LOS ANGELES (Hidden Beach Recordings) - eBe Winans wasn't quite a year old when Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. gave his now-famous "I Have A Dream" speech during the March on Washington in 1963. As an infant, he missed the hoopla over the powerful words.
And even though the speech is replayed every year around this time to celebrate the slain civil rights leader's legacy, famed gospel singer Winans, formerly of Detroit, had never heard it in its entirety.
It wasn't until five years ago, when the singer was at home watching a cable news special commemorating King's speech, that the words connected with Winans, who is No. 7 in the widely known Detroit-bred Winans gospel family.
The powerful words hit him like a brick, he says. Winans, born Benjamin Winans, immediately called a friend and told him to fax him the whole speech. Reading the speech wiped him out. He was inspired to go to the piano room of his Nashville-area home and write the up-tempo ballad that his new record label, Stillwaters, hopes will become the perennial MLK song.
"'I Have a Dream'," the song, is just an extension to this generation that may not have taken the time to read the whole speech," Winans says, taking a break from the Stellar Award gospel festivities in Houston. "To let them know that his dream lives on and to bring it back to the forefront, just being a part of this historical day is beyond my own dreams."
His album, called "Dream," won't be released on Feb. 22, but already folks like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, former President Bill Clinton and Berry Gordy, all friends of Winans, have heard the song. The record label, an inspirational division of Hidden Beach Recordings, is preparing for a yearlong campaign to increase the song's presence that will coincide with next year's 20th anniversary of the King holiday. The lyrics of the single are the words of the speech set to music and include snippets of King delivering the speech. The song is powerful. Winans' signature husky baritone vocals are poured over an upbeat slow song, putting to music the words that schoolchildren now study every year. "The King estate wanted to make sure the message of Dr. King is spread to a new audience," says Roger Patton, general manager of Hidden Beach Recordings.
Patton, who oversees the label's business affairs, said it took about a year and a half to get the license cleared and signed off on by the family. Winans' close relationship with the King family and a friendship with Hidden Beach's Chief Executive Officer Steve McKeever and King's son Dexter King helped to seal the deal. A representative of the King estate could not be reached for comment.
"Understandably when you're the custodians of arguably the most important speech ever given, they are sensitive about any licenses requests," Patton said. "People have licensed small portions of the speech for different uses, but they've never given 100 percent of the copyright for a use like this."
To read the text of King's "I Have a Dream" speech, go to:
www.npr.org/news/specials/march40th/speeches.htm
