BeBe, CeCe and Whitney Give Gospel Tunes a Heavenly Workout

Singing Winanses actually outnumber singing Jacksons, and most of the members of the gospel-singing Winans family from Detroit were either on stage last week at the Wiltern in Los Angeles or invited to come down to the lip of the stage to grab a microphone along the way.

Brother-and-sister team BeBe and CeCe Winans, who play the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim tonight, were the billed attraction at the sold-out hall, joined by several more sibling Winanses, Mom and Dad Winans, and even audience-favorite Whitney Winans. Whitney Winans?

Actually, Whitney Houston was introduced by her real name. (The audience knew what to expect before that; she’s widely known as a Winans pal, and BeBe gave it away when he finished off some preaching about looking forward to dancing in heaven with the line: “When I get there, I’m going to dance with somebody who really loves me!”) But she was made so prominent a part of the show--coming out on stage before the midpoint of the 2-hour set, never again to leave--that she might as well have been family.

Houston, of course, comes from a gospel-oriented clan herself, which doesn’t explain her predilection for showing up at BeBe and CeCe concerts around the country nearly as completely as their shared singing style of choice--swooping and dipping all over a single, poor, defenseless syllable. It’s the Megalo-Melismatic school.

The second half of the show was filled with a lot of what the New Testament writers might call “vain repetition,” with the ballads stretched out so the singers could challenge each other with repeated readings of the same word or phrase. Showing off for the Lord? Maybe. Only a vocal teacher, a die-hard fan or the Almighty himself could wait through several dozen renderings of the word nobody --all with different, increasingly heightened inflections, of course--in the song “Nobody but You” without wondering when the next number might begin. (Not that this sort of playful one-upmanship is exactly unknown in gospel, or in rock, for that matter.)

But in the more compact, upbeat numbers, in which the singers adapted their voices to the songs and not vice versa, BeBe & CeCe & Whitney really did offer what could only be gratefully accepted as a joyful noise by black music and Christian fans alike. “The world don’t even know what a party is!” exclaimed CeCe, as heavenly minded as her brother, and in some rousing examples of contemporary black pop at its finest, they endeavored to define it for a waiting world.

Opening the show, in an odd pairing, was Adam Again, one of the few really interesting groups operating in the field of Christian rock. The mostly white eight-piece unit’s loud funk ‘n’ roll--no doubt influenced by Talking Heads and Prince--had a few of the more traditional gospel fans running for the exits (and reportedly complaining to management about the seemingly “un-Christian” group), but by set’s end most of the crowd was understandably won over. (A cameo appearance late in the set by a rap trio, Soldiers for Christ, may have helped win over some of the spiritually undecided.)

When BeBe and CeCe play the Celebrity tonight, the unusual sounds of Adam Again will be replaced in the opening slot by the tranquil tunes of First Call, a very popular and quite talented vocal trio in the standard, white, contemporary-Christian mold.

BeBe and CeCe Winans will play tonight at 8 p.m. at the Celebrity Theatre, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. Tickets: $16.50. Information: (714) 999-9536.