Fifteen Spirituals That Will Change Your Life

?This inspiring book is part memoir (Carrigan is both musician and music journalist), part tour of gospel music hits and artists, and part a quick history of forgotten parts of America. Music touches people’s hearts in deep and enduring ways that words often fail to do. We all remember the time and place where we first heard certain life-changing songs. Carrigan explores fifteen Gospel songs with enduring power: each chapter includes a brief history of the song, its setting, composer and lyrics, and illustrates its themes of comfort, healing, community, hope, and love. 

Includes spirituals from Amazing Grace and Precious Lord, Take My Hand to Steal Away to Jesus and I’ll Fly Away. Each chapter explores brief history of the song, its setting and composer, examining key lyrics, illustrating ways it expresses themes of comfort, healing, community, hope, and love. Fifteen Spirituals encourages readers to listen to favorite, or unfamiliar, Gospel songs to discover their transforming power.

Music lovers, musicians, readers of Christian inspirational literature, music historians, and fans of Gospel singers will want to read this book.

Table of Contents includes: Amazing Grace—God’s grace and salvation, Precious Lord, Take My Hand—Comfort & healing, Wade in the Water—Baptism, redemption, social justice, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms—Hope, community, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot—Death and hope, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?—Community, hope, Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning—Expectation and new life, How Great Thou Art—God’s greatness, I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me—Work, love, prayer, Standing on the Promises—Faith, If Heaven Never Were Promised to Me—Faithful living, I’ll Fly Away, God’s Got a Crown—Heaven, Brethren We Have Met to Worship—Worship, Steal Away to Jesus—New life

Guitarist and music critic Henry L. Carrigan, Jr. has been playing Gospel music all his life and writes about Gospel, Soul, Blues, and Americana music for No Depression: The Quarterly Journal of Roots Music and Living Blues. He’s interviewed many musical greats including Rosanne Cash, Rick Bragg, and Kris Kristofferson. Andraé Crouch’s If Heaven Were Never Promised to Me changed Henry’s life when he was playing in a Jesus band in college, and he’s worked in churches, played spirituals in prison ministry, and taught religion and music in various colleges and in workshops. He teaches classes on Gospel in churches and has developed an extensive playlist of songs for such classes.