Baylor’s program has digitized thousands of Black gospel records.
MICHAEL ROBERTSON GREW up singing church songs out of hymn books—classics like “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” and “Lord, I Want to Be a Christian.” He attended Methodist and Baptist churches where music wasn’t known for extravagance, and choirs weren’t allowed to move, clap, or jump. But in 1965, he experienced something transformative. A now-bygone Houston gospel quartet, the Echoes of Zion, was singing in an old storefront-turnedchurch in his Fifth Ward neighborhood.
“It was the sound and the energy that I noticed,” says Robertson, who went on to be a lead singer in the group Endurance of Houston. “You can hear these beautiful voices, the guitars and the drums, and it was call
