A Place to Sing About
In 1963, she married Donald Douroux, a now-retired brick mason. He plays electric bass at church and is, she says, a "genius" with sound systems. (They have a daughter, Mardy, and three grandchildren.)
After the 1974 death of Douroux's father, a painful schism at Mount Moriah caused the Pleasant family to leave the church. Her brother, also named Earl A. Pleasant, became pastor at Greater New Bethel, where she later took over the music.
"It was like a bird pushing us out of the nest," Douroux said of her father's death.
Douroux got a boost outside black churches in the early 1980s when Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker recorded her "We're Blessed" and "If It Had Not Been for the Lord on My Side." Because her husband earned a good living, she soon quit her school job to pursue music further.
Douroux, who looks a decade younger than her age despite a touch of gray atop her shoulder-length hair, composes mainly away from the piano, often hooking onto an idea while driving or doing chores in her suburban ranch-style home in Agoura. "You Got to Move" was inspired by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It refers to divinely ordered storms and quakes, but Douroux also had in mind how California brush fires can destroy one house but skip another.
"It's things you can't explain that make us understand the reality of a higher source, a higher being," Douroux said in her tiny church office. "It's the mystery of how God works."
In 1983, Douroux formed her foundation. Its motto: "Classical music has Carnegie Hall, country music has the Grand Ole Opry. Gospel music needs a museum and theater: the Gospel House."
Such a museum, she believes, would showcase the sound that marries blues and jazz with traditional hymns and spirituals as it speaks to God and celebrates him.
Its improvisational forms, passionate overriding solos and hand-clapping beats at first shocked conservatives in the 1920s. But gospel pioneers such as Chicago composer and pianist Thomas Dorsey became very popular as the music took hold in many black churches. Over time,gospel powerfully influenced mainstream music too, through the likes of Aretha Franklin and Al Green and the 1969 success of "Oh Happy Day" by the Edwin Hawkins Singers. More recently, it has absorbed rock and rap.
To preserve all of that, Douroux sought at various times an Inglewood nightclub, a city-owned theater in Los Angeles' Leimert Park and the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard. The facility would have a concert hall, classrooms for singing lessons, a library of sheet music and deep archives of recordings.
But she acknowledges her business inexperience may have hampered matters as real estate prices kept rising. No big-bucks patron pledged what Douroux now estimates might need to be $12 million. And, some city officials were leery of the religious overtones and her group's ability to run a center.
Rodena Preston, national minister of music of the Gospel Music Workshop of America, which is headquartered in Detroit, said she admires Douroux's persistence. "Probably the average person would have given up by now," said Preston, a Los Angeles-area resident and sister of the late Beatles protege and keyboardist, Billy Preston.
Finally, two years ago, some good news came from Westwood.
About $38,000 in grants, mainly from UCLA's Center for Community Partnerships, funded a project called Gospel Archiving in Los Angeles. It linked the school's ethnomusicology archive and Douroux's foundation.
Researchers videotaped Douroux's workshops and concerts, and UCLA archivists last year digitized about 100 hours' worth for public view. (Her foundation is preparing for classes and concerts Wednesday through Saturday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near LAX and at Greater New Bethel.)
Douroux's collection of about 400 LPs and cassettes, including many rarities donated to her foundation, had gathered dust in church closets and her garage. Douroux lent them to UCLA, where some are being digitized for on-campus use.
"The material is tremendous. It is so rich, so rich, and now it is there for everyone to have access," DjeDje said.
In part, the UCLA project sought to bring Los Angeles gospel out of the shadows of Chicago and Detroit and to honor Southern California artists such as the Rev. James Cleveland, who died in 1991, and fellow Grammy winner Andrae Crouch, senior pastor of New Christ Memorial Church in Pacoima.
Douroux is pleased the university has the collection, but she still holds out hope for her museum. She calls the efforts to found Gospel House a "test of commitment, because once you have a vision, it's always in your heart."
The hall at the Dallas Convention Center is blander than bland, with rows of folding chairs beneath fluorescent lights.
After the 1974 death of Douroux's father, a painful schism at Mount Moriah caused the Pleasant family to leave the church. Her brother, also named Earl A. Pleasant, became pastor at Greater New Bethel, where she later took over the music.
Douroux got a boost outside black churches in the early 1980s when Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker recorded her "We're Blessed" and "If It Had Not Been for the Lord on My Side." Because her husband earned a good living, she soon quit her school job to pursue music further.
Douroux, who looks a decade younger than her age despite a touch of gray atop her shoulder-length hair, composes mainly away from the piano, often hooking onto an idea while driving or doing chores in her suburban ranch-style home in Agoura. "You Got to Move" was inspired by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It refers to divinely ordered storms and quakes, but Douroux also had in mind how California brush fires can destroy one house but skip another.
"It's things you can't explain that make us understand the reality of a higher source, a higher being," Douroux said in her tiny church office. "It's the mystery of how God works."
In 1983, Douroux formed her foundation. Its motto: "Classical music has Carnegie Hall, country music has the Grand Ole Opry. Gospel music needs a museum and theater: the Gospel House."
Such a museum, she believes, would showcase the sound that marries blues and jazz with traditional hymns and spirituals as it speaks to God and celebrates him.
Its improvisational forms, passionate overriding solos and hand-clapping beats at first shocked conservatives in the 1920s. But gospel pioneers such as Chicago composer and pianist Thomas Dorsey became very popular as the music took hold in many black churches. Over time,gospel powerfully influenced mainstream music too, through the likes of Aretha Franklin and Al Green and the 1969 success of "Oh Happy Day" by the Edwin Hawkins Singers. More recently, it has absorbed rock and rap.
To preserve all of that, Douroux sought at various times an Inglewood nightclub, a city-owned theater in Los Angeles' Leimert Park and the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard. The facility would have a concert hall, classrooms for singing lessons, a library of sheet music and deep archives of recordings.
But she acknowledges her business inexperience may have hampered matters as real estate prices kept rising. No big-bucks patron pledged what Douroux now estimates might need to be $12 million. And, some city officials were leery of the religious overtones and her group's ability to run a center.
Rodena Preston, national minister of music of the Gospel Music Workshop of America, which is headquartered in Detroit, said she admires Douroux's persistence. "Probably the average person would have given up by now," said Preston, a Los Angeles-area resident and sister of the late Beatles protege and keyboardist, Billy Preston.
Finally, two years ago, some good news came from Westwood.
About $38,000 in grants, mainly from UCLA's Center for Community Partnerships, funded a project called Gospel Archiving in Los Angeles. It linked the school's ethnomusicology archive and Douroux's foundation.
Researchers videotaped Douroux's workshops and concerts, and UCLA archivists last year digitized about 100 hours' worth for public view. (Her foundation is preparing for classes and concerts Wednesday through Saturday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near LAX and at Greater New Bethel.)
Douroux's collection of about 400 LPs and cassettes, including many rarities donated to her foundation, had gathered dust in church closets and her garage. Douroux lent them to UCLA, where some are being digitized for on-campus use.
"The material is tremendous. It is so rich, so rich, and now it is there for everyone to have access," DjeDje said.
In part, the UCLA project sought to bring Los Angeles gospel out of the shadows of Chicago and Detroit and to honor Southern California artists such as the Rev. James Cleveland, who died in 1991, and fellow Grammy winner Andrae Crouch, senior pastor of New Christ Memorial Church in Pacoima.
Douroux is pleased the university has the collection, but she still holds out hope for her museum. She calls the efforts to found Gospel House a "test of commitment, because once you have a vision, it's always in your heart."
The hall at the Dallas Convention Center is blander than bland, with rows of folding chairs beneath fluorescent lights.
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