Ray Repp

Ray Repp is a singer-songwriter credited with introducing folk music into Catholic masses with his 1965 album Mass for Young Americans, an album that formed the earliest stirrings of Contemporary Christian music.(Not all of his music has been squarely religious; "Don't Go In the Street" and "Apple Pie," both from The Time Has Not Come True, featured sometimes humorous, prescient left-leaning social commentary.) Since that early collection, he has recorded 11 collections which have been translated into as many as 28 languages and has won ASCAP's "Award for Special Contributions to the Field of Music" 6 times.His music collection is now available in CD form.They include: "The Best of Ray Repp Vol. 1 & 2 and Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow," all songs written from 1965–1985. He is married to, and lives with, his long-term partner Richard Alther, a writer and painter, in their homes in Southern California and Vermont.Alther has written "The Decade of Blind Dates," about his past relationships as a homosexual divorcee, and his current marriage to Repp. Repp's music has been recorded by those outside the Catholic Church as well.Christian punk outfit Undercover and Christian rocker Phil Keaggy have seen fit to cover Repp's work on their own discs. Repp drew a measure of notoriety from the mainstream journalistic media in 1997 when he sued composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, asserting that Lloyd Webber had plagiarized portions of his "Phantom Song" from his own composition "Till You."Lloyd Webber, however, cross-litigated in counter-accusation that Repp had, in turn, plagiarized portions of "Till You" from "Close Every Door," from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Repp ultimately lost the case.