I've never been more honored to sing about Jesus and for Jesus. The Martins's arrival on the national gospel scene participates in a familiar narrative of the country kids from Nowheresville, USA, making it big. Gaither uses a repertoire of leading questions, strategic glosses of the singers' responses, folksy asides, and improvised amplifications to cultivate the image of The Martins as hill-country kids made good as gospel celebrities. Mark Noll has described this process as one focused on the formation of a parallel but separate evangelical culture meant to preserve pietistic thought and action perceived to be under attack and threat of extinction by secularization. Mae is her 18-year-old daughter. In the broadest sense, The Martins here evince how "the interaction of lyrics, music, and religious experience in southern gospel functions as a way for evangelicals to cultivate the social tools and emotional intelligence necessary for modern living." Such work is as welcome as it is needed. Christ's return coincides with the rapture of living Christians and the raising of the righteous dead to heaven. He was very busy and was getting ready for the next day's video. . Interestingly, Willow Creek leaders published a study conducted by the church in 2008 that indicated the seeker-sensitive model did not reliably lead to consistently reported levels of spiritual development or maturity among those who were attracted to the church by its seeker sensitivity (Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, Reveal: Where Are You? For an overview of southern gospel's history and development within the wider domain of American gospel music, see Shearon et al., "Gospel Music," and Don Cusic, The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music (Madison: Popular Press, 1990). Recording companies experienced similar contractions. Who is Joyce Martin's first husband? - Answers Its primitive construction and the faded color photo intensify the contrast between rustic lifeways and the warmly lit, generously appointed, and contemporarily decorated set in which The Martins appear comfortable, coiffed, and professionally poised. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_38', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_38').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Certainly this is true of southern gospel. Directed by Debra Granik. Joyce E. (Sanders) Martin (born 1946) - Texas These two tropesinnocence and prodigious talentinteracting with the publically retold stories of their backcountry upbringing, suggest an authenticity that speaks across generations, professional accomplishment, and even the cynicizing forces of the entertainment business.53A notable elision in this storyand it points to more general (mis)understandings about the Gaithers's personaeis the role of Gloria Gaither. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_20', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_20').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); In its early decades, CCM's creative and cultural home was Nashville and many performers and professionals still work there. She has Angelman Syndrome and is the happiest girl you will ever meet. Mud, set in the Arkansas Mississippi River Delta, powerfully evokes the fluidity of class, ethnicity, and geography as defining features of identity in a region where the flux of life is so heavily dependent on, shaped by, and intertwined with the flow of the river. Joyce Martin is a well known gospel singer. Joyce is married to Paul Sanders, a singer/songwriting musician, currently a member of the country band, Shenandoah where he plays bass and sings harmony. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_56', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_56').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); A particular Arkansas primitivism merits attention here. When Gaither says, "You can take them anywhere," he seems to mean that in his role as producer and impresario he can rely on The Martins to stand and deliver whatever the show demands. Trinity Broadcasting Network is the D.B.A. of Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana Inc., a California religious non-profit corporation holding 501(C)(3) status with the Internal Revenue Service. After Grant's divorce from Gary Chapman, her symbolic function in southern gospel expanded to include the corrupting effect of musical compromises on personal morality and the heternormative family.Southern gospel's disdain of CCM can come off as a kind of "Sister Bertha Better Than You" self-righteousness.27Here, I am borrowing an image first popularized by Ray Stevens in "Mississippi Squirrel Revival," on He Thinks He's Ray Stevens (Universal, 1987, MCAC-5517). GMA has drastically shifted its outreach and marketing emphasis toward black gospel artists and groups, going so far in 2011 as to move the Dove Awards from Nashville's Grand Ole Opry to Atlanta, the unofficial capital of black gospel music. Joyce Martin Sanders is an American singer who, along with her siblings Jonathan Martin and Judy Martin Hess, is best known as a member of the Christian country trio The Martins. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_50', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_50').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); southern gospel audiences have historically bonded with performers who come to fame through place-based narratives of discovery. Christian vocalists The Martins Joyce Martin Sanders, Jonathan Martin and Judy Martin Hess perform at the Missouri Theater at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 17. Though the publication of "He Leadeth Me" predates the popularization of the term of "gospel hymns" (which is most commonly sourced to Philip P. Bliss's Gospel Songs [1874] and Bliss and Ira D. Sankey's Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs [1875]), the song's style anticipates the dominant features of the gospel hymn and is customarily treated by gospel singers and fans as part of the corpus of gospel hymns that remain popular in southern gospel.