Excerpt by author Ben Jones from "I'm Glad About It"
Excerpt from I’m Glad About It: The Legacy of Gospel Music in Louisville, 1958-1981
One of the reasons it’s so hard to sell Black music to Black people is that we hear it for free every Sunday. I used to play with a little bitty lady named Anna Louis Davis in Lancaster, Kentucky. She could sing as high as Minnie Ripperton and send you out the building. She could Mahalia Jackson you all day long. Then she’d go home, eat Sunday dinner, go to work Monday, and do it again next week. Every Black Church has, not one of them, they have ten.
There’s nothing in the industry—Drake, Kanye, you name it—that they didn’t hear in church. Brother, you could go to any old church without a piano or organ and what do you think those sisters are doing? Some high heels on a hardwood floor and a tambourine, all day long. Who cares about secular music when we got ten Aretha Franklins in every church?
— Ben Jones, Owner, Better Days Records
Pictured: Ben Jones at the first location of Better Days Records in 1982