artist info

TAKE 6 is the most awarded a cappella group in history, with ten Grammy’s, ten Dove Awards (Gospel Music Awards), Best Jazz Vocal Group honors for seven consecutive years in Downbeat’s prestigious Reader’s and Critic’s Poll, a Soul Train Music Award, BRE (Black Radio Exclusive) Vocal Group of the Year, two NAACP Image Award nominations, induction into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and countless other musical and humanitarian citations.

Showing the global appeal of this phenomenal group, they celebrated their 25th Anniversary last year with a World Tour including stronghold favorite markets Asia, South America, eastern and western Europe and the United States and TAKE 6 opened up new markets with debut tours of Australia and Canada. They receive rave reviews and overwhelming audience reception wherever they go. From New York’s famed Blue Note to the Montreux Jazz Festival, from PBS to ABC-TV specials, they remain the quintessential and pre-eminent a capella group in the world, working harder than ever, and loving every minute of it.

Take 6 has come a long way from their days at Huntsville, Alabama's Oakwood College where McKnight formed the group as The Gentleman's Estate Quartet in 1980. When tenor Mark Kibble heard the group rehearsing in the dorm bathroom, he joined in the harmonies and performed on stage that night. When Mervyn Warren joined shortly afterward, they took the name Alliance. Yet, when they signed to Reprise Records/Warner Bros. in 1987, they found that there was another group with the same name, so they became Take 6. Says McKnight: "Take 6 was all about a democratic process of sitting in a room together and throwing a couple of hundred names at each other and Take 6 was the one that got the most yay votes [laughing.] It pretty much was a play on the Take 5 jazz standard and the fact that there are six of us in the group, so it became Take 6."