Jesus music, known as gospel beat music in the United Kingdom, is a style of Christian music that originated on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This musical genre developed in parallel to the Jesus movement. It outlasted the movement that spawned it and the Christian music industry began to eclipse it and absorb its musicians around 1975.
Jesus music primarily began in population centers of the United States where the Jesus movement was gaining momentum—Southern California (especially Costa Mesa and Hollywood), San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago—around 1969–70. Large numbers of hippies and street musicians began converting to born-again Christianity. A number of these conversions, especially in southern California, were due largely to the outreach of Lonnie Frisbee and Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. In the aftermath of such conversions, these musicians continued playing the same styles of music that they had been playing prior to their conversion, though they now infused their lyrics with a Christian message. Of the many bands and artists that came out of this time-period, some became leaders within the Jesus movement. Most notably among them Larry Norman, Barry McGuire, Love Song, Second Chapter of Acts, Randy Stonehill, Randy Matthews, and during the mid-1970s, Keith Green.
Much of the music
was a blend of
folk music and folk rock
(Children of the Day, Paul Clark, Nancy Honeytree, Mark Heard, Noel Paul Stookey, Karen Lafferty, Debby Kerner & Ernie Rettino),
soft rock (Chuck Girard, Tom Howard, Phil Keaggy, Scott Wesley Brown, Kelly Willard),
R&B (Andraé Crouch (and the Disciples)),
soul music/jazz fusion (Sweet Comfort Band),
country rock (Bethlehem, Daniel Amos, Gentle Faith, The Talbot Brothers: John Michael and Terry Talbot, The Way),
and hard rock (Agape, All Saved Freak Band, Petra, Resurrection Band, Servant).
Initially, the music tended to be relatively simple, as it drew largely on guitar-based folk and folk-rock influences.