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If Beverly Crawford
sounds totally at home making music, it should
come as no surprise. Love of her Lord, along
with music, family and friends have always been
the very fabric of her life. And on the alternately
rocking, soothing, and always endearing and encouraging
Family And Friends LIVE! — her second and latest
release for EMI Gospel/Dexterity Sounds Records — Beverly
Crawford delivers the album she has waited a
lifetime to make.
Recorded live at Atlanta's Jackson Memorial Baptist
Church—Beverly's favorite
medium of performance in one of her favorite cities in the world — she is joined
by her highly musically gifted father, six siblings, 19-year-old daughter Latrina,
and several notable other guests, including gospel great Melvin Williams and
fellow diva, Shirley Murdock, and gospel patriarch, Bobby Jones.
Known best through the first half of the '90s as the lead singer for the gospel
artist and impresario Jones' group Bobby Jones & New Life, Beverly had amassed
a fervent following for her live performances before ever entering a recording
studio as a solo artist. "I've always felt like I'm at my best in a live
setting," says Beverly . "There's something about being onstage...to
see the reaction and feel the energy of the people that just takes me on a personal
high. I give absolutely all of myself when I'm singing, and I feel so much excitement
and joy when I'm onstage, it seems to touch people, and they feel it along with
me. If they come in sad, they can leave happy."
With a singularly personal touch, and an uncanny gift for making each person,
even in an audience of thousands, feel as if she's singing directly to them,
Beverly, who's come to be known affectionately as "Gospel's Sweetheart," feels
a calling to deliver a message of encouragement and hope, especially in troubled
times. "After 9/11, and the war in Iraq , and just the everyday trials of
life, I wanted this to be an album to really encourage people," says Beverly
. "Through it all, we all need family and friends who will lift us up, and
love us for who we are. This album takes you on a journey of worship, and the
excitement of worship," she explains. "I'm really a traditional gospel
girl, and that's going to come out in most anything I sing. But this album is
also very contemporary with the stylistic diversity to provide songs in which
anyone and everyone are going to find something to latch onto musically and relate
to lyrically. It's inspirational, and it's also a whole lot of fun."
Produced by masters Sanchez Harley and Derrick Lee, Family And Friends LIVE!
is filled with stand-out selections. "Higher in the Lord" is irresistible,
foot-stomping traditional gospel with a cool, jazzy touch. "I need the Lord
to take me higher and higher in Him," says Beverly . "He's my peace,
and my joy, and the person who takes me through everything I go through in life,
and this song reflects that. It makes you want to dance, and feel good. It gets
you going in the morning on the right foot!"
Melvin Williams and Beverly team up for the angelic, soul-stirring ballad, "I'm
Willing." "It's a great encouragement to be able to tell people that
no matter what you're going through, wait on God. Through sickness, pain, depression...whatever
may be hurting you at any given time. God has proven that if we are willing to
believe in Him, to know that one day He is going to bring us out of that situation,
then we're going to make it."
"Hold On," a duet with Shirley Murdock, puts a funky groove and punchy
horns to a smoking, solid Sunday-morning classic-to-be. "This song is so
exciting to me, because it's another encouragement song: 'Hold on! Don't you
dare give up!' Shirley is like a sister to me, and we had such a great time recording
it. I think you can hear the joy and happiness there, and we all need all of
that we can get."
Beverly and her mentor, Bobby Jones, join together on a rousing take of the no-nonsense,
can't-sit-still gospel standard, "How I Got Over." "In Your Arms" is
a gentle, moving ballad, declaring the eternal comfort of Go''s love, and the
album-ending "Inhabit Your Praise" is a reverential plea for complete
oneness with the Almighty.
Beverly was born and raised in Gainesville , Florida , one of seven children
and the daughter of a pastor/evangelist. Her father had been the evangelist for
Gainesville's Church of God by Faith before founding and becoming bishop of his
own Holy Temple of God in Gainesville, in 1978, and her mother — a gifted singer
in her own right — for a number of years served as his worship leader. Beverly
, singing almost literally "from the womb," first realized her vocal
gifts at age three, when she would go into the family's yard, singing to an audience
of grass with a stick as her microphone. Beverly 's entire family was comparably
gifted, providing the music for her father's evangelistic crusades throughout
the Southeast and up and down the East Coast. Beverly became an active member
of the group, known as the Camps Sisters, at the tender age of five, singing
with her prodigiously talented siblings and several family friends who rounded
out the ensemble and band.
Beverly grew up on a musical diet that was not surprisingly heavy on all the
gospel greats, past and present — Shirley Caesar, Mahalia Jackson, Tramaine Hawkins,
and Vanessa Belle Armstrong, among others. And although secular music was not
sanctioned in the home by Beverly's parents, she and her siblings still managed
to catch all the latest R&B on their radios — including the likes of Natalie
Cole and Aretha Franklin, all influencing and shaping the breadth and depth of
Beverly's range and repertoire today.
"I studied these women," says Beverly, who never had any formal training
in voice. "They were my vocal instructors! Both of my parents were also
great singers, and I learned a lot from them. Plus, being on the road since age
five, the stage was like a second home, and singing for people just came naturally,
often for long periods of time at a stretch. I believe that's where my stamina
comes from today."
Beverly married in her early 20s, and her husband, Todd Crawford, became the
group's manager, and had them send a demo tape to Bobby Jones, host then and
now of the most widely successful gospel music television show in history, Bobby
Jones Gospel. Jones was impressed with what he heard and invited the Camps the
appear on his show. Response was strong and favorable in general, but Jones seemed
to spot something in Beverly in particular that resounded with him. "After
our second appearance, Bobby told me he needed a lead singer for his own group,
Bobby Jones & New Life, and did I think my brothers and sisters would mind
if I joined him," Beverly recalls. "We had a family meeting, and the
verdict was a unanimous 'go for it...it's your time.' They couldn't have been
more supportive."
Beverly spent six years, beginning in 1990, traveling with Jones and performing
regularly on his hugely popular show, broadcast weekly, nationwide, on cable
TV's Black Entertainment Television ( BET ). A grueling tour schedule of over
200 dates a year also helped endear Beverly to millions—and establish her a one
of gospel's premier live performers — before she had even recorded the first
of her first two major-label albums, Precious King in 1996, followed by 1998's
Now That I'm Here. Those two offerings earned her Stellar and Grammy Award nominations,
and her devoted following continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Her subsequent
on EMI Gospel/Dexterity Sounds, Beverly, and now Family And Friends LIVE!, have
only seen Beverly's extended family—whether they've personally met her or not
- continue to grow. Still, Beverly Crawford remains the real, genuine and warm
human being she's always been.
"If I step on a stage and there's one person in the audience, I'm going
to give the same thing I'd give a million," Beverly concludes, "because
that life matters to God, and that may be the one life that he's going to use
me to change. In Christ, we're all family and friends, and my greatest job is
simply to be available for Him to use me as He chooses."
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