My friend Dean loves music as much as I do. He's not an ecclesiastical Luddite, though he will readily profess his fondness for the kind of church music he grew grew up with and on which he cut many of his theological "teeth." He passed this terrific resource on to me in a recent e-mail. It begged to be posted. BTW, he's also very computer savvy, so the links he's listed may require downloading software to facilitate internet streaming.... but he's thoughfully posted the simple instructions.

My favorite worship music will always be the classics of Fanny Crosby, John Newton, Martin Luther, C. Wesley; J. Fillmore, R.Carter, C. Miles, W. Thompson  and others of that genre. I miss them all the more because I haven't been able to partake for years.  I consider these to be the most worshipful and meaningful words set to music. The other thing is that this group of writers uncommonly have back-stories that are themselves great testimonies, Fanny Crosby for example was blind from infancy (six weeks).  Sometimes the testimony even has a front story:

When the world-re­nowned lay preach­er, Dwight Ly­man Moody, lay on his death bed in his North­field, Mass­a­chu­setts, home, Will Thomp­son made a spe­cial vi­sit to in­quire as to his con­di­tion. The at­tend­ing phy­si­cian re­fused to ad­mit him to the sick­room, and Moody heard them talk­ing just out­side the bed­room door. Re­cog­niz­ing Thomp­son’s voice, he called for him to come to his bed­side. Tak­ing the Ohio po­et-com­pos­er by the hand, the dy­ing evan­gel­ist said, “Will, I would ra­ther have writ­ten “Soft­ly and Ten­der­ly Je­sus is Call­ing” than an­y­thing I have been able to do in my whole life.”