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With First Baptist Church under construction and fears that Trinity Temple could not hold the larger crowd expected to turn out, Roberts secured St. John’s Baptist Church in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, to record volume 4, I Stood on the Banks of Jordan. For all of the popularity of Peace Be Still, it was volume 4 that earned the troupe its first Grammy nomination. This chapter chronicles the grand opening of the First Baptist Church and the impact the recordings had on the lives of Angelic Choir personnel and church membership and visibility. The chapter concludes by demonstrating how the success of the Cleveland-Angelic Choir disks stimulated a live recording frenzy for Savoy and its competitors, a practice that dominates the industry today.

Chapter 9 explores the critical and commercial success of Peace Be Still and the two-part 45-rpm single of the title track. The records were not marketed aggressively in the trade press but instead through the tried-and-true channels of radio airplay, live programs, and word of mouth. Further, Peace Be Still relied almost exclusively on the African American community for sales. To promote Peace Be Still and raise the money to complete construction of the church, the Angelic Choir toured nationally and appeared on television. The chapter also includes a biography of the album cover’s enigmatic artist, Harvey Williams.

Chapter 3 opens with Reverend Lawrence Roberts being named pastor of the First Baptist Church of Nutley. Church membership having dwindled to almost nothing, Lawrence and Bootsy set about turning the ship around. They recharged the church’s music ministry by inviting Lawrence’s Voices of Faith community choir to sing periodically for Sunday services. The Voices of Faith soon became First Baptist’s main choir. A brief explanation of the significance of a gospel choir in African American Baptist churches is presented for readers unfamiliar with the practice. When in 1961 the Voices of Faith cut their first album for Savoy Records, the ensemble was rechristened the Angelic Choir.

This chapter describes the production of the first two volumes of the This Sunday--in Person albums by James Cleveland and the Angelic Choir at First Baptist Church. It explores the sonic and lyrical content of each album and the record trade’s response to each upon their release. Some of the musical architecture established on these albums would inform arrangements used for Peace Be Still. A description of the final live recording produced in the original First Baptist Church, by the Roberta Martin Singers, precedes the razing of the church building and plans to erect a modern sanctuary on the site. Most of the funding for the new building would depend on sales of Angelic Choir recordings.

Why has Peace Be Still become one of the most influential gospel albums of all time? What does it express, sonically and lyrically, about the circumstances in which the artists lived? Have interpretations of its message by a predominantly African American listening public changed during the six tumultuous decades since its release? The introduction presents these and other questions the book will address. The introduction also summarizes the book’s main argument: that the album, and particularly its title track, does not necessarily contain elements of explicit protest as much as it codes messages of resistance and resilience that have nurtured and sustained African Americans over centuries of discrimination.

The opening chapter situates Peace Be Still in its geographic and cultural context of Essex County, New Jersey, a destination for African Americans departing the South during the Great Migration. It offers brief biographies on two of the book’s principal characters: Lawrence Roberts, who organized the Angelic Choir, and Dolores Pigford Roberts, his wife and an Angelic Choir member. Readers learn what it was like to grow up African American in a religious household in the Newark metropolitan area. It offers a history of the First Baptist Church of Nutley, where Lawrence became pastor and for which he formed the Angelic Choir, which recorded Peace Be Still in 1963.