Fridays at 7 p.m. starting February 1 on WHRV FM

Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul hosted by Grammy award-winning gospel singer Cece Winans, is a four-part series that celebrates Black gospel music’s profound and under-acknowledged influence on early rock and soul music.

Without gospel music there never would have been an Elvis Presley. There never would have been a Ray Charles, or a James Brown. From the mid-twentieth century on, gospel music not only thrived within a separate sphere as vital as the jazz, rock and rhythm and blues worlds; it also constantly intersected with the secular music industry, providing models that countless artists outside the church emulated. Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul explores these connections as a way of reinstituting gospel's central place within the history of American popular music.

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