That was the purpose,” one chorister, now in her 80s, told me. We knew the Lord, and we were there to praise and lift up His name. “We weren’t so disturbed that we couldn’t serve the Lord. They insisted that the bombing and other violent acts against African Americans did not govern their lives, nor their singing, that night. But when I interviewed Angelic Choir members, I discovered they saw things differently. That was my personal theory-that the song’s raw power was prompted by the terrorist attack. The record’s title track defined an era of gospel music. The cover of the album Peace Be Still, with artwork by Harvey Williams. Of the thousands of gospel songs recorded in the early 1960s, how did “Peace Be Still” come to define its era? Was it a case of being the right song at the right moment? Were embers of emotion from the Birmingham blast hovering over the recording session that evening?

“No record ever,” wrote historian Anthony Heilbut, “neither Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ nor the Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road,’ has so blanketed its market.” Inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress in 2004, “Peace Be Still”-the title track on a collaboration between the Angelic Choir of the First Baptist Church of Nutley, New Jersey, and the “King of Gospel,” James Cleveland-remains, to this day, an enduring cultural touchpoint for the ’60s.

Recorded just four days after the devastating bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, it became an instant classic, selling nearly a million copies to an overwhelmingly Black audience over the next decade. “Peace Be Still,” a six-minute-long hymn, swept gospel radio in 1963.

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