Hosanna in a Spot of Hell

Andrae Crouch brings the gospel to Soledad Prison

California's Soledad Prison is a spot of hell in the middle of a Garden of Eden. Located on 960 acres in the verdant Salinas Valley, the penitentiary housing 2,400 inmates is a cauldron of latent racial violence. In its 26-year history, 18 inmates have slaughtered one another in the name of black or white supremacy. Last week, as part of a continual effort to promote racial harmony, prison authorities held a concert by Gospel Singer Andrae Crouch, a black. TIME Correspondent James Wilde attended. His report:

Take me back. Take me back, dear Lord,

To the place I first received you.

I need your help just to make it home.

The words were sung with a fervor that touched everyone in the hall. The audience ignited with applause. Andrae Crouch and the Disciples, 1977's top gospel group, had triumphed in the "gladiator school"--the inmates' name for Soledad Prison--on the threshold of the new year.

The evening concert in the gymnasium of the prison's medium-security cell-block unit was a soothing antidote for Soledad's pervasive atmosphere of violence and tension. One section of the prison unit was still locked up after the near-fatal stabbing of a white inmate on Christmas Day. Several days before the concert, 18 men were confined to the maximum-control unit of the penitentiary for insubordination. When Crouch arrived at Soledad with his multiracial band (four whites, five blacks), the chaplain cautioned them uneasily: "In the event of any disturbance, obey the instructions of the custodial personnel. Don't get excited. Don't get involved."

Dressed in black, with a gold Star of David* glittering at his throat, Crouch generated his own kind of involvement. The singer ate with the inmates and, ignoring the unwritten prison law of segregation, passed from one racial group to another with dignity and ease. Said he: "I come in the name of Jesus. Wash me in your precious blood as I open the door of my heart and receive you as my Lord and Saviour."

Then he started to play on the prison's beat-up piano. As the glow of the gospel music touched the audience of disheveled, jean-clad and self-segregated men--blacks seated on the left, whites on the right, Chicanos in front-they began to thaw. Black prisoners started to sway, clap their hands rhythmically and shout an occasional hallelujah. One white inmate drummed his tattooed fingers and pulled at a diamond ornamentally embedded in his ear lobe.

I've had many tears and sorrows

I've had questions for tomorrow

There've been times I didn 't know right from wrong.

But in every situation

God gave blessed consolation

That my trials come to only make me strong.

When the concert was over, few of the prisoners wanted to leave. Said Louie Mareno, a Chicano: "I've been in jail a long time, but I've never seen a group react to anyone like this." Said Captain Buzz Brewer of the Salvation Army: "I've never seen anything like this in the eleven years I've been working in prisons." A white convict named Forrest summed up the scene: "When you can get all these races together acting as a whole, that's good. It was a miracle considering all the tensions here."

Crouch's success story is also a little miraculous. Five years ago, the bearded singer was broke and did not even have the economic privilege of owning a credit card. Since then he has been nominated five times for pop music's highest honor, a Grammy Award, and won one in 1976. Billboard magazine named Crouch's group the most popular gospel singers of 1977. His was also the first black gospel group to play at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. His Soledad concert was arranged at the request of an independent ex-con outreach group called The Way Inn. As for his own motivations in singing the Lord's praises to such a group of desperate men, Crouch explains: "I'll hook them any way I can." For a moment at least, Andrae Crouch succeeded.

* Crouch explains: "Christ was a Jew and so was my grandfather."

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