By Adelle M. Banks

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON

BeBe Winans, the seventh son of the famous gospel singing Winans family, owes much of his fame to 1980s televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

Before they became mired in sex and money scandals, the Bakkers introduced Mr. Winans and his sister, CeCe Winans, to the millions of people watching their “PTL (Praise the Lord) Club” show on TV.  That also paved the way for other black gospel artists such as Yolanda Adams and Donnie McClurkin to reach a broad audience.

“The PTL Network allowed us to be introduced to a whole new audience, a white Christian audience,” Mr. Winans said. “And then when we started recording, we broke down doors in the white Christian marketplace where they weren’t playing any black artists, Christian artists on those radio stations.”

Mr. Winans was interviewed in Washington, where a musical he co-wrote about his life story will begin in July at the Arena Stage.

“Born for This: The BeBe Winans Story” attempts to break Mr. Winans out of any particular box. One of those boxes is the notion that he and his sister (born Benjamin and Priscilla) are joined at the hip.

“People assume that we don’t have separate lives, even though we’ve done as many years as solo projects,” he said.

The musical debuted last month in Atlanta.

When Mr. Winans first shared his project with director Charles Randolph-Wright, also the director of “Motown The Musical,” the six-time Grammy winner known for rhythm and blues as well as gospel had a much wider plan for the theater stage.

“Originally, what he had been working on was a project about the entire Winans family, which would take at least two weeks to do if you went every night for four hours,” said Mr. Randolph-Wright.

As co-writer of the production, Mr. Randolph-Wright focused on a “tiny section” about the appearances of then 15-year-old CeCe and 17-year-old BeBe on the Bakkers’ show in Pineville, N.C. The actors who play the roles of CeCe and BeBe Winans are actual brother-and-sister members of the Winans family — Deborah Joy Winans, their niece, an actress who auditioned for Mr. Randolph-Wright’s “Motown” production, and Juan Winans, their nephew, a Grammy nominated-singer making his acting debut.

Much of the play focuses on family — how Mr. Winans deals with his sister getting the audition at PTL, and not him; how he and his brothers adjust when Ms.Winans gets married; and how he copes with the death of his closest brother, Ronald.

It also focuses on the intersection of fame and faith — for the Winans duo, their young friend Whitney Houston and the eventually scandal-plagued Bakkers.

Although it includes more than two dozen new songs written by Mr. Winans, the production features some of the songs that made the duo famous, including a version of “Up Where We Belong,” which they sang on the Bakkers’ show.

“That album sold a million copies for the PTL Club,” said Bil Carpenter, author of “Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia.” “You had to give a donation and they sent you the album.”

But in real life and on stage, the Bakkers’ introduction of the Winans siblings to their TV audience gave the African-American performers a platform that prompted displeasure from white staffers on the show and racist threats by critics.

“They took care of us,” Mr. Winans said of the Bakkers, who he said were like a second set of parents as they appeared on the show, far from their family home in Detroit. “They looked out for us.”

Apparently, it was more than the young siblings knew. After Mr. Randolph-Wright wrote a scene about the threats, Mr. Winans ran it by Mr. Bakker, now 76, when he had dinner with the televangelist in Branson, Mo.

“He said, ‘Oh, yeah, we just kept them from ya’ll. We hid them from y’all. We protected ya’ll. But there was a whole lot of threats’,” Mr. Winans told an audience at an event promoting the musical.

In 2011, Mr. Winans got in touch with Mr. Bakker to invite him to the ceremony when he and Ms. Winans received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Mr. Bakker, who was not available for comment, also attended the “Born for This” opening in Atlanta.

The production is not billed as a “jukebox musical” because it features songs beyond the ones the duo performed. Nor is it a religious revival. Like the rest of his music, Mr. Winans hopes it will defy categories — just as his career has — and be an inspirational production that some think could make it to Broadway.

“It was hard for them, the industry, to put me and my sister in a certain catalog,” he said. “If there is a human being over there, then my music should be played over there. If there are people over here, my music should be played over here.”