Doris Mae Akers

Doris Mae Akers was an American gospel songwriter, composer, arranger, singer, pianist, choir director, and publisher born in Brookfield, Missouri, in 1923. She learned piano by ear as a child, wrote her first gospel song at about ten, and as a teenager organized a small jazz group. In 1945 she moved to Los Angeles, where she joined the Sallie Martin Singers as singer and pianist and soon became part of the city's developing African American gospel scene. She later formed the Simmons-Akers Singers with Dorothy Simmons and helped operate the publishing venture Simmons and Akers Music.

In 1957 Akers was invited to develop and direct the large Sky Pilot Choir at the Sky Pilot Revival Center in Los Angeles, a group often described as one of the city's pioneering interracial gospel choirs. Her work crossed racial and denominational boundaries and included composing, arranging, directing, recording, and publishing. Other enduring songs include Lead Me, Guide Me, You Can't Beat God Giving, and Lord, Don't Move the Mountain, the latter associated with her collaboration with Mahalia Jackson.

Akers wrote both words and music for Sweet, Sweet Spirit in 1962 after an intense pre-service prayer time with the Sky Pilot Choir. She continued recording and leading music for decades, later serving as minister of music at Grace Temple Deliverance Center in Minnesota. She died in 1995 and was posthumously inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2011.