Late gospel music hall-of-famer to get exposure

updated 8:06 a.m. ET July 27, 2007

GARDEN VALLEY, Texas - Christian singer-songwriter Keith Green never shirked an opportunity to share his vision.

Offered a chance to provide an aerial tour of the wooded East Texas pasture that was home to his Last Days Ministries, he didn’t hesitate.

The overloaded, twin-engine Cessna crashed less than 30 seconds after takeoff, killing all 12 aboard. The dead included Green, 28, two of his young children, pilot Don Burmeister and missionaries John and DeDe Smalley and their six children.

That was 25 years ago. Now Green’s work is about to be rediscovered.

EMI/Sparrow Records is painstakingly going through recordings saved by his wife, Melody. An iTunes release with music never before heard by the public is planned for August. More material will be released next year, said Bryan Ward, director of artist development with EMI Christian Music Group.

The July 28, 1982, accident doused one of the brightest lights in the Jesus Movement, a youthful Christian counterculture. The bushy-haired evangelist with a distinctive tenor voice was posthumously inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

Green sold between 560,000 and 1 million records, Ward said, although exact numbers are difficult to determine. Green gave away many records, and sales were tallied differently then.

‘I have kept every little thing’
Melody Green, who co-wrote “There Is a Redeemer” and other songs, said advances in sound quality-enhancing technology make the timing right to release more of her late husband’s work.

“I have kept every little thing that Keith’s done,” she said.

Green’s emotional lyrics exude spiritual discovery, while his boisterous attack on piano keys brings to mind Elton John.

Admirers included Bob Dylan, who played harmonica on Green’s “So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt” album.

“I think he was one of the best songwriters of the modern era of Christian music,” said John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association in Nashville, Tenn. “It was vulnerable and transparent and absolutely not contrived.”

Others agree that Keith Green was an original.

“He was intense about everything — everything from his music to his spiritual journey to where you could get the best cheeseburger with grilled onions and a chocolate malt,” said Randy Stonehill, who wrote “Your Love Broke Through” with Green and Todd Fishkind.

Green’s compassion was so deep that he invited street people to stay in his home, which grew to become a Christian commune with seven homes and 70 people. “My life was radically changed by that experience,” said Jerry Bryant, the commune’s first pastor.

‘Christians don’t like to talk about hypocrisy ...’
Yet Green could also offend the flock with his blunt “no compromise” approach to faith. “Christians don’t like to talk about hypocrisy any more than turkeys like to talk about Thanksgiving,” Green often said.

He groused about being celebrated for his music, considering himself simply an instrument of God. Giving him credit, Green said, was like praising a pencil for producing a poem.

He was critical of the “industry” of Christian music, which grew explosively after his death.

At the peak of his career, he became convinced that ministry should not cost money. He talked his way out of a record contract so he could give his music away for “whatever you can afford.”

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Green earned a recording contract at age 11 with Decca Records. Time magazine called the Sheepshead Bay, N.Y., native a “pre-pubescent dreamboat” who “croons in a voice trembling with conviction.”

But when child stardom didn’t happen, Green, who had a Jewish background but grew up reading the New Testament, turned to drugs and to an intense spiritual quest.

He embraced Christianity in the 1970s.

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