Keith Green

Keith Green, an early trailblazer in contemporary Christian music, achieved prominence in the late 1970s by merging a pop-inflected soft rock style with forthright spiritual themes. Born in 1953 in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, he displayed musical aptitude from childhood and secured a recording contract with Decca Records at the age of eleven. Although Decca positioned him as an up-and-coming teen idol, his songwriting prowess distinguished him from typical acts, resulting in his becoming the youngest member of ASCAP in 1965. That initial momentum proved fleeting once more visible teen idols such as Donny Osmond eclipsed him.

Not long after leaving adolescence, Green married fellow musician Melody Steiner in 1973, after which the couple embraced the Christian faith with growing intensity. While serving as staff writers for CBS Records, they began welcoming people in need into their California home, offering a supportive setting for fellow spiritual seekers. What started as this domestic outreach eventually evolved into Last Days Ministries, a nonprofit that remained active for decades. Green reentered the Christian recording scene in 1977 with For Him Who Has Ears to Hear on Sparrow Records. Employing a soft rock approach reminiscent of Elton John or Leo Sayer, he reached both secular and faith-oriented listeners while keeping his lyrics distinctly Christian.

After releasing his second album, No Compromise, in 1978, he departed Sparrow and instituted a policy of providing his music without charge. To realize this vision the Greens mortgaged their home and self-financed So You Want to Go Back to Egypt in 1980. The album was distributed via mail order and at concerts on a pay-what-you-want basis, an approach that anticipated models adopted nearly thirty years later and was intended to broaden the reach of his faith-based message. Following the 1981 compilation The Keith Green Collection, he issued what became his final studio album, Songs for the Shepherd. On July 28, 1982, mere months after its release, Green and two of his children died in a plane crash while conducting an aerial survey of the Last Days Ministries property. Two posthumous collections drawn from earlier recordings appeared soon afterward: The Prodigal Son in 1983 and Jesus Commands Us to Go! in 1984. Numerous additional compilations, anthologies, and tribute albums have surfaced in the ensuing decades. Melody Green continued directing the ministry and, in 1989, published the biography No Compromise about her late husband. Decades after his death, Green’s influence continues to be felt throughout the world of contemporary Christian music.