Rance Allen

One of the first groups to successfully merge soul and rock with Gospel, Rance Allen and the Rance Allen Group recorded for Stax's Gospel Truth label in the early '70s. Backed by both a symphony of strings and most of the M.G.'s, and fronted by Rance Allen's dynamic gliding vocals, R.A.G. made "message music" more accessible to the pop charts, thus paving the way for what is known today as CCM.