Earnest Pugh Biography | Earnest Pugh

Earnest Pugh (born November 23, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter of gospel music with a five-octave vocal range. Public recognition for the artist commenced with the success of Rain on Us (2009) and I Need Your Glory (2011), and he subsequently attained the title of “Gospel Music’s Leading Man”. Pugh is also the founder of the record label, EPM Music.

After seeking recording contracts from major gospel record labels and being rejected, Pugh decided to launch his own label in 2006. His first album, Earnest Pugh Live: A Worshipper’s Perspective, was released via a distribution agreement with Detroit’s Crystal Rose Records label.

The radio single Wrapped Up, Tied Up, Tangled Up rose to the Top 40 on the now-defunct Radio & Records gospel radio chart and lay the foundation for his career. He followed up the next year with a CD entitled, Seasons Change, that failed to chart.

In 2007, his album, A Worshiper’s Perspective, won Best Gospel Album at the 6th Annual Independent Music Awards.

A chance meeting with Black smoke Worldwide Gospel Records founder Kerry Douglas, who had taken James Fortune & FIYA and Keith Wonder Boy Johnson to the top of the gospel charts, would be pivotal to Pugh’s evolution as a national artist.

“He (Douglas) told me back in 2008 that he could take my single Rain on Us to number one and he did just that in less than eight weeks,” Pugh told the Miami Times.

The dramatic ballad spent two weeks at #1 on Billboard’s Hot Gospel Songs chart in 2009. The CD, Live: Rain on Us, also featured the Top-40 gospel radio hits Perfect Peace and The Great I Am.

In the early summer of 2011, Pugh delivered another CD titled Earnestly Yours. Douglas had Pugh re-record James Fortune’s track, I Need Your Glory. The song shot to the Top Ten in a few weeks and stayed on the Billboard Hot Gospel Songs chart for ten weeks.

The song and the CD earned Pugh extensive media coverage. “Pugh is a pointed and slick singer (and dresser), and for most of this strong album he provides a solid center while his backup choir sings in hushed and reverent tones”, Jon Caramanica wrote in The New York Times.

In January 2012, Pugh announced that his EPM Music label had formed a distribution agreement with Entertainment One Distribution and would soon be signing a variety of high-profile gospel artists to record under his label banner.

Earnest Pugh Age

Earnest Pugh is an American singer-songwriter of gospel music with a five-octave vocal range. Public recognition for the artist commenced with the success of Rain on Us (2009) and I Need Your Glory (2011), and he subsequently attained the title of “Gospel Music’s Leading Man”.He was born on November 23, 1966, Memphis, TN, Pugh is 52 years old as of 2018

Family, Early life

Pugh was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the seventh of nine children. His father, Earnest Pugh Sr., worked at a Firestone plant in Flint, Michigan and commuted to see his family on weekends. His mother, Lillie Pearl Pugh, worked for the government and held a number of part-time jobs. Read also about John P. Kee

She was the first to notice Pugh’s singing ability and encouraged him to sing. “My mother believed in me and what I could accomplish” he once told the Miami Times. “Her death a few years ago hit me hard but I used that pain to inspire my writing on my last two CDs” January 2013

During his late teens, Pugh briefly sang with the Grammy Award-winning gospel choir, O’Landa Draper & The Associates. However, Pugh’s tenure with the ensemble was short.

He enlisted in the Army and remained there for fifteen years. He told The Washington Post that he “frequently was called on to sing at funerals.”

After retiring from the military, Pugh held a number of positions with churches as a worship leader in Texas and Georgia. In 2001, he became a worship leader at Ebenezer AME Church in the Washington, D.C. area.

Net Worth

Gospel psalmist, vocalist, and songwriter Earnest Pugh’s five-octave vocal range and crystal clear delivery have produced him an all-natural for interpreting gospel ballads, and he tackles them with pleasure and conviction.

A Memphis, Tennessee indigenous, Pugh showed huge singing talent even while a kid, and by his teenagers, he was performing with O’Landa Draper like a support vocalist, a tenure that finished when Pugh joined the military support.

Following his release, he continuing to go after his musical goals, as well as dabbled in performing, appearing in a number of stage plays. Ultimately he began showing up on numerous gospel-oriented tv shows on the Wager network and somewhere else.

His first recording, Earnest Pugh Live: A Worshipper’s Perspective, made an appearance in 2006, accompanied by Months Change a 12 months later on in 2007. Live: Rainfall on Us found its way to 2009, having a 4th recording, Earnestly Yours, striking in 2001.

Any occasion album, Xmas with Earnest Pugh, found its way to 2012 – the entire year he relocated to Houston, Tx – accompanied by The W.We.N. (Worship in Nassau) Encounter, which was documented in the Bahamas during Radio One’s Like Luxury cruise, in 2013.

The EP Simply Worship (2014), as well as the compilation Hidden Treasures & Collaborations (2015), became Pugh’s 5th and sixth produces to reach the very best Ten of Billboard’s Best Gospel Albums graph. He has a net worth of $700,000 dollars

Earnest Pugh Wife, Married

Gospel Singer Earnest Pugh On His Divorce: ‘I Had A Very
Skewed View Of What Love Was All About’

Some research shows that couples who are active in their faith are much less likely to divorce, but breakups do
happen, even among devoted Christians. “I Need Your Glory” gospel singer, Earnest Pugh, is opening-up
about his own split.

For 18 years, the gifted vocalist and father of 2 was married, but in 2006, it all came crashing down—something
for which he accepts some blame.

“I was married at 18 years old and divorced 18 years later because I had a very skewed view of what love was
all about,” Pugh explains.

“I thought it was all about providing `things’ opposed to true love and quality time.”

Though still unmarried, the EPM Group/eONe Entertainment artist says “Life has taught me a valuable lesson
now on how to give and receive love on a different level.”

He continues, “With each experience over the years I have gained a love and passion for expressing love to
those who mean the most to me.”

In an effort to spread that love around, Pugh, whose buttery voice spans five octaves, is set to release a
a remake of the classic love song, “You Are So Beautiful.”

He will be performing his updated version of 1975
Top 10 Pop hit written by legendary organist Billy Preston with Bruce Fisher and made popular by Joe Cocker,
in five cities across the U.S.

Pugh’s Valentine’s Day single hits iTunes February 11.

Earnest Pugh Youtube