Albert A. Goodson

GOODSON, Albert A. b. Los Angeles, October 1933; d. Los Angeles, December 2003. Goodson was brought up in the Pentecostal church. At the age of twelve he joined St Paul Baptist Church where he apparently received his only formal musical training, and was introduced to gospel music by the church’s director of music, J. Earle Hines (1916-60) and pianist Gwendolyn Cooper-Lightner (1925-1999), who in 1946 founded the church’s Echoes of Eden Choir, and with others established St Paul’s as a center of gospel music. The church was one of the first in Los Angeles to broadcast worship services regularly, each Sunday morning reaching an estimated audience of one million in seventeen states, and to...