Ray Repp is a Roman Catholic singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 credited with introducing folk music

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 into Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 masses

Mass (liturgy)

"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...

 with his 1965 album Mass for Young Americans that formed the earliest stirrings of Contemporary Christian music

Contemporary Christian music

Contemporary Christian music is a genre of modern popular music which is lyrically focused on matters concerned with the Christian faith...

. (Not all of his music was squarely religious; "Don't Go In the Street" and "Apple Pie" 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.

Repp's music has been recorded by those outside the Catholic church as well. Christian punk outfit Undercover

Undercover

Being undercover is disguising one's own identity or using an assumed identity for the purposes of gaining the trust of an individual or organization to learn secret information or to gain the trust of targeted individuals in order to gain information or evidence...

 and Christian rocker Phil Keaggy

Phil Keaggy

Phil Keaggy is an American acoustic and electric guitarist and vocalist who has released more than 50 albums and contributed to many more recordings in both the contemporary Christian music and mainstream markets...

 have seen fit to cover Repp's work on their own discs.

Repp got some mainstream notoriety in 1997 when he sued composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...

, asserting that Lloyd Webber had plagairized portions of his "Phantom Song" from his own composition "Till You". Repp ultimately lost the case.

Selected discography

Data from One Way Jesus Music Website

• 1965, Mass for Young Americans, F.E.L.
• 1966,Allelu!,F.E.L.
• 1967,Come Alive,F.E.L.
• 1968,Sing Praise,F.E.L.
• 1969,The Time Has Not Come True,F.E.L. (recorded 1966)
• 1972,Hear the Cryin' ,Myrrh
• 1974, Give Us Peace,K&R (also released in 1975 on Agape label)
• 1978, Benedicamus - The Song of the Earth,K&R
• 1979, Sunrise, In the Dead of Winter,K&R
• 1981, By Love Are We All Bound,K&R
• 1985, Ever Bless,K&R