GREATS TAMELA AND DAVID MANN AND DR. BOBBY JONES TO BE HONORED AT THE 2023 BMI TRAILBLAZERS OF GOSPEL MUSIC AWARDS

ATLANTA, PRNewswire -- BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) will honor Gospel superstars Tamela and David Mann and Dr. Bobby Jones at its 22nd Annual Trailblazers of Gospel Music Awards to be held at Flourish Atlanta on March 30th. The inspirational ceremony will recognize the impact that the three legendary entertainers have made on the genre and beyond and pay tribute to the songwriters and publishers behind the best in Gospel music. The private event will be hosted by BMI President & CEO Mike O’Neill and BMI Vice President, Creative, Atlanta, Catherine Brewton.

“BMI is thrilled to be back in Atlanta celebrating the best in Gospel music,” said Brewton. “We’re extremely proud to honor powerhouse couple Tamela and David Mann for their incredible contributions to the Gospel community, the enduring legacy of Dr. Bobby Jones and the songwriters and publishers behind the top Gospel songs of the previous year. Through song and praise, they deliver inspirational messages of hope, faith and goodwill to music lovers around the world. We feel truly blessed to bring these trailblazers together in fellowship and celebrate their creative works.”

Throughout the ceremony, BMI will also recognize the songwriters, producers and music publishers of the past year’s 25 most-performed Gospel songs in the United States.

The BMI Gospel Song, Songwriter and Publisher of the Year will also be named during the event.

Together, Tamela and David Mann have become staples in the Gospel community and have flourished across radio, television, film and stages around the world. The iconic couple began their professional music careers in the ‘90s after joining the Gospel group Kirk Franklin and the Family and toured the globe. They went on to develop successful solo careers and joint ventures as a couple in music and beyond, creating Tillymann Entertainment in 2005, a home for all of their many projects in entertainment. In 2018, David and Tamela released Us Against the World, their first collaborative album as a duo. The companion book of that album won an NAACP Image® Award for Outstanding Literary Work, and the album’s singles have topped the charts, including the Urban AC track “Ups & Downs.” Most recently, The Manns embarked on the acclaimed “Overcomer Family Tour,” a mixture of music and comedy, featuring their son David Jr, and their daughters La’Tia and Tiffany Mann.

As a solo artist, Tamela has released six studio albums and has received a GRAMMY Award, BET Award, Billboard Music Award and multiple NAACP Image, Stellar Gospel Music and GMA Dove Awards. She was also the first Gospel lead artist in Billboard Gospel radio chart history to score three consecutive No.1 singles from her album Best Days. Beyond music, The Manns have appeared in numerous Tyler Perry plays, films and television shows, including I Can Do Bad All By Myself, Meet the Browns and Madea Goes to Jail, among others, and the pair also starred in their own sitcom, Mann & Wife, and the docuseries, It’s a Mann’s World.

In addition, the esteemed singer, TV host and radio broadcaster Dr. Bobby Jones will be celebrated, honoring his illustrious career spanning more than 40 years. For more than 35 years, he was the host of Bobby Jones Gospel on BET, which was the highest rated show on the network and longest running original cable show in history. Jones is credited for giving Yolanda Adams, Kirk Franklin, Mary Mary and many others their first national exposure on television.

An established Gospel singer and songwriter, Jones has received a GRAMMY Award for Best Soul Gospel Performance by a Duo or Group in 1984 for “I’m So Glad I’m Standing Here Today” with Barbara Mandrell. He has also received a Dove Award, three Stellar Awards and a presidential commendation from President George W. Bush, among several other awards and accolades. He currently serves as a UNICEF Ambassador and was inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame (BMEWOF) in February 2023.

Celebrating over 80 years of service to songwriters, composers, music publishers and businesses, Broadcast Music, Inc.® (BMI®) is a global leader in music rights management, serving as an advocate for the value of music. BMI represents the public performance rights in over 20.6 million musical works created and owned by more than 1.3 million songwriters, composers, and music publishers. The Company negotiates music license agreements and distributes the fees it generates as royalties to its affiliated writers and publishers when their songs are performed in public. In 1939, BMI created a groundbreaking open-door policy becoming the only performing rights organization to welcome and represent the creators of blues, jazz, country, and American roots music. Today, the musical compositions in BMI’s repertoire, from chart toppers to perennial favorites, span all genres of music and are consistently among the most-performed hits of the year. For additional information and the latest BMI news, visit bmi.com, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @BMI or stay connected through Broadcast Music, Inc.’s Facebook page. Sign up for BMI’s The Weekly™ and receive our e-newsletter every week to stay up to date on all things music.

For more information on the BMI Trailblazers of Gospel Music Awards, visit www.bmi.com/ genres/gospel and use hashtag #BMIGospel on social.

CHICAGO – When one is a true and genuine king of comedy, it doesn’t ever have to be glaringly declared or announced. These singular talents tend just quietly assume their thrones leveraging hard work, raw skill and dues paid, and rule the scene without all of the noise and fanfare.

One real king of comedy in our midst, blazing a path to success that is uniquely all his own is actor, comedian and renowned impressionist “Reggie Reg.” Although his ascent to the heights of legend has been a relatively calm and measured one, those who are most knowledgeable about him know that the last laugh will be all his.

Granted, there are no overnight successes in show business, but Reggie Reg is one person who has been consistently yet selectively working the comedy and acting circuits large and small for many years now, charting a respected name for himself across the entertainment world. Iconic greats such as television talk-show legend David Letterman sing his praises, as he has twice appeared on Letterman’s top-rated former show, “Late Night.” Reg additionally has appeared in films, most notably the critically acclaimed biopic Remember the Titans, and on the small stage in theatre productions that have cast him alongside celebrated actors Billy Dee Williams, Leon and other luminary thespians. Born in Chicago but reared in Brookhaven, Mississippi, Reg began his career progression at the tender age of six when he won a local talent show impersonating the late comic impresario Flip Wilson. Further developing and honing his act from that point, he went on to create unforgettable impressions of characters he saw on some of the popular television sitcoms of the time, such as “Sanford & Son,” “Starsky & Hutch” and numerous others. The gifted actor and comic though he certainly was, it was his impressions that quickly emerged to become his bread and butter, mesmerizing audiences from coast to coast.

Today, he is most widely revered for his expansive repertoire of over 60 depictions of characters that would be the hardest for most to faithfully mimic. Namely, Academy Award-winning actors Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Al Pacino, Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, former California Governor and seven-time Mr. Olympia Arnold Schwarzenegger, fellow comics Chris Rock, Chris Tucker and the late Bernie Mack, several a-list broadcast media personalities and others too numerous to list.

Since first bringing the house down on Letterman, Reg has scored unforgettable guest appearances on BET’s “Comic View” and HBO’s “The Bad Boys of Comedy,” plus he’s become a virtual household name on the comedic circuits in Chicago, throughout the Midwest and across the United States. He has performed at such career-important comedic venues as Chris Tucker’s Comedy Café, the Uptown Comedy Corner and Punch Line Comedy Club in Atlanta, as well as Los Angeles’ Comedy Union, The Laugh Factory and The Improv.

Nonetheless, as the late John Witherspoon used to say, “You can’t stop there; you’ve got to keep going.” Currently, Reggie Reg, a self-described “urban cowboy” is keeping himself as busy as ever. He’s staying fully engaged in perfecting his craft, including working on developing a series of film shorts, studying and creating film scene reenactments, recording monologues and audio books and vetting more stand-up comedy and acting opportunities that continue to come his way nationwide.

“Reggie Reg” (Muhammad) is one of the nation’s foremost and most revered African American impressionists, and acting and comedic stage talents. He is currently available for large-scale special guest appearances, corporate and business functions, voiceover opportunities and is reviewing scripts, sponsorship and endorsement proposals for calendar year 2023-24. For more information on Reggie Reg, please visit his website, and be sure to connect with him on his Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok pages.