![]() As home to the Jesus People Movement-which, admittedly, was waning in the mid-1970s after its apex of Explo ’72-Green was surrounded by songwriters, performers, churches, labels, and listeners who shared a vision of contemporary popular music that led people to Christ and his teachings. Southern California, where he and Melody lived, was the perfect place to experiment with writing and performing pop songs that expressed his love for Jesus. Green was so excited about his new faith that he immediately started incorporating it into his music. During this time he was also searching for a meaningful spiritual experience, which he found at Kenn Gulliksen’s Vineyard Christian Fellowship in LA’s Coldwater Canyon neighborhood.* Through Gulliksen’s guidance and his own deep engagement with the Bible, Green committed himself to Christ in 1975 Melody also converted. ![]() As his widow Melody Green describes in her memoir, No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green, Keith signed with CBS as a staff songwriter in 1974, working together in a co-writing pair with Melody. After being dropped by Decca, he followed these with a handful of singles on indie labels ( Era and Rustic). Initially, he was signed to Decca Records as a pre-teen artist in the mid-1960s, releasing several singles from the age of 11. It just spread like wildfire in the Christian youth community.” Like many Christian artists, particularly early ones who first came to prominence during or immediately following the Jesus People Movement, Green’s music career had several phases. You’d just whisper his name and he’d fill up a church. Keith Green was something of a phenom Christian artist in the 1970s-one of Sparrow Records’s early major stars who could fill a concert venue, according to Sparrow Records founder Billy Ray Hearn: “He was so electrifying.
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