Take Six Takes Time for Deserved Success

If asked to predict, in early 1988, which of the year’s recordings stood a chance of selling a million copies, most music buffs certainly would not have chosen the debut by a polished but little-known a cappella vocal group with deep roots in gospel.

Yet, only three years into their young careers, the six members of Take Six, who take the stage at the Del Mar Fair Grandstand tonight at 7:30, have emerged as one of the music industry’s great success stories. The band’s good fortune offers hope to original artists everywhere that music doesn’t necessarily have to be watered down or slicked up by this year’s hot producer to sway the masses.

With their debut album, “Take Six,” on the verge of going platinum (1 million sales) and last year’s follow-up, “So Much to Say” gone gold (500,000) only 10 months after its release, the band is riding a surge of success beyond its wildest expectations.

“Even after we got a recording contract, we thought what we were doing was very different and would probably attract only a small number of listeners,” said Cedric Dent, at 28 the band’s elder statesman. In fact, for the first year, the band’s debut album seemed destined for only modest success.

“By February of 1989, we had sold only about 30,000,” recalled Dent, who sings baritone, just above band member Alvin Chea’s bottom-end bass. “Then we won two Grammys and performed on the Grammy awards program in late February, and, within two months, we were around 200,000 to 300,000. It’s hovering between 900,000 and platinum now.”

There are other singers with Take Six’s gospel roots and awesome vocal power, but many of them--Anita Baker and Whitney Houston come to mind--have struck commercial gold by confining their amazing vocal instruments to middle-of-the-road pop songs. The members of Take Six, however, are unabashed Christians, and they have hit the big time with original spirituals and new readings of inspirational gospel standards--melodies and lyrics that often sound like something straight out of church.

Although their newest album continues the spiritual direction of its predecessor, the band takes more risks. Where “Take Six” included mostly reworkings of public domain spirituals, “So Much 2 Say” finds the band’s composing skills blossoming--a majority of the tunes are Take Six originals. And, where Mark Kibble and Mervyn Warren (Warren left the band early this year and was replaced by Joel Kibble, Mark’s younger brother) handled writing and arranging duties on the first album, the follow-up is a more collective effort.

Dent, for example, co-wrote and arranged the title cut with Warren, and Dent also arranged the group’s new version of “I’m on My Way,” a spiritual standard.

Take Six’s debut recording was all vocals, but the new release features drums, percussion and synthesizer on “Where Do The Children Play.” And on “I L-O-V-E U,” the group used a synthesizer to assemble an orchestrated rhythm track of “body sounds”--vocals combined with chest-slapping, hand-clapping and all manner of percussive bodily assaults.

In fact, Dent doesn’t rule out the possibility of even more instruments showing up on future recordings.

“I think we’ll always dabble in instrumentation, because, basically, we’re all instrumentalists first, but I think a cappella will always be our base. Claude (McKnight) and Vinnie are both trombonists, and all the guys play piano to some degree. Dave (Thomas) is a guitarist, I think.”

All of the members of Take Six grew up singing in church choirs, and several have known each other for years.

Mark Kibble and McKnight, the group’s founders, formed their first group together in 1980. Warren was next to join, then Dent (in 1985), David Thomas and Alvin Chea. The group landed a recording contract in 1987.

With the success of Take Six’s debut album, you might have expected a quick follow-up. After all, two years between releases is an eternity in the music industry, especially for a hot act.

“We did have the record company pressuring us,” Dent said. “But, very early on, we were struggling to get gigs, being a new group no one had heard of. So what happened was, we were taking any and everything, and we booked ourselves way up in advance. We were on the road fulfilling our obligation when we should have been in the studio.”

Probably one reason the group is enjoying such broad success is that its music has much more to offer than just Christian messages. The spiritual side is there, but it’s so tightly woven into the group’s thick carpet of vocal sounds that the higher message doesn’t seem preachy. If you don’t want to tune into it, just concentrate on the sound of six instruments--in this case voices--that come together with the creativity and power of a great jazz ensemble.

The band’s sound is the result of six diverse and varied backgrounds.

“I think if you asked each member about influences, you’d get a whole different list of artists,” Dent said. “The single strongest influence on our sound would be the singers in the Hi Los.”

“I’m a classically trained pianist, and I plan to get back to it eventually. Actually, I’d like to do a contemporary keyboard album one day when the time is right. In college, I really started to experiment with jazz piano--Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Clare Fischer. At the same time, I was into vocal jazz and Big Band music, as well as studio orchestra writers like Claus Ogerman and Michel Legrand, and that led me into listening to movie sound track albums.”

All of these influences have come together in a band that appeals to an unusually broad audience.

Dent attributes the band’s success to both good timing and its unusually broad appeal.

“It was interesting that at the Grammys, the year our album won, Tracy Chapman was a big winner, and Bobby McFerrin,” he said. “It seemed as if the industry and the public were turning towards more acoustic and a cappella music. . . . We have found that our audience cuts across a wide cross-section of listeners. I think we do have a large body of gospel listeners, but also a large body of jazz enthusiasts who are equally into our stuff, and maybe a smaller proportion of pop fans.

“I think, though, that we tend to think of what we do as gospel, because our lyrics are all biblically based. In concert, where you really have the opportunity to show people what you’re about, we try to do some witnessing, some ministering. Because that’s really where our music stems from.”