Gospel

When gospel composer Carol Antrom wondered how her songs were being received several years ago, she resorted to a little marketing. She handed out a pack of three-by-five index cards during her much-anticipated annual concert of songs here. Many cards came back ringing with testimonials. One man wrote that he had come to the concert filled with thoughts of suicide. But the music had magically dispelled them. It had given him hope, if only for a time. Antrom's songs - many are rich ballads taken from her personal experiences - have been banishing negativities for years.

Producers, promoters and playwrights are seeing a rising interest in bringing the gospel and its music to the stage, and this blend of church and theater is dealing with some worldly subjects indeed - drug-pushing, adultery, prostitution, deceit and death. "Today's problems in society are appealing to the public," said Samuel L'hommedieu, a Virginia-based gospel show promoter. "The music is enjoyed and the themes are of interest to people today. " Resolutions, a gospel musical by Virginia playwright Dorothy Hughes, opens tonight at the Shubert Theater and ends Sunday.

Gospel lovers and those who'd like to know more about a musical tradition whose roots grow deep in Philadelphia will want to keep Friday nights free for a while. Starting this week, National Public Radio and the Smithsonian Institution will present a 26-part exploration of African-American sacred music and its influence on American life. It will air locally on WHYY. "Wade in the Water: African- American Sacred Music Traditions" will use music, storytelling and analysis to recount the history of African-Americans in this country.

Sing glory hallelujah! The Kentucky Fried Chicken Corp. has announced the eight finalists in its second annual Philadelphia-area gospel music competition. The finalists - two in each category - will meet Oct. 12 in a concert-style competition at the Academy of Music, where judges will name a winner in each of the four categories. More than 100 soloists, ensembles and choirs had entered the first round of competition during the summer, and this month 57 semifinalists competed in concerts at four area churches.

Somewhere in the first act of Don't Get God Started, I thought of The Gospel at Colonus and the difference between the two. Both are gospel musicals. The first is a real one. The second is a fake. The difference is mostly in an understanding of what makes a good gospel musical. Don't Get God Started, which has moved into the Walnut Street Theater for what should be a long summer's run, maintains close contact with its roots - the black Pentecostal church service. With music and lyrics by Marvin Winans and a book by Ron Milner, this new work never strays from the simple basic mission of redemptive Christian faith.

The pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph began the gospel standard "Call Him by His Name" Friday at the Theatre of Living Arts all alone. He dropped several fierce single notes, ripping out each as though tearing pages from a magazine. He didn't do anything particularly tricky; instead, he let the pure, soul-piercing sound of his instrument command the spotlight. Pretty soon conversation stopped. The room, filled to sweaty capacity, grew as quiet as a chapel. Then Randolph got busy.

Don't Get God Started adds something new and important to the standard elements of the gospel musical. In addition to the lead vocalists, the choir and the roof-raising fervor, this gospel musical draws upon the comedy and the drama of life as its audience recognizes life is lived. Sketches are acted out between gospel numbers, bringing this show closer than the theater usually gets to the spirit of the Middle Ages, when religious faith and entertainment were intermingled for a community of believers.

Just when it seemed that gospel plays had pulled themselves out of the predictable confinement of being "good gospel, bad play," along comes No Place to Lay My Head. Recent productions like The First Lady knew they could count on big voices and powerful songs alone to drawn their audience, but they didn't settle for that. Instead they delivered real plots, believable characters and quality acting between the music. No Place to Lay My Head falls back into the "good enough" attitude of too many early gospel plays.

Archibishop Wood High School will present a Thanksgiving weekend performance of The Word, a gospel rock opera by Bill Monaghan of Bucks County. The show, being produced for the third year, will be at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in the school's Friedman Auditorium at 655 York Rd., Warminster. Tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for students and older adults. For information and ticket reservations, call 215-672-5050, Ext. 17. THANKSGIVING SERVICES Woodside Presbyterian Church, at 1667 Edgewood Rd., Lower Makefield, will hold an ecumenical service at 7:30 p.m. today.

Watch it, suckers, Aunt Esther is coming to Philly. LaWanda Page, best-known for her role as Redd Foxx's Bible-toting nemesis on the long-running television show Sanford and Son, will be appearing at the Shubert Theater tomorrow and Sunday. She is the star of Take It to the Lord . . . or Else!, a gospel musical comedy written, directed and produced by Philadelphia playwright Don B. Welch. The two of them were in a New York Hilton & Towers hotel room preparing for an appearance last week on Sally Jessy Raphael's talkfest.

NASHVILLE, TENN. - Gordon Stoker, a member of the Jordanaires vocal group that backed Elvis Presley, died Wednesday. He was 88. His son Alan told the Associated Press that Stoker died at his home in Brentwood, Tenn., after a lengthy illness. Stoker, who was born in Gleason, Tenn., got his start playing the piano on WSM radio and its signature show, the Grand Ole Opry. Alan Stoker said his father was just 15 when he started playing professionally. He joined the Jordanaires as a piano player, but then became tenor vocalist.

It's that time of the boys' basketball season when only select teams are still playing. Chester, Lower Merion, Neumann-Goretti, Upper Moreland, Gospel of Grace Christian, Imhotep Charter . . . Never heard of Gospel of Grace Christian? Join the club. "No one knows us," coach Mario Berrios said. Gospel of Grace is the surprise entry in the PIAA state tournament, which will begin this weekend. The Cheltenham school qualified in just its second season as a PIAA member.

It's that time of the boys' basketball season when only select teams are still playing. Chester, Lower Merion, Neumann-Goretti, Upper Moreland, Gospel of Grace Christian, Imhotep Charter . . . Never heard of Gospel of Grace Christian? Join the club. "No one knows us," coach Mario Berrios said. Gospel of Grace is the surprise entry in the PIAA state tournament, which will begin this weekend. The Cheltenham school qualified in just its second season as a PIAA member. The Saints made the field by advancing to the District 1 Class A final last week and will open against Math, Civics & Sciences at 6 p.m. Friday at Bonner-Prendergast.

Playing for Church Farm coach Marc Turner requires sacrificing yourself for your teammates, your coaches, and your program. Saturday at Villanova, yet another class of Griffins did just that, winning their third straight District 1 Class A boys' basketball championship, 52-33, over Gospel of Grace Christian. "This team once again has shown that you cease to exist as an individual," Turner said. "You need to turn into a team before you can win. " Juniors Aondofa Anyam and Jan Bohm broke out as team leaders this season and scored 12 points apiece in the title game.

Cleotha Staples, 78, the eldest sibling in the influential gospel group the Staple Singers, died Thursday at her Chicago home after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for a decade, said family friend and music publicist Bill Carpenter. The family's music career had its roots with Roebuck "Pops" Staples, a manual laborer who strummed a $10 guitar while teaching his children gospel songs to keep them entertained. They sang in church one Sunday morning in 1948, and the response convinced Pops that music was in the family's future.

'Sometimes things just fall out of the sky; sometimes you're tugging on it pretty hard," says Iris DeMent. She's talking from her Iowa City home about the songwriting process of Sing the Delta , her first album of original songs in 16 years and the impetus for the short tour that brings her to Wilmington's World Cafe Live at the Queen on Tuesday. "There's one song on there that there's a line that I literally, I'm not exaggerating, sat on the floor six or eight hours a day for three or four days in a row just to get that one line.

God's work, it seems, is never done. That's why, rather than resting on the seventh day, he called upon Live Nation to put together a gospel music tour, "The King's Men," and unite the top-selling salesman of the Word. On Sunday, four formidable headliners - Kirk Franklin, Marvin Sapp, Donnie McClurkin, and Israel Houghton - laid bare their souls and their most impassioned voices at the Liacouras Center. And it was good - the three-hour-plus showing of holy music's Traveling Wilburys, to devotees of God and to his performers.

MUSIC Boogie in the park While the Philly-baked Disco Biscuits aligned first with the jam band scene, the group has evolved into the harder-edged, electronica-charged space rage. And for their latest festival City Bisco - the first in Philly proper - the Disco Biscuits have surrounded themselves with lots of like minds to keep you dancing. First day includes well-known spinners Diplo and R2DJ (both homegrown products, too), plus Aeroplane, Cinnamon Chasers, The Manhattan Project and Wyllys.

William J. Oliver, a retired business executive who worked tirelessly to spread the gospel of Christ around the world, died unexpectedly on Thursday of a heart attack. He was 82. Mr. Oliver, of Villanova, led an active life in both the secular and spiritual worlds. He retired in 1992 as vice president of the mid-Atlantic region for Deluxe Check Printers, which provided checks and documents for larger companies. He served as chairman of the board for the Heritage Foundation, also known as the Longport Home for the Aged.

FLORENCE JONES knew from childhood that she was meant for a career in music. As a student at Barratt Junior High School, she wrote in the yearbook that she wanted to be a music directress. In her 70-year career in music, she did just that, directing choirs and playing the organ at a number of local churches. Florencia Maylee Mack - as she became after marrying William Kenneth Mack - a talented woman whose career also included giving private music lessons and comforting the bereaved with organ music at local funeral homes, died Aug. 16. She was 84 and lived in Kensington.