Baptists remember Word Entertainment's humble roots in Texas
___By John Pierce
___Baptists Today
___MACON, Ga.--Reports that Warner Music Group is buying Word Entertainment for more than $84 million offer some Baptists another reminder of how the once-ignored genre of Christian music is now big business.
___To those who remember the humble beginnings of Word Records a half-century ago, the success of the label is mind boggling.
___"He asked if I'd be the first recording artist," said Atlanta musician Frank Boggs of fellow Baylor University alum Jarrell McCracken, who gave life to Word Records in 1951.
___Boggs, then a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, was involved in citywide youth revivals across the South, where
he directed large choirs, led group singing and sang solos with his booming bass voice. Two of the songs he often sang--"No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus" and "Yes, God is Real"--were put on a 78 rpm recording with the Word label.
___"Ethel Waters was the first really famous artist he signed," said Boggs, who did several concerts with the popular gospel artist.
___McCracken, who helped organize some of the early youth revivals that featured Boggs and other Baylor students who went on to be significant Baptist leaders, first made a recording of his own voice doing "a take-off on a football game," recalled Boggs.
___A radio sportscaster in Waco, McCracken called the play-by-play analogy of a contest between good and evil with Jesus and Satan as opposing coaches. The script was developed from an article written by Jimmy Allen in 1947, when he was a junior at Howard Payne University.
___Allen later would become president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Radio & Television Commission in Fort Worth.
___"I decided to place the Christian experience in the form of a football game broadcast from Station Word," said Allen, now pastor of the interdenominational chapel in Big Canoe, Ga.
___McCracken took the Word label name from that recording, Allen said.
___Allen first used the football analogy as a devotional for the Baptist Student Union at Howard Payne. A fellow student sent a copy to Jess Moody, a Baylor graduate who reprinted it in The Shield magazine.
___McCracken later recorded "The Game of Life" on an LP with sound effects and followed by testimonies of Christian athletes such as Bill Glass. The record on the growing Word label sold more than 2 million copies.
___Under McCracken's leadership, Word expanded to include books and other publishing ventures. Eventually, deals with ABC, A&M Records and others followed. The Word label has attracted popular contemporary singers like Amy Grant, Point of Grace and Sandi Patty.
___Other Word recording artists through the years have included the Imperials, Nicole C. Mullen, Kurt Kaiser, Jaci Velasquez, Ray Boltz, Wayne Watson, First Call, George Beverly Shea, Fernando Ortega, Phil Keaggy and Petra.
___The latest deal involves Gaylord Entertainment selling Word Entertainment--its Christian music division--to Warner Music Group for $84.1 million.
___Boggs recalled McCracken visiting him and his father in Dallas in the early 1950s and offering them one-third of the company's stock for $10,000.
___"We thought it might be a conflict of interest since I was the main recording artist at the time," Boggs said with a laugh.
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