SouthernGospelBlog.com

Perhaps this is something that only interests web designers, but I confess to being fascinated by traffic statistics. Since Musicscribe and Averyfineline both posted their recent numbers, and it seems to be a slow news day (so far), for whatever it’s worth, here you go:

• Yesterday: 2,985 unique visits / 6,872 page views
• Last Week: 16,698 unique visits / 44,369 page views
• This month to date: 42,911 unique visits / 104,650 page views
• Last month: 52,377 unique visits / 117,733 page views
• Year to date: 225,799 unique visits / 458,016 page views
• Total to date: 641,252 unique visits / 1,072,595 page views

When I started this website, I hoped that one day I could number my daily readership in the hundreds. Numbers like these boggle my mind.

Thank you all for coming back time and again…and giving me a good reason to do the same.

EDIT (5/21/08, 12:39 PM): It just occurred to me to post total visits / page views since the start of this blog. Turns out I just passed 1 million page views a few weeks ago and didn’t even know it.

The Old Paths’s free download promotion has ended.  Sound clips from each of the songs can still be played on their website, where copies of their recent projects can also be purchased.

I would like to thank Jeremy Peace and the rest of The Old Paths for suggesting and helping me set this promotion up. It was one of the most innovative ways I’ve seen a group introduce themselves and make new fans, such as this one and, may I add, this one.

David Bruce Murray has posted the upcoming single (a cover of Benny Hester’s When God Ran) from a mystery national group on his Musicscribe blog. Twenty-five of the people who correctly guess the group will get a free download of the group’s entire CD.

Depending on how accurate the results are, it could either be a great publicity move for the group, or go towards documenting the contention that many Southern Gospel quartets sound alike.

I am a fan of email newsletters.

With as many websites as I monitor, it’s impractical to check them all on a daily basis. So for some time, I have been looking for (and, behind the scenes, testing) various options to convert this blog’s posts into a daily email newsletter.

After trying several options after the last few years, I finally found one that works the way I want it to work. It’s FeedBurner (yet another part of the world owned by Google…oh, well), and you can click here to try subscribing. It’s free, and the bottom of every email will have a link you can click to unsubscribe if you so desire.

If you faithfully visit the blog every morning, looking to see if there’s something new, this might not be for you. But if you are the sort that visits whenever you can remember, but you can’t remember quite as often as you would like, this might be for you.

What were Southern Gospel’s best live moments? Whether musical or comedic, what were impromptu moments, unexpected (at least on the part of the audience), that epitomize the best of this genre?

I’ve considered making a list for some time,  but (thanks to the advice of a wise friend) decided that it would be more interesting if I got your input first.

Especially focus on moments that are known to a decent circle of Southern Gospel fans, whether it was at a concert such as the NQC where may SG fans were in attendance, or whether it made its way onto a live recording.

Before I get to the main topic of this post, let me explain why I ask you questions like this. Some view blogs as writer-driven–that a writer should do whatever he wants. But I spent several years in traditional journalism (producing newsletters) before starting this blog, and I still hold to an old-school perspective: If you don’t provide the readers with the content they want, they won’t come back.

Therefore, when one of my regular readers emailed me a few days ago expressing a desire that I’d stick to reviewing national groups, I decided to consider his perspective seriously. The only problem is that I don’t know if his view is shared by most of you, or only a few of you.

So do you like reading reviews of projects by local groups, or would you rather I only reviewed projects by nationally known groups?

Let me say at the outset that there are a few groups discussed enough among Southern Gospel fans–such as the Diplomats, the Old Paths Quartet, and Liberty Quartet–that I’ll probably be open to reviewing their projects either way. For several of these groups, the case can be made that they’re either at a national or an almost-national status. I’ll also note that there are one or two reviews already in the works which I may post because of previous commitments; this discussion is with a long-term view in mind.

If there are differing views in this discussion, keep all comments respectful.

For several reasons, I’ve recently been contemplating switching to a new graphic design for this website. I wanted to move to a three-column format, wanted a way to highlight the featured article, and, most importantly, wanted it to be immediately obvious which contributor had written each post. So I spent the weekend re-writing this Wordpress theme and thought I would give it a try. A few specific comments:

• No, I’m not going anonymous; I simply moved my picture to the “about” page.
• You can find a link to the featured article in the upper right-hand corner.
• This site appears to display properly in current versions of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. If you use another browser and notice that it does not display properly, let me know.
• This theme was originally written in Dutch. I don’t know Dutch and translated each line of code word by word. If you notice a line that doesn’t make sense, or a Dutch line I missed, let me know and I’ll fix it.

Before rendering a final verdict on whether this design is a keeper, I’ll wait to see your comments, both as to whether you like it and as to compatibility.

I don’t typically post concert announcements on this thread, but this one is worth making an exception for and posting. Charlie Sexton of Sweet Creek Promotions announced:

Recently, a very dear friend of mine, “Big Jim” Hamill passed away. Many of you already know that he was the legendary lead vocalist for The Kingsmen Quartet from Asheville, NC. Mr. Hamill had been very sick for a number of years, and spent the last year of his life in a physical rehab facility following an orthopedic surgery that he never really recovered from. At the prompting of another old friend, Mr. Lane Rainwater, we’ve planned a Memorial Concert to honor the life of “Big Jim”, and to raise some much needed funds for his sweet widow, Jan Hamill. She’s had many health problems of her own for the last several years. I hope you can plan to attend this great night of music, fun and stories as we honor the memory of this gentle giant.

The concert will feature the Mark Trammell Trio, the Diplomats, the Old Paths Quartet, the Original Liberty, Randy Miller, and Calvary’s Way. It will be held Friday, January 25, 2008 at 7 PM at Open Bible Tabernacle (545 Lorene Drive, Marietta, GA). There will be no admission charge; an offering will be received to benefit Jan Hamill and the Hamill family. A concert poster can be found here.

On a personal note, I was out of town last Saturday and thus missed my daily post. During this trip, I had the chance to be interviewed by Phyllis Schlafly on Eagle Forum Live. If you didn’t catch the interview on your local station, you can hear the two half-hour segments here and here.

As I re-read my series of posts for last year’s 12 Days of Christmas Series, entry #1 really stands out. A year ago, this is what I posted:

If I had the power to give anyone any Christmas gift, my first choice would be easy. I would give Roger Bennett a clean bill of health.

For years, Roger Bennett and Anthony Burger were Southern Gospel’s two most popular pianists, legends in the making. But with Burger dead and Bennett off the road for now, Southern Gospel lost its two best in one fell swoop. So it was an easy decision to pick Bennett to start this series.

Of course, he is now cancer-free at last. But my Christmas wish and prayer today is that God would grant Roger’s wife Debbie and their children Chelsea and Jordan peace and comfort as they face their first Christmas season without him.