Tony Cummings charts the five-decade history of Christian music pioneer DAVE POPE

The slick pop of 'Sail Away' caught the ears of Buzz readers, if not the mainstream public. It even got a US release on Myrrh Records under the title 'It Only Goes To Show'. "When 'Sail Away' was issued I had a number of offers," said Dave. "People said 'we want to manage you' and I said 'I don't want to do the music thing full time. I'm happy for that to serve what I'm doing. My heart is with young people. Increasingly many of them are losing their way and I want to communicate faith and I don't want to spend all my time travelling round with a band, rehearsing, doing sound checks, doing concerts, going back and waiting for the weekend for the next round of musical things. I'll do it but I want to do it alongside the other opportunities.' At that stage record companies didn't get wildly excited because it meant they weren't going to see black plastic shifting off the shelves at a rate of knots. And management weren't going to make a lot of money by my going to Chaddesley Corbett Secondary High School for a day and talking to the 6th Form. Bill Latham (Cliff's Christian concert manager), a very good friend, did offer to help and we did look at a management strategy. I was also doing quite a bit of TV stuff at that time with Tyne Tees. But again, with all the rehearsals and travelling up every week. . . They wanted me to do a children's programme. I thought I've got to be careful here. Although it's a great opportunity, television does lock you into a particular area and I didn't want to be just a children's communicator. So I turned the volume down on that as well. In the end people got a bit weary of making offers and I just trundled on doing what I've always loved doing and I guess that's the story."

In the late '70s, Dave was invited to get involved in an event, formed by Buzz magazine and British Youth For Christ, which was quickly to become the biggest attended Christian event in the UK and the showcase for the emergent modern worship music. Singer/songwriter Graham Kendrick was the key figure in the movement. However, Dave Pope was to get involved in the memorable worship sessions at Spring Harvest's Big Top. "I was invited to get involved with developing an event that would bring Christians together from all over the country, namely Spring Harvest. And I guess because of my musical associations I was invited to get involved in the worship. It happened one night in Prestatyn when Graham Kendrick developed laryngitis and they said, 'Dave, would you step in?' I'm a Methodist so worship for me, remember mid-'70s, was the hymn, prayer, hymn, reading, hymn sandwich. And someone said, 'You've got 40 minutes to lead worship.'

"I'd watched Graham and enjoyed him and been involved in being led in worship by Graham but I thought how can you follow a guy like that? You can't. Out of that experience I began to realise that there's a place for performance but there was also a place to use music to enhance people coming into the presence of God and appreciating who he is. Graham was the great pioneer. He broke the mould of worship, he took some of the flak, but he broke the ice. He began to help people to understand that art can lead you into a deeper experience of God. We were happy to hang on to his coat tails and do whatever we could. But doing whatever I could helped me to realise that there was a whole worship opportunity in ministry alongside the evangelistic stuff that I was doing. Using the music that I loved, some of the old songs (I still say the Methodist hymn book is the best compilation of its genre, of its time) and working with John, who also had a real appreciation and wrote sympathetically in terms of the worship thing, we decided to go into the studio and produce an album. I was amazed at the success of it."

'Thank Offering' was released on the emergent Chapel Lane Records, run by Rob Andrews, and quickly became the best selling Christian album in the UK. It's blend of tender devotional balladry, classy keyboard lines and largely John Daniels originals (plus a couple of covers of Graham Kendrick and David Meece) found a receptive audience with the Spring Harvest throng. The following year, Kingsway Music released Pope's and Daniels' 'Love Offering' album and that too was a major sales success. Dave was by now an omnipresent worship leader at Spring Harvest.

With Bible teacher Ian Coffey, in 1980 Dave formed an outreach and arts charity The Saltmine Trust. Dave explained, "I really wanted to try and encourage other young people to take the Gospel out to people, to step out in faith and do something similar to what I'd done. But whereas I didn't have people to lead me by the hand as it were, I wanted to invest in young musicians and young artists but really make sure they weren't just musicians but they really took on the responsibility of communicating faith. So Saltmine unashamedly was a mission organisation set up deliberately. It responded to invitations to work with local churches in church-based missions sometimes for a weekend, sometimes for a week. I deliberately introduced other so-called evangelists - people with good news and a gift to communicate good news. But at the same time we put together teams of musicians who wanted, maybe after college, to give a year, two years. We looked for people who had a certain amount of musical ability so the Saltmine Band then became a band in their own right but were also able to back some of the stuff that I was doing."

Then in June 1982 a major tragedy overtook the singing evangelist. He recounted, 'I'd been invited down to Moreland's Bible College to speak and lead worship at their valedictory weekend when they were saying goodbye to students. I was travelling back on a Sunday evening in June, 1982 and I was within two miles of my home, travelling up a dual carriageway, doing the right speed, in the right position on the road and suddenly I was overtaken by a large van. It was about half past 11 at night. Two families had been in a local social club and they had positioned themselves on the middle part of the dual carriageway and for some inexplicable reason decided to make a dash for it. The husbands had gone on ahead and it was two mothers with two pushchairs. The first sight I had of them was as I was being overtaken by the van. They had obviously jumped across in front of the white van and the first I saw, one of them was on my bonnet and one was under the car. Thankfully the children were pushed clear but both ladies died in that accident.

"I can't even begin to describe the immediate reaction. It was in my hometown and I'd just finished a mission there called the Filling Station. We'd seen a lot of people come to faith - a lot of the leadership we have now in the area, actually, came out of that mission. Although I'd spent a lot of time singing songs like when you're up against a struggle that shatters all your dreams, your hopes are cruelly crushed by Satan's schemes, praise the Lord. And I couldn't. 'Cos I was actually quite angry. And also there were the big questions: Why? Those questions became deeper when I couldn't prove what had happened. The witnesses, for reasons I now understand, weren't prepared to witness the accident and the white van driver didn't stop. So I was ultimately charged with driving without due care and attention. I remember the official saying this is the very lowest thing. I said that isn't the point. The point I'm trying to make is an accident was an accident and I really struggle with the fact I'm being charged with something that was outside of my domain. But maybe God taught me something in all of that and I think, as someone rightly said, when you hit rock bottom, you hit the rock. It did take a long time for my faith to kick in. I couldn't sing for awhile and I couldn't praise for awhile. The number of times I'd sung 'when you're feeling tired and in difficult times, praise the Lord'. And I'm thinking hey, I'd better start listening to what I've been saying to other people. Ultimately I did prove that even when sometimes we praise God with a whisper or when we praise God with faltering words or when we praise God with mystery around, God does meet with you in the anxiety and the mystery. And I'd say that and I do say it now when I talk to people about praise and worship, expensive praise is when you don't really praise and you can't understand why but you say Lord, I don't understand this but you are the greatest, even with a whisper, it really touches Heaven."

The appalling accident made things very difficult for Dave in his Dudley hometown. "I was fined 60 pounds or something. And the thing that really hurt me, I was told because of the legal process not to make contact with the families. I wanted to do that but I couldn't. The headline in the Express and Star was Death Car Preacher. That was tough but it also proved to me that people really did understand. If I'd been drinking, if I'd been speeding, if the car was faulty - but none of those things, of course. What happened was I would get home at night and find baskets of fruit on the doorstep and letters and cards. People were amazing. I never had any belligerency in the high street. By that time the association with Cliff was also trumpeted in all the newspapers so people knew who I was and it would have been easy for them to vent their anger but reading between the lines I think people understood.'

In 1983 at Milton Keynes' Pace Studios the album 'Living Sacrifice: Songs Of Living Faith' was released with the rather unwieldy artist credits Saltmine Band, Dave Pope, Chris Eaton And Friends. It was produced by Chris Eaton - who had gigged regularly with Dave while a teenager - and featured a variety of worship songs from the UK (Marilyn Baker's "Jesus You Are Changing Me" and Keith Routledge's "The Truth, The Life, The Way") and the US (Amy Grant's "Mountain Top" and Laurie Klein's "I Love You Lord"). Dave told Buzz magazine at the time of its release, "It's been done with a very small budget compared with my previous albums but the end result is one I am excited about. It's important on a worship album to get what I call a 'Spirit-filled groove'."

One of the best selling Christian albums of 1984 was the live worship set recorded at Spring Harvest 1984, 'The Servant King'. Dave Pope made an appearance on the album and in fact most of the backing musicians at Spring Harvest that year (Geoff Baker, keyboards; Dave Butler, bass; Mark Simmons, guitar; Peach Brookes, guitar and John Brett, synths, sax) were The Saltmine Band.

Dave Pope 1985

In 1985, Dave Pope was particularly busy. He toured extensively with The Saltmine Band and recorded an album with the outfit, 'Royal Praise' released on the Word subsidiary DaySpring Records. Rather a curate's egg of an album, among its tracks were Dave trying to go funky with covers of Leon Patillo songs and Saltmine Band members Dave Butler and Mark Simmons offering their take on Kendrick's "The Servant King". Dave and the band were now a fixture at Spring Harvest and appeared on the event's 1985 live worship album 'Lights To The World'. Dave also ministered at the Mission To London organised by Argentinean evangelist Luis Palau, and together with Bryn Haworth, Graham Kendrick and The Saltmine Band appeared on the album 'Live Praise From Q.P.R.'.

But it was Dave's solo album 'Taste And See' produced by keyboard maestro Chris Eaton which was possibly his best recorded work since 'Sail Away'. Recorded at Chapel Lane Studios it featured several Chris Eaton songs as well as covers of US acts like Michael Card and Gary Chapman. Dave particularly remembered the recording of Chapman's "It's Not A Song". He laughed, "There's one really high note in it and when we came to do it live I have to say it was easier to do it in the studio and record it than it was to do it live. But we did try it once or twice. A terrific song. It was brought to me by someone who said your voice will go great on this. Naturally I would tend to gravitate towards very ballady, croony stuff. That song was definitely not in that vein."

Dave spoke affectionately about Chris Eaton, who of course went on to write hits for Cliff Richard and Amy Grant, "The guy is so talented and his talent was bound to break through. I suppose you could say that I discovered him though that sounds like I'm blowing my own trumpet. I think more artists should [work with young, untested musicians], because it actually keeps you fresh, it keeps you in touch with what is currently happening. One of the things I've always concentrated on is trying to be a springboard for other people. There's a style of leadership that wants to hold on to leadership and continue to build the empire. I don't. I really genuinely don't. For me, the kicks I get now are not being invited to the Albert Hall to sing with the All Souls Orchestra - lovely as that is. The kick for me is seeing people that I've worked with doing the Albert Hall in their own right. That for me is the number one. I love to sit at home and drink my cocoa and get happy when somebody else is doing whatever they're doing."

By the late '80s worship music had become big business. In the UK Eastbourne's Kingsway Music were now dominating the Christian marketplace with their albums and songbooks, while in the US Mobile, Alabama's Integrity Music were taking congregational worship at even bigger sales heights with their live albums in their Hosanna! Music series circulating hundreds of new songs to the worldwide Church. In 1991 the two companies made a marketing decision which in retrospect was a dubious one. Integrity took several of their live Hosanna! albums featuring American worship leaders, wiped the original vocals and substituted well known British worship leaders like Graham Kendrick, Noel Richards and Dave Pope to sell in the UK market. Dave Pope's venture into this unfortunate initiative was the 1991 Hosanna! Music album 'Shouts Of Joy'.