The Informer

24/01/2024

The Power of a Mentor: How Aretha Franklin Shaped Whitney Houston’s Musical Destiny

16/01/2024

“Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” Learn more about love as the foundation of Kingian Nonviolence: thekingcenter.org

08/10/2023

"Isn't She Lovely."

19/04/2023

Judge Colvin encouraged the inmates in the Bibb County to turn their lives around

03/02/2023

“Hymns for Him” located at our church to kick off Black history month . Feel free to be in attendance February 5, 2023 at 5 PM!

03/02/2023

28/12/2022

Three Kings of Comedy....

28/12/2022

"Christ came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly. I am grateful for the abundance." Merry Christmas from our family to yours! -The Angelou Johnson Family

28/12/2022

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28/12/2022

This was Redd Fox’s final sitcom!

28/12/2022

TODAY WE REMEMBER THE LATE GREAT JAMES BROWN

28/12/2022

Happy Holidays!

09/12/2022

NAACP President & CEO: “Nothing can replace the time that she has lost, but we hope that her family can find comfort in the fact that Brittney will be free to celebrate the holidays with them.”

05/12/2022

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”

05/12/2022

This week in 2013, The Queen of Soul performed in President’s Park at the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony.🎄

Photo Courtesy of Getty Images.

02/12/2022

21/09/2022

In Music History The Album - "Songs in the Key of Life" is the eighteenth album by American recording artist Stevie Wonder, released on September 28, 1976, by Motown Records, through its division Tamla Records. It was the culmination of his "classic period" albums. The album was recorded primarily at Crystal Sound studio in Hollywood, with some sessions recorded at the Record Plant in Hollywood, the Record Plant in Sausalito, and The Hit Factory in New York City. Final mixing was performed at Crystal Sound.

An ambitious double LP with a four-song bonus EP, Songs in the Key of Life became the best-selling and most critically acclaimed album of Wonder's career. In 2003, it was ranked number 57 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In the same year it was preserved into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, which called it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically," significant
In April 2008, the album was voted the "Top Album of All Time" by the Yahoo! Music Playlist Blog, using a formula that combined four parameters – "Album Staying Power Value + Sales Value + Critical Rating Value + Grammy Award Value".

In December 2013, Wonder did a live concert performance of the entire Songs in the Key of Life album at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. The event was his 18th annual House Full of Toys Benefit Concert, and featured some of the original singers and musicians from the 1976 double-album as well as several from the contemporary scene.

In November 2014, Wonder began performing the entire album in a series of concert dates in the U.S. and Canada. The start of the tour coincided with the 38th anniversary of the release of Songs in the Key of Life.

Highly anticipated, the album surpassed all commercial expectations. It debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Pop Albums Chart on October 8, 1976, becoming only the third album in history to achieve that feat and the first by an American artist (after British singer/composer Elton John's albums Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and Rock of the Westies, both in 1975). In Canada, the album achieved the same feat, entering at number one on the RPM national albums chart on October 16 1976) - Songs in the Key of Life spent thirteen consecutive weeks at number one in the U.S., and 11 during 1976. It was the album with the most weeks at number one during the year. In those eleven weeks, Songs in the Key of Life managed to block four other albums from reaching the top – in order, Boz Scaggs’s Silk Degrees, Earth, Wind & Fire's Spirit, Led Zeppelin's soundtrack for The Song Remains the Same and Rod Stewart's A Night on the Town. On January 15, 1977, the album finally dropped to number two behind Eagles' Hotel California and the following week it fell to number four. On January 29 it returned to the top for a fourteenth and final week. The album then began its final fall. It spent a total of 35 weeks inside the top ten and 80 weeks on the Billboard albums chart. Songs in the Key of Life also saw longevity at number one on the Billboard R&B/Black Albums chart, spending 20 non-consecutive weeks there.

In all, Songs in the Key of Life became the second best-selling album of 1977 in the U.S., only behind Fleetwood Mac's blockbuster Rumours, and was certified as a diamond album by the RIAA, for sales of 10 million units in the U.S. alone (each individual record or disc included with an album counts towards RIAA certifications). It was the highest selling R&B/Soul album on the Billboard Year-End chart that same year.
Songs in the Key of Life was also the most successful Wonder project in terms of singles. The lead-off, the upbeat "I Wish" was released in November 1976, over a month after the album was released. On January 15, 1977, it reached number one on the Billboard R&B chart, where it spent five weeks at the top. Seven days after, it also reached the summit of the Billboard Hot 100, although it spent only one week at number one. The track became an international top 10 single, and also reached number five in the UK. "I Wish" became one of Wonder's standards and remained one of his most sampled songs. The follow-up, the jazzy "Sir Duke", surpassed the commercial success of "I Wish". It was released in March 1977 and also reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 (spending three weeks at the top starting on May 21) and the R&B chart (for one week, starting on May . It also reached number two in the UK, where it was kept off the top spot by the song "Free" by Deniece Williams, who had provided backing vocals on the album.

As sales for the album began to decline during the second half of 1977, the two other singles from Songs in the Key of Life failed to achieve the commercial success of "I Wish" and "Sir Duke". "Another Star" was released in August and reached only number 32 on the Hot 100 (number 18 on the R&B chart, and number 29 in the UK) and "As" came out two months later, peaking at number 36 on both the Pop and R&B charts. Though not released as a single, "Isn't She Lovely" received wide airplay and became one of Wonder's most popular songs. It was soon released by David Parton as a single in 1977 and became a top 10 hit in the UK.

21/09/2022

Freda Payne just turned 80, and she’s still looking good!!

21/09/2022

Remembering Brooke Benton today on his birthday!

21/09/2022

“Give us the ballot and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who will, who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the Divine.”


Full speech here: https://youtu.be/oPre-KEFiVs

Resister to vote here: https://www.rockthevote.org

06/08/2022

“Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.”