Fred Hammond Gives Gospel a Push

American Visions, Dec, 1999 by Mary A. Dempsey

For Fred Hammond--musician, singer, songwriter, producer--it starts with a beat.

The beat twists into a melody, funk and fusion shaded with pieces of the burly man's tough Detroit beginnings. That melody takes on words bolstered by the moments he's lived, the stories he's heard, the scenes he's witnessed. Voices join the mix, singing--as Hammond puts it--"all out, right to the wall."

When it comes to praise-and-worship music, Hammond leads the gospel vanguard with a highly produced sound that seethes with hints of rap, reggae, jazz and blues. His song "Let the Praise Begin" kicks in with what Hammond calls "a Stevie Wonder-style keyboard vibe moving into an up-tempo urban groove." He dishes out an inspirational message edgy with the aromas and flavors of real life.

On Pages of Life: Chapters I & II (Verity), as with his other CDs, Hammond wrote the music and lyrics, produced the recording, sang with his 12-member Radical for Christ choir, and even played the keyboard and bass guitar.

"He's truly gifted," says Phyllis Siders, director of the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Detroit--the city that, along with Chicago, turns out many of gospel's most important performers. "His lyrics are exceptional, and he's a profound producer and singer. His music has a contemporary sound, an urban sound, but his message is still focused. His message is still God."

Hammond pushes gospel into new corners. "He attracts a different audience than traditional gospel music," Siders says. "I'm sure much of his audience is kids and young adults, and he appeals to folks who have never gone to church. But even church folks listen to Fred Hammond. I'm 54, and I like his music."

His infectious rhythms and honest lyrics have lured a groundswell of followers; gospel music sites on the World Wide Web are jammed with messages from Hammond enthusiasts in Japan, Australia, Africa and Europe and across North America. "You can tell that this man not only can write, sing and play, but he spends time with God," a young woman from Pennsylvania writes online. "He spends time in the Word of God. He does not know of Him--he knows Him. That personal relationship is what sets Fred Hammond ... apart from the rest."

Hammond's goal? To insert God straight into people's lives. According to Hammond, people too often feel unable to live up to the lofty expectations of a distant God. He says that he uses his music to show them that "God deals with you where you really are. For God, it doesn't have to be pretty."

At 10 a.m. every Sunday (except when road trips interfere), Hammond turns up at the altar of Detroit's Straight Gate Church to minister with Bishop Andrew Merritt, who describes Hammond as "one of the most anointed singers and gifted writers and arrangers that we've ever seen."

Some gospel purists balk at the jeans-and-boots-clad musician, but Deborah Smith Pollard, a University of Michigan--Dearborn assistant professor of humanities and English and a scholar in gospel history, sees Hammond's work as the logical next step for a genre that has always been flexible. "He added urban funk to praise and worship music," she Says. "People embrace his work because it's enjoyable and it's spiritual, and the two are not mutually exclusive."

Smith Pollard, who hosts a popular Sunday morning gospel program on Detroit radio station WJLB-FM, adds: "One thing about Fred is that you always know he's singing about God. He doesn't use pronouns that leave you unsure; there's never any equivocation with him."

According to Hammond, more churches are welcoming his urban sound. "A lot of pastors are waking up," says the 38-year-old producer, "and a lot of old-school pastors are being replaced with younger pastors who know what it's like to be out on the street. They're like me: They believe the church can't be hard for people to get in, that God will take you no matter where you are. They want to make God accessible."

As a kid, Hammond played in his junior-high- and high-school bands, sang in his church choir, and listened to Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind and Fire. But music didn't consume him. Nor did the church. "I would steal from the store down the street, then go to church," he says. "But my mother kept us connected to the church, and that gave us a sense of God. That's not what's going on with Generation X. They don't know about God. The streets have taken them. And now their children don't know about God."

While the young Hammond teetered on the edge of music, hanging with musician friends and singing with groups, he made no plans for the future. He left high school unclear about college. "I was another young African American walking around with no clue," he admits. He joined the Army.

Then in 1977 it happened. The Testimonials, the Detroit group later known as the Winans, put out a successful record--and Hammond knew what he wanted. "We all lived together in the neighborhood, we all did music, we all did home recordings with cheesy albums that had covers drawn by our cousins, but the Testimonials had taken it to a whole new level," recalls Hammond, who joined the Winans on tour, playing bass guitar. He eventually helped form the urban-edged group Commissioned (which inspired Boyz II Men) and stayed with the Grammy-nominated group for a dozen years. In 1994, he struck out on his own.