Gospel music took centre stage during the live broadcast of the 50th Annual GRAMMY® Awards. The Gospel medley raise the roof on the Staples Center and brought the capacity crowd to its feet.

Introduced by Ludacris, MusicCares® Person of the Year Aretha Franklin and BeBe Winans opened with “Never Gonna Break My Faith”, a song that Franklin originally performed with Mary J. Blige. The song tied with “Blessed & Highly Favored” for Best Gospel Performance earlier in the day. The numerous horns of The Madison Bumble Bees performed the solo for the song.

Triple GRAMMY® winner The Clark Sisters and Trin-i-tee 5:7 then took that stage and performed “You Brought the Sunshine”. Israel & New Breed followed with “With Long Life”. The grand finale featured all artists performing “Old Landmark” (a.k.a. “Let Us All Go Back” ).

Other winners with Gospel ties who received GRAMMY&reg Awards included Johnny Cash who won Best Short Form Music Video for “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”. Juan Luis Guerra whose album La Llave De Mi Corazón won for Best Tropical Latin Album. Alison Krauss received a GRAMMYS® for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals for her duet with Led Zeppelin lead vocalist Robert Plant on “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)”.

Vince Gill, with wife Amy Grant looking on, took home the Best Country Album GRAMMY® for These Days and provided one of the most memorable quotes of the night after receiving his award from Ringo Starr, “I just got an award given to me by a Beatle. Have you had that happen yet, Kanye? ... Just kidding.” This followed a comment by Pre-telecast Awards host Patti Austin who quipped, “I’m so glad Kanye (West) won everything because you know how cranky he gets when he loses.”

Miley Cyrus, who also appeared on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” last night, presented an award together with Cyndi Lauper. Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli performed “The Prayer” in tribute to Luciano Pavarotti and others in the music industry who passed away during the past year.

Not only were CCM artists featured on the GRAMMYS®, Lifehouse performed a medley of “Hanging By A Moment” and “First Time” at the NFL Pro Bowl’s half-time show in Hawaii.

YMZ has the list of Gospel category winners here and the complete list of Gospel category nominees here.