Here's a concert featuring a group that says it's doing "classic" style, now.

CLICK HERE to hear Robert Turner and the Silver Heart Gospel Singers in an online concert from the Kennedy Center's Millenium Stage.

IMO this is an example of the BRIDGE between the classic quartets and the phase that followed-- MUCH more accompaniment than the early classic quartets. Here we have a keyboard, bass, and drumset, and I can hear but not see a horn section (synth?). Turner sings lead and there are four ladies backing up on harmony, taking the place of the response in the call-response form typified in spirituals (they also take a few turns on lead). This also is that style where at some point, many of the songs take off into spontaneous, Spirited singing expanding the song into a "message." Testifyin'!

I prefer the quieter style of the earlier quartets, myself, but there are some good songs in here and one can choose one's own style.

Here's Turner's group's take on the genre:
African American gospel music grew out of the African American folk spirituals of the early 19th century "invisible churches" of pre-emancipation black communities. Gospel songs were often composed but included rearrangements of spirituals and hymns. Gospel's sacred adaptation of secular black music was controversial in the beginning. With the addition of rhythmic intensity usually found in dance music to the Sunday morning worship service, one patriarch of the holiness church is said to have said, "The devil should not be allowed to keep all this good rhythm" (Southern 456). With growing acceptance, gospel soon came into full being in northern cities as African Americans migrated north in search of greater economic opportunities.

By the 1940s, gospel had captured the attention of national recording companies and gained a wide enough audience to support a radio program on WLIB in New York. Gospel performers traveled the revival and church-concert circuit, and crossed-over into secular settings. Gospel earned its place as an important American musical genre by the 1960s and 70s.

African American gospel has grown in popularity since its beginnings in the 1920s and has changed over the years, incorporating elements of be-bop, rhythm and blues, and pop music. But the Silver Hearts have "stuck to the basics," doing traditional gospel, 1960s-style, accompanied by keyboard, keeping a foundation in Jesus and the theme of hard times, "*music," as Turner says, "your mother or grandmother could relate to."

... "The way gospel used to be," Turner says, "it really didn't pay; it was a sacrifice-music." And over the years, there has been pressure to change. "*to be accepted you got to have the hot records out," and traditional gospel, the kind of music the Silver Hearts do, although still accepted today by many gospel music lovers, it does not tend to elicit big recording contracts. While Turner enjoys contemporary gospel music, he says that some of the music "overpowers the words." "How can you enjoy a good gospel song from an artist if you can't hear what the artist is singing?" But according to Turner, the move towards contemporary gospel is perhaps a good thing for the musical genre. "Who knows? When I started off in 1960, there could have been somebody from 1930 that was saying my music was contemporary. I'm sure it was, 'cause it was new! You can make your music new, but keep the meaning. Don't lose the meaning."

Songs included (times approximate):
(In the concert, titles were not announced, so these are my best stab at making a searchable record.)

00:15 Old Time Religion
03:50 Remarks about style, introducing the group, and acknowledgements
05:35 I Wanna Be More Like Jesus
10:30 (One Day God's) Love Lifted Me
16:00 I Love to Praise Him (I love to praise His Name)
20:40 A Friend Is Someone on Whom You Can Depend (I choose Jesus)/NO Not One. (This seems to be a medley of a song I don't know, with a version of "No Not One.")

"Old School Gospel" (slower, simpler, emph. on expressive singing not instruments)
26:30 Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior (with piano only till the end)
30:50 I Will Trust in the Lord (sounds like based on a spiritual, and very bluesy)
34:53 (I'm Gonna) Hold Out (Just a Little While Longer) (everything gonna work out fine) This may be distantly related to "The Gospel Plow," AKA "Keep Your Hand on the Plow," "Hold On").
40:08 Everytime I Think About (There is a God Somewhere)
47:30 What Kind of Man Is This (o, o, o, it must be the Lord)

52:55 Jesus I Love You (don't you know that I love you so)

NOTE: There is a lot of brief testifying as each song is introduced (and/or at the end of songs). I've tried to indicate starting times where the SONG actually starts.