Kirk Franklin, “king” of urban Gospel music, joins greats in the oral history collection

A video interview with Gospel artist, songwriter, and producer Kirk Franklin is the latest addition to the library’s Oral History of American Music (OHAM) collection. Franklin, dubbed by the entertainment magazine “Variety” as the Reigning King of Urban Gospel, has won 20 Grammy Awards to date and has sold millions of his recordings, performing with vocal groups and as a solo artist.

Franklin has toured internationally with many Gospel music icons, including The Clark Sisters, whose interview is also in OHAM’s collection.

Accomplishments and awards

Franklin began leading Baptist church choirs at age 11 in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas. Twelve years later, he released his debut album “Kirk Franklin & The Family,” featuring a local 17-member choir. That recording landed at number three on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart in 1993. In 1995 his holiday album, the first-ever Christmas album of contemporary Gospel music, stayed at number one on the Billboard Gospel Chart for 42 weeks.

Franklin began his work as a solo artist in 2002 with the disc “The Rebirth of Kirk Franklin” and released a second autobiographical masterpiece, “Hero,” in 2005. Proceeds from the song “Are You Listening?” from his number-one-rated album “The Fight of My Life,” recorded with an ensemble of notable Gospel artists, went toward helping victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

In 2013, Franklin’s music label, Fo Yo Soul Recordings, which won three awards in its first year, became an imprint of RCA Records. In 2021, he was among the first inductees into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame, along with Quincy Jones, James Brown, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and others.

In 2023, Franklin released his solo album “Father’s Day”—his 19th studio album—and its hit single “All Things” won Best Gospel Performance/Song at the 2024 Grammy Awards event.

Franklin has also written four books, including the autobiographical “Church Boy” and a children’s book-CD about worship styles titled “How Do Alligators Praise the Lord?” His SiriusXM channel, “Kirk Franklin’s Praise,” airs Gospel music to millions of listeners.

Franklin at Yale

While in New Haven, Franklin offered a master class—a sold-out event—at New Haven’s Immanuel Baptist Church. The class was offered as part of Braxton D. Shelley’s course “The Gospel Imagination: Tradition and Revolution.” Shelley is the faculty director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Music and the Black Church, a program of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, with which OHAM frequently collaborates.

In the OHAM interview, Franklin is in conversation with Ambre Dromgoole (MAR ’17, PhD ’23), assistant professor of Africana religions and music in the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University.

The videotaped interview with Kirk Franklin will become part of OHAM’s Major Figures in American Music Collection, which now comprises more than 1,700 recorded interviews—dating from 1970 to the present day—with significant composers and musicians.

Many of the interviews in the OHAM collection can be streamed online using the Aviary platform. For information on how to access the interviews, view interview tables of contents, or request interview transcripts, select the tab “Accessing OHAM” in the collection guide. 

Read more about Kirk Franklin and his visit to Yale on the Institute of Sacred Music’s website. Watch a YouTube video and view photos of Kirk’s April 24 master class “Why We Sing.”

—Deborah Cannarella

Photos by Harold Shapiro