Back to the 80's again this week for an early CCM icon, Carmen. Carmelo Domenic Licciardello , known by his stage name Carman, was an American contemporary Christian music singer, songwriter, television host, life coach, and evangelist. An Italian American, Carman was born in Trenton, New Jersey. As a child he performed in his mother's band; as a teen, he found some success performing at casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
While attending an Andraé Crouch concert, he became a born again Christian, and embraced evangelical Christianity. In 1980, he made a custom album titled God's Not Finished with Me. The following year, he was invited by Bill Gaither to tour with The Bill Gaither Trio.
Carmen was an artist that you’re very familiar with or not at all. He had a fine singing voice but was far more interested in a sort of rhyming, spoken word, preach-rap that was all its own. It was hugely, deliriously popular among a certain demographic of Christianity.
After relocating to Tulsa, Oklahoma, he released a moderately successful eponymous debut album (later issued as Some-o-Dat) in 1982—which contained mostly novelty songs. Then, with the release of the album Sunday's on the Way in 1983, a string of contemporary Christian music chart successes started, beginning with the title song. As he continued his music career, he established the nonprofit organization Carman Ministries. With the 1985 release of The Champion came his first number-one song, of the same name.
Carmen will be remembered for at least one thing, it is absolutely his music videos. They are wild. Sometimes they feature Carman as a MC Hammer-type dance machine. Sometimes they feature him as a pompadoured rockabilly showman. Sometimes he was a stern-faced spokesman for the Moral Majority or a back alley tough guy or a proletariat champion. Most often, he was a stormy revolutionary bringing God’s violent judgment to a world on the fast track to hell. His first number one album on Christian charts, Revival in the Land, followed in 1989. He won a Dove award for Best Video in 1991 tor the video of the title song.
Between 1987 and 1989, he was named Charisma magazine's readers' choice for favorite male vocalist. In 1990 and 1992, Billboard named him the Contemporary Christian Artist of the Year.
In 1995 he released R.I.O.T. Righteous Invasion of the Truth. The title track won a Dove Award for Rap/Hip Hop Song of the Year. This video finds Carman and his working class comrades enslaved in some sort of smoke-making factory. Carman escapes, explodes everyone else’s shackles, and then it’s time for a class conscious dance R.I.O.T.
In 1995, he translated some of his songs into and released his first Spanish-language album, Lo Mejor. Heart of a Champion, a 30-song retrospective was released in 2000.
He was nominated for four Grammys and sold over 10 million records. It is believed he holds the world record for the largest single Christian concert in history. In the first, he was the main act in August 1993 in Johannesburg, South Africa, with more than 50,000 in attendance. The following year he performed a free concert at Texas Stadium October 22, 1994, with 71,132 attendees, and 80,000 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Beyond his music career, he participated in various television productions and interview duties as a host for both the Trinity Broadcasting Network in general and its flagship program Praise the Lord. In 2001, he starred in the film Carman: The Champion.
For decades, Carman’s legacy has been secondhand for a certain type of early 90s youth group culture that perfectly encapsulated a whole era of American Christianity. That era continues to shape ours today, for better or worse. Carman was drafted into the culture war like a lot of Christians of that time were, but he didn’t think of it in strictly cultural terms. To Carman, Christianity was a cosmic opera, with all Christians playing a part in an apocalyptic war between good and evil. He was hardly the only person to think this way but he found a lot of success by depicting it as literally as the budget would allow. There’s no denying the impact he left behind was singular. He didn’t even break the mold. There was no mold to break.
Carman died on February 16 of this year, 2021, after a series of complications resulting from surgery to repair a hiatal hernia, 28 days after his 65th birthday.
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