Robert Marovich publishes a new book on King of Gospel James Cleveland

In a 2015 Reader story, critic Peter Margasak called scholar and radio DJ Robert Marovich “one of the foremost authorities on Chicago gospel” and wrote that his then-new book, A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music, “convincingly establishes the city’s crucial role in the origin of the music.” Marovich has since become a Reader contributor himself, and on Tuesday, December 14, the University of Illinois Press publishes his latest volume, Peace Be Still: How James Cleveland and the Angelic Choir Created a Gospel Classic. The book goes deep about the recording of Cleveland’s famous 1963 live LP, Peace Be Still, as well as its impact on church life, the music business, and the civil rights movement. 

Since the early 90s, Gossip Wolf has been tuning in to WHPK’s Friday-night live-band showcase Pure Hype, which brings local artists and touring acts of every genre into the station’s University of Chicago studio to cut loose. Pure Hype records each artist’s performance as a matter of course, and according to WHPK booking director and archivist Bryce Prewitt, the station has “begun transferring and publicly releasing over 350 DATs” from the early 1990s through the late 2000s and uploading them to YouTube. (These older recordings will exist alongside a couple dozen sessions from 2015 and 2016 already on Bandcamp.) The initial batch includes full-throttle 2001 sets from UK garage-rock miscreants Country Teasers and far-out Chicago prog-pop masters Cheer-Accident, and Prewitt says the archive will eventually feature the likes of Dianogah, Daylight Robbery, Smith Westerns, and the Flying Luttenbachers.

Gossip Wolf has a soft spot for Sunroom, the local record label and publication house founded in 2018 by musician Jake Stolz (Pool Holograph, Varsity, Discus, Central Heat Exchange) and designer and poster artist Clare Byrne. So it’s heartwarming to hear that last week, Stolz and Byrne got engaged! “The proposal happened right out front of our home studio, where we’ve been doing all things Sunroom and building our lives together for the last couple years,” they explain via e-mail. “It’s been really amazing and overwhelming receiving all the love from our family and friends.” Their busy schedules also include maintaining their Monthly Flyer Club, so if you want 12 risograph-printed flyers mailed to you next year for $5 per month, sign up on the Sunroom site.

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