James Cleveland was born in December 1932 in Chicago, Illinois. When he was a toddler, his grandmother took him with her to choir practice at Pilgrim Baptist Church, where he invariably found himself bored to tears. Despite his protests, she took him regularly. Sensin he wasn't going to ever escape these tedious sessions, he hatched the idea to try and sing along with the choir, for his own diversion. As he got more confident and certain of the words