The Singing Stewarts were the first major British
Gospel group.
The five brothers and three sisters of the Stewart family were born in
Trinidad and migrated to
Handsworth in
Birmingham in 1961.
They were all members of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbath, and ...
and under the training of their mother began to sing in an ''
a cappella
''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...
'' style songs that mixed traditional Southern gospel songs with Caribbean calypso music, calypso.
In 1964 they were the subject of a TV documentary called The Colony produced by the BBC's Philip Donnellan and Radio Producer Charles Parker (producer), Charles Parker, which brought them to national attention, and in 1969 they were the first British gospel group to be recorded by a major record company when PYE Records released their album ''Oh Happy Day''.
References
British gospel music groups
Musical groups from Birmingham, West Midlands
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