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The Real

Arthur Roland

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                                          Humble beginnings In 2014, Arthur Roland was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame as

                                          a member of Lucille Pope and the Pearly Gates. He has been playing and touring for 35 years as

                                          a professional gospel artist. He is among the first Gospel groups to record and chart on a White

                                          Southern Gospel Music label (Morningstar Records). The 2009 album was entitled "It's all

                                          Good." He has also worked hits for artists like the Williams Brothers (God will Deliver), Slim

                                          and the Supreme Angels (Separated Right from Wrong), and Lucille Pope and Pearly Gates (Real

                                          Christians Stand up; Great Reunion) to name a few. Roland has played and sung on countless

                                          other works with artists like the Blind Boys of Alabama, Dorothy Norwood and many others. In

                                          2004, he toured Switzerland and other Countries on "The tribute to Mahalia Jackson tour." He released his first solo project in 2014, "Revival on a Tour Bus," on the Tate Music Group Label, which earned him his first multi-selling platinum and is still a top seller in Southern Gospel. His sophomore album, "Stepping Out Of Myself,” is slated for release in November 2015. This album is the first project ever to be written produced and sung mostly by Roland, and launched the startup of his own record label. That was always a dream after moving to St Louis, Mo. in 2009 and now back home in Georgia in 2015.

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When you accept salvation at the early age of six years old and grow up in Bostwick, an Eastern                                            Georgia town with fewer than 400 people, you learn to listen and sometimes you even dream of                                              a world bigger than the one that you were born in. It was at his family’s church, Mt. Vernon                                                    Baptist, that he first heard the music of the Old Negro Spirituals sung and grew to love them. But                                          when his parents took him to his first Gospel show and he heard legends like the Gospel                                                        Keynotes, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and the Williams Brothers a chord ran through his body                                                when he heard the guitars and the drums playing. He was so fascinated by the Gospel quartet                                                  sound that he went home and formed a group with his sisters. They copied the sounds and crafted                                          it into their own. They became a children’s quartet that traveled and even recorded. One night the                                          young Arthur had a very clear dream that they were performing on a huge stage and he was doing something that he had never done before – he was playing the guitar! When he woke up from that dream he was gifted by God with the ability to play the guitar just as he had in the dream. He recognized it as a gift from God.

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From these humble beginnings, Roland has spent over 35 years of his life touring, singing, playing, and writing music for some of those same artists that he saw when he walked into that Gospel concert at six years old. He has been amazingly blessed to learn side-by-side from legends like Clarence Fountain and the Blind Boys of Alabama, Lucille Pope, the late Willie Johnson, and Joe Ligon of the Mighty Clouds of Joy. These talented Gospel greats taught him the history and integrity of this style of music and sharpened his skills as a performer, writer, and singer. He also learned the history of the blues, which emanated from the church, and infused it into his traditional but unique Gospel style.

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