For 35 years Dr. Bobby Jones was the face and voice of gospel music for millions of people who tuned into his weekly Bobby Jones Gospel program on Black Entertainment Television (BET). As the longest running host of a TV program (even longer than Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and Don Cornelius’ Soul Train), Dr. Jones and his Nashville Super Choir were Sunday morning staples for a generation of church folks. After a nearly thirty-year recording hiatus, they have come together to record one last live album entitled, Dr. Bobby Jones & The Nashville Super Choir Live: The Legacy Finale (Bender Boys Music Group / Tyscot Records), at Nashville’s Mount Zion Baptist Church. The ten-track set will feature cameos from an array of dynamic vocalists such as Kim Burrell and Tamela Mann as well as longtime Super Choir alumni Everett Drake and Denise Tichenor-Davis, among others.
As a tease to the forthcoming album, the 87-year-old Jones (known as the Ambassador of gospel) and the 30+ member choir have released the first radio single, “We Will Sing.” The uplifting, horn-driven singalong was written by the choir’s longtime music director Derrick Lee (who passed in 2022) with the project’s producer Ay’ron Lewis (Aretha Franklin, James Fortune & FIYA, RiZen, Zacardi Cortez). It fuses the flavors of contemporary and traditional gospel with an inspiring message about eternal rejoicing in heaven. The track is available on all major digital music platforms. It’s been embraced by Apple Music’s editorial team which programmed it on their popular Gospel Worship, New in Christian, Sunday Soul and Take Me to Church playlists.
“I’ve been along the journey with Dr. Jones and the choir for a long time,” says Jovan Bender who joined the choir in 1997 and continues to perform with it. “When Derrick Lee died a couple of years ago, Dr. Jones needed somebody to step up to run the show, so I just took the lead to become the vocal director, and I thought it would be honorable to do a new project…I asked Dr. Jones about it and at first, he said, no. Eventually, he said it would be great to do one more album for his legacy and that’s how it happened. Then, I asked my brother Jimmy [Bender] to help me because he was already producing and decided to come on board as executive producer.”
The new album will tentatively release in 2027, but fans can enjoy the new radio single “We Will Sing” now HERE
ABOUT DR. BOBBY JONES & THE NASHVILLE SUPERCHOIR
Dr. Bobby Jones holds the record as the longest running host on television with 35 years as the host of BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel that aired from 1980-2016. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Tennessee State University and earned a doctorate in education from Vanderbilt University. He later embarked on a successful teaching career in the St. Louis, MO and Nashville, TN public school systems before transitioning into academia as college instructor. He later became a textbook consultant for McGraw-Hill. A lifelong fan of church music, Jones launched the Sunday morning Nashville Gospel program on Nashville’s WSM TV in 1976. In 1977, Jones and his New Life Choir released their debut album, Sooner or Later. They went on to record an armful of albums for Creed Records, Myrrh Records, Light Records, Malaco Records, GospoCentric Records and Tyscot Records. Their “I’m So Glad I’m Standing Here Today” collaboration with country star Barbara Mandrell earned them a Grammy® Award as Best Soul Gospel Vocal Performance by A Duo, Group, Choir or Chorus in 1984. When the newly formed Black Entertainment Television (BET) cable network was formed in 1980, they began airing Jones program which morphed into Bobby Jones Gospel. Over the next four decades, the program was often the network’s highest rated broadcast. It was a showcase for future gospel superstars such as Kirk Franklin and Yolanda Adams as well as mainstream music legends such as Loretta Lynn, Dionne Warwick and Patti LaBelle. Since 2017, BET Awards has named its annual gospel award the Dr. Bobby Jones Best Gospel/Inspirational Award.
ABOUT THE BENDER BOYS MUSIC GROUP
Jimmy and Jovan Bender are biological brothers who formed their Nashville-based recording label in 2025 to bring the world one more album by Dr. Bobby Jones and the Nashville Super Choir. A bass player, Jimmy began the J. Bender concert promotion firm circa 1997. He formed a recording, concert promotion and production, and booking agency that serves a variety of genres and artists such as soloist Everett Drake, The Marable Twins quartet, The Nashville Soundz Party Band, Da Chozen Brothaz southern gospel quartet, the vocal duo – Nathan & Suzanne Young, and Dr. Bobby Jones and the Nashville Super Choir. The brothers are now pooling their collective resources to make a bigger bang in the gospel music industry.
