Christian Music News: 50 years ago, a South Side church choirs hit single made them national stars (2024)

My article on the Beautiful Zion Missionary Baptist Church, as featured in the Chicago Tribune on May 31, 2023.

During a break at the Brunswick Studio in Chicago one day in 1972, engineer Bruce Swedien asked Willie Henderson if he knew of any good gospel groups. Music label founder Billy Ray Hearn wanted to sign an African American gospel artist to his new Christian imprint, Myrrh, and had reached out to Swedien for recommendations.

“Sure,” Henderson replied. “I know some singers at my mother’s church.”

His mother’s — actually the entire Henderson family’s church — was Beautiful Zion Missionary Baptist in West Englewood. Swedien, who would go on to win Grammy Awards for engineering Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Bad and Dangerous, among other successes, decided to check out the church’s young adult choir. He liked what he heard and, with Hearn’s blessing and Henderson as producer, recorded the Beautiful Zion Young Adult Choir’s debut LP for Myrrh in summer 1972.

Fifty years ago this month, the choir’s joyously optimistic single from that album, “I’ll Make It Alright,” achieved something almost unheard of, then and now: it made the top 40 of Billboard’s soul singles chart. The album, released in September 1973, hit No. 4 in its first week on the gospel album chart and remained in the top 10 for several months. The young adult choir, once so small it could fit in two cars, became national stars overnight.

For Hearn, signing the Beautiful Zion choir must have felt like winning the golden ticket. He was undoubtedly aware of the Edwin Hawkins Singers, another African American young adult choir whose softly rocking take on the hymn “Oh Happy Day” topped the pop charts in 1969. Hot on the Hawkins’ heels, Chicago’s own Christian Tabernacle Concert Choir charted nationally that same year with “Hello Sunshine,” a gospel version of a song recorded by both Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. Could Beautiful Zion complete the gospel crossover trifecta?

If anyone could make that happen, Willie Henderson could. A versatile R&B and soul musician, songwriter and producer, Henderson assembled some of the city’s most respected studio musicians for the Beautiful Zion sessions. Drummer Terry Thompson and bassist Louis Satterfield comprised the rhythm section. Ron Steele was on guitar and Odell Brown on organ (he would later cowrite Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”). There was also keyboardist Marvin Yancy, a member of the R&B vocal group The Independents and, later, producer of early hits for wife Natalie Cole. For arranger, Henderson tapped Gene “Daddy G” Barge, a saxophonist and songwriter with a music resume as long as his arm.

The choir itself was no johnny-come-lately. Organized in 1962, it had grown to some 70 members and was celebrated for its church-wrecking capabilities. Samuel Douglas, a former member of the choir and participant in the Myrrh recording, recalled, “Eighteen of us would go to the Thompson Community Singers musical. We’d sing and run them out of their own church!” Devora Miller, another former choir member present on the recording, concurred. “We did a lot of traveling because we were bad!”

Choristers Ollie Cherry, Charlie Hatter and Emma Richards were the album’s lead singers. Most of the leads, including “I’ll Make It Alright,” fell to Richards, who shared directing duties with Cherry. Richards came from a talented musical family. In the late 1940s, her brothers Jake, Curtis and Lee formed a gospel quartet called the Highway Q.C.’s that included a teenage Sam Cooke.

Henderson relied on Richards to prep the choir for recording sessions. “Willie instilled in us that we couldn’t dillydally,” Richards said. “We needed to be ready because the sooner we got done, the less money you spent on studio time.” All songs and arrangements were written exclusively for the album. “We rehearsed in the studio,” Miller said. “Sometimes we’d only do two or three songs in a session, depending on how complicated they were.”

Given the modest size of the Brunswick Studio, located in the former home of Vee-Jay Records on South Michigan Avenue, the production crew recorded one section of the choir at a time, bringing everyone together only when necessary. Choir members recall sitting on the floor, watching Swedien and Henderson record The Chi-Lites while they waited their turn to use the studio. “And when they got done,” said Vaudelita Griffin, “The Chi-Lites watched us record.”

“I’ll Make It Alright” caught fire in spring 1973. WVON in Chicago played the record over and over. “It was on R&B radio stations all across the country,” Henderson recalled. “Everywhere you went, there it was, playing. It was almost as big as ‘Oh, Happy Day.’”

Invitations to appear on gospel programs came from as far away as New York. “The church grew tremendously,” Richards said. “People from the West Side came all the way to our church.” Douglas said new members “flooded into the choir after they found out what was going on.” In June 1974, the Chicago Chapter of the National Association of Television and Radio Announcers bestowed its Best Gospel honor on the choir.

But the additional exposure did not come without controversy. It turned out that “I’ll Make It Alright” had actually been written by Curtis Womack and recorded in late 1962 by The Valentinos, a vocal group consisting of Womack and his four brothers. Womack wrote it originally as a gospel song but turned it into a love song for the recording on Sam Cooke’s SAR imprint. The Beautiful Zion record label credited Henderson as an arranger but not Womack as a songwriter. “We got into a big old dispute over the royalties of the record,” Richards remembered. Added Henderson, “The lawyers called and said that was their song, so we only got paid one time.”

Meanwhile, Richards, whose energetic vocals helped sell the song, was approached to become an R&B singer. She refused. “All my life I was sickly, and my parents pulled me through,” she said. “I realized later that the Lord had something to do with it, but I didn’t want to betray my parents by singing R&B.”

Hoping for another hit, Myrrh hustled Henderson, Swedien, Barge, the musicians and the choir back to Brunswick Studios later in 1973 for a follow-up album. In the Spirit, credited to the Beautiful Zion Missionary Baptist Church Choir featuring Emma Richards, produced the single “Ride to the Mountaintop.” In October 1973, it, too, crossed over to the soul singles chart but never made it higher than #87. Myrrh dropped the choir and it never recorded commercially again. The church received a royalty check only after Myrrh recouped all recording and production costs.

The choir settled back into its weekly routine. Membership dwindled over the years as choir members moved away and others became ministers and started their own churches. But Yvonne Tate, who sang with the 1970s choir and remains a member today, said they still do “I’ll Make It Alright” for special church occasions. “Fifty years later, people still call us the church that did ‘I’ll Make It Alright.’”