Gospel music has its fair share of mainstays and superstars, but only a fraction has been gifted with the higher calling of leading the saints in song. Even fewer have been commissioned with the task of breaking through denominational and ethnic backgrounds, while still maintaining an in-demand career that includes performing, composing, arranging, and producing for the biggest acts in the genre and beyond.
Kurt Carr is one such minister.
Just The Beginning, his latest release on his newly minted Kurt Carr Gospel imprint in association with Zomba Gospel, is a testament to this industrious spirit. The album is a capstone that is bound to extend the reach of Carr's growing legacy in contemporary gospel—a celebrated repertoire that, in less than a decade's time, has left an indelible imprint in the sacred-music canon.
"God has called me to preserve the music of the church," Carr says, matter-of-factly. "There are people, there are ministers, who are called to go into the world and evangelize it. I feel that I am called to perpetuate the music of the church so that there's substance to feed seasoned saints, and new converts once we catch them. That summarizes my calling."
In light of Carr's already extensive résumé in gospel music, Just The Beginning may sound like a non sequitur, but the artist truly believes he's turning a page. "I feel it's the beginning of many new horizons," says the psalmist, who recently moved his quarters to Houston, Texas, after a 20-year tenure in Los Angeles. "God wants us to know that there's so much more in store for us. People have seen great things, but they haven't seen the greatest yet."
For those keeping tabs on Carr, it's been almost four years since he turned heads with his chart-topping One Church project, but this time around the multiple Stellar recipient says he's not looking to replicate the genre-bending eclecticism of that recording. In many ways, Just The Beginning is about him stripping things down and going back to the basics.
"The last album was a thematic album; it was a stretch. We had bagpipes, accordion—sounds that have never been associated with gospel music," Carr says. "These songs are very singer-friendly, very congregational. This time, I'm going back to my roots—church music."
That's good news for the church. A protégé of not one, but two gospel legends—he was mentored by both Richard Smallwood and James Cleveland—Carr has carved a niche of his own in Sunday-morning liturgies, blessing worshippers with his unmistakable knack for choir-friendly melodies and a cross-cultural appeal second to none.
For proof, one needs not look further than Carr's signature song, "In the Sanctuary"—also the centerpiece of his breakthrough, gold-selling recording Awesome Wonder—to realize his keen ear for the corporate. To this day, millions continue to sing the song across the globe every week, in no less than nine different languages. "After the success of that song, I knew that God had called my music ministry to reach people of all races and all people who have an open ear for God's message," says Carr.
Through the years, this calling to reach anyone with ears to hear has led Carr to write an armload of instant classics and standards for the modern church, including the bona fide hits "I Almost Let Go;" "For Every Mountain;" "Kumbaya;" "God Great God;" and "God Blocked It," as well as "The Presence of the Lord," the song that put Byron Cage on the map. Kurt Carr has ministered in over 20 countries and was recently named honorary principal of a Gospel music school in Japan that boasts a "Kurt Carr" class of gospel music production!
A renaissance man in every sense of the term, Carr has used the last few years to continue to write and produce for various heavy-hitters, develop his own music label, nurture new artists, and perform all over the world with his inimitable Kurt Carr Singers—Yvette Williams, Michelle Prather, Troy Bright, Timiney Figueroa-Caton, Nikita Clegg-Foxx, Nikki Potts, and Vonnie Lopez.
In between travels, listeners and congregants alike have continued to reap the benefits of Carr's prolificacy, as recent songs and albums by the renowned Tramaine Hawkins (her highly applauded 'comeback' CD "I Never Lost My Praise") and Bishop Paul S. Morton (his seminal "I'm Still Standing"), with whom Carr teamed up in the aftermath of Katrina, have made waves in airplay charts and houses of worship throughout the nation. In fact, Morton says all the time that Kurt Carr "is a genius and has found a way to tailor make songs that completely express my heart;" and Hawkins has said the single "I Never Lost My Praise" was a song that she'd been waiting on for over 20 years- while critics compared it to her legendary classics "Changed" and "Going Up Yonder."
Just The Beginning is all set to further this tradition.
