More Than Precious Memories (Paperback)

More than Precious Memories is the first book of its kind--a collection of essays offering scholarly analysis and interpretation of Southern Gospel Music. Believing Southern Gospel Music to be a significant cultural and religious phenomenon worthy of the best efforts of scholarship, Grayes and Fillingim have assembled a diverse group of scholars who apply a variety of methods and theories to the task of understanding Southern Gospel Music and its cultural context. These scholars and approaches include the following.
- Scott Tucker, looks at the theme of "heaven" in six of the Gaither Homecoming songbooks
- David Fillingim looks at how Southern Gospel Music answers the question of theodicy from the perspective of the rural white, working class
- Robert M. McManus explores selected song lyrics to show how Southern
- Gospel Music helps construct the identity of the community compared to Contemporary Christian Music
- Darlene R. Graves identifies key sustaining personality strengths of women that tend to preserve consistency between their public performance and personal spiritual walk
- Elizabeth F. Desnoyers Colas and Stephanie Howard (Asabi) explore Southern Gospel and Black Gospel music through the influence of Thomas A. Dorsey
- Michael Graves examines how the culture of Southern Gospel Music deals with its inevitable prodigal sons
- Raymond D.S. Anderson analyzes the Gaither Homecoming videos as examples of the postmodern turn in American popular Christian culture
- John D. Keeler presents the first audience study of Southern Gospel Music employing a "Uses and Gratifications" research framework
- Paul A. Creasman examines the ways Southern Gospel Musicas a culture memorializes its dead by use of the Internet
- Naaman Wood reviews significant scholarly approaches to the study of popular music.