Pioneers of CCM: 2nd Chapter of Acts

The first Contemporary Christian Music album I ever bought was by a group called 2nd Chapter of Acts. They were a sister/brother vocal trio - Annie, Matthew and Nellie - who had just begun to appear on the scene. Their first album - which I played and played until I nearly wore it out - was simply titled *With Footnotes, and yes, the asterisk was important. About three quarters of the back cover of the album is filled with the entire second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and the *footnotes section is directly underneath, where the tracks and credits are listed. A neat touch. The front of the album, which is predominantly green and yellow in its themes, show the three siblings grinning into the camera, and yes, they are unmistakably brother and sisters.

*With Footnotes was released on the Myrrh label in 1974 and contained 11 tracks, all but one of which were written by Annie Herring. The producer of the album was Annie's husband Buck, and their master stroke was to enlist the genius of maestro keyboardist and arranger Michael Omartian, who just about played all of the keyboards, co-ordinated all of the strings and brass arrangements and even lent his hand to the drums on a few of the tracks. The sound of the album was rich and full, with plenty of melodic layers that caressed the ears of this listener, still very much in my teens. The most significant feature though, is the trio's flawless, soaring vocals that effortlessly convey spirit and meaning to the listener.

For some reason, I played Side 2 first, and the first track I heard from 2nd Chapter of Acts was Easter Song. It's a track that many other artists covered over the years because it's so simple and yet so memorable. Another stand out track on the album is Which Way The Wind Blows, which was co-written by Annie and Nellie.



Annie was the eldest married sister from a large family of nine children, while Nellie (14) and Matthew (12) were the youngest when they were orphaned in 1970, so she and husband, studio engineer and producer Buck Herring took them in to live with them. With Annie's love for piano and music in general, the trio had been singing together probably since they could walk. Soon they could be seen playing coffee houses and at church events around the area. It was during a meeting at the home of 60s rock star Barry McGuire that they got their big break. McGuire heard them singing around the piano and promptly invited them to record the backing vocal tracks for his upcoming (and debut Christian) album Seeds in 1973 (Buck was credited as the producer).

Their sweet, soaring, close harmonies were a great counterpoint to McGuire's gruff, gravelly voice, and they were soon touring with him in concert. They were given their own slot, and as they came onto the stage and began to sing, the crowd would grow strangely silent. Mistaking this as disapproval, the siblings were a little unnerved, but soon began to realise as people approached them after their gigs that nothing like them had been heard before, and people were dumbstruck by their musicality. A string of successful albums, including In The Volume Of The Book (1975) and Mansion Builder (1978) followed, as 2nd Chapter of Acts cemented their place in CCM history. Both Annie and Matthew Ward went on to release successful solo albums, and in 1999 they were inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

It's true, once you have heard 2nd Chapter of Acts in full flow, you'll never hear vocal groups again in the same way. Annie, Matthew and Nellie set the bar so high that it's impossible not to acknowledge the indelible impact they had in shaping the early years of CCM.

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Pioneers of CCM: 2nd Chapter of Acts by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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