{"id":2472,"date":"2021-11-23T13:31:45","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T17:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/?p=2472"},"modified":"2022-01-19T10:58:35","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T14:58:35","slug":"preacher-pap-the-maryland-state-choir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/preacher-pap-the-maryland-state-choir\/","title":{"rendered":"Preacher Pap & the Maryland State Choir"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Preacher Pap and “the exciting” Maryland State Choir released a\u00a0gospel album\u00a0in 1978 with the whimsically quizzical title, \u201cIf God Seems Far From You \u2026 Guess Who Moved<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

University of Maryland Eastern Shore alumni who collect memorabilia\u00a0from — and about — their alma mater\u00a0should avoid judging a vinyl record by its album cover, however.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pap, whose real name is the Rev. Orlando T. Riley Jr., was born in Berlin, Md. in 1948 and as a young man was known on the Delmarva Peninsula for his moving music ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late ’70s, Bishop Willie G. Dukes sought Riley’s opinion of a group of singers from Calvary Pentecostal Church in Bishopville, Md.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a little country choir,\u201d\u00a0the bishop\u00a0told Riley. \u201cDo you think you can do anything with them?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riley recognized immediately the choir had big-time talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat was so special about those young people,\u201d he said, \u201cis not only could they sing \u2026 but they were so anointed. Everywhere they went \u2026 people were blessed by their singing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riley made arrangements with a small record company in Newark, N.J. to\u00a0cut a\u00a0stereo album of\u00a010 songs, nine of which he wrote,\u00a0that\u00a0could\u00a0be sold during a\u00a0concert tour of mid-Atlantic states.\u00a0(His stage name, unfortunately,\u00a0is\u00a0misspelled even though a photo of an airplane\u00a0on the cover has it right.<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe sold a lot of them,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWe had to re-order a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dukes presided over churches in three states — Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. Pap suggested naming the group the \u201cMaryland State choir\u201d so audiences would know where the singers were from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name, it turns out, had nothing to do with the institution of higher education in Princess Anne that from 1947 until 1970 was known as \u201cMaryland State College.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s possible some of the (choir) members might have been students,\u201d Riley said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t know that. I just appreciated their talent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGuess who moved?\u201d was his debut album, the first of 11\u00a0in his discography. Riley became a pastor at New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in 1990, a congregation of 250 parishioners in Elizabeth, N.J.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has toured under his \u201crecording name.\u201d Preacher Pap and The Gospel Invisibles performed at\u00a0UMES’ Ella Fitzgerald Center for the Performing Arts in February 2009 as part of annual homecoming week festivities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was his first visit to campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Preacher Pap and “the exciting” Maryland State Choir released a\u00a0gospel album\u00a0in 1978 with the whimsically quizzical title, \u201cIf God Seems Far From You \u2026 Guess Who Moved?\u201d University of Maryland Eastern Shore alumni who collect memorabilia\u00a0from — and about — their alma mater\u00a0should avoid judging a vinyl record by its album cover, however.\u00a0\u00a0 Pap, whose…Read more Preacher Pap & the Maryland State Choir<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-2472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2472"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/125\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=2472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}