music clip of the day
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Category: gospel
2010
Sunday, 8/1/10
The power of conviction?
Look at that smile (1:35).
The Consolers (Sullivan & Iola Pugh [husband and wife])
“The Grace of God,” live (TV broadcast [TV Gospel Time]), early 1960s
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“Waiting For My Child,” live
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“I Feel Good,” live
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lagniappe
In its classic form, gospel was music designed to kill—to slay the congregation in spirit, moving them not just to laughter, tears, and hollers, but to screams and even seizures. The first woman who started shrieking was known, in the parlance of the gospel quartets, as “Sister Flute.” Big churches had volunteers in nurses’ uniforms to tend to the stricken.
Later these forces were unleashed on white teenagers, to memorable effect. Little Richard, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Marvin Gaye, Al Green—two whole generations of soul singers got their start and their sound in church. You know what they can do. And you know the idioms too: You set me free. You set my soul on fire. Have mercy. Help me now. I need you early in the morning/in the midnight hour/in the evening/to hold my hand. Not to mention that rock and roll standby: I feel all right.
But—at the risk of a) sounding like a Christian or b) stating the obvious—in gospel those words make a kind of sense they will never make in secular music. In gospel a grownup can perform them and mean them right down to the ground. The lyrics may not be much in themselves: as [Anthony] Heilbut writes, “the music’s success depended more on its singers than its songs.” But for all the group participation in gospel, for all its expression of communal feeling (and political protest), these songs deal very deeply with loneliness, abandonment, and death. They ask more of God than we can ask of one another. The very idea of “needing” the one you love may predate the gospel explosion, but it is a gospel idea.
—Lorin Stein, “The Gospel According To Gospel,” The Paris Review (blog), 7/2/10
2010
Sunday, 7/25/10
what takes your breath away
It’s not the way she pulls out all the stops—lots of singers do that.
It’s how she pulls back (2:00-2:35, 3:00-3:20, etc.).
Whitney Houston (with mother Cissy Houston nearby), “A Quiet Place,” live (TV broadcast)
2010
Sunday, 7/18/10
Everything I learned, I learned here in the church as a little girl.
—Sharon Jones
Sharon Jones, “Gospel Sunday,” New York (Queens)
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lagniappe
reading table
In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much—how little—is within our power—Emily Dickinson (#1292)
2010
Sunday, 7/11/10
Still another group that played last weekend at FitzGerald’s American Music Festival—these guys performed on Sunday (the 4th), along with Brave Combo and C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band and the Blasters and Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue.
The Victory Travelers, live, Chicago, 2008
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lagniappe
three steps to a better day
1. Click here (Sinner’s Crossroads, Kevin Nutt’s weekly one-hour “gospel extravaganza” on WFMU-FM).
2. Click on the link for the most recent show (7/8/10).
3. Listen.
2010
Sunday, 7/4/10
Happy 4th of July!
The funkiest, countriest quartet. As a church once rocked to guitarist William ‘Pee Wee’ Crawford’s vamps, the late Reuben Willingham quipped, ‘This may not be a Fish Fry, but it sure got soul.’ The Augusta-based Swanees maintained the same background—Charlie Barnwell, Rufus Washington and the good-humored falsetto James ‘Big Red’ Anderson—for over thirty years. Some of James Brown’s grooves were first set down by his friends the Swanees. Veteran leads included Willingham, Johnny Jones (the finest singer in the post Sam Cooke tradition, with a range from baritone to high falsetto, and a more vivid, sanctified persona than his idol Cooke) and Percy Griffin.
—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (6th ed. 2002)
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Swanee Quintet, live
“What Are They Doing In Heaven” (featuring Johnny Jones), TV broadcast
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“Little Talk With Jesus” (featuring Johnny Jones), TV broadcast
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“New Walk” (featuring Reuben Willingham and Johnny Jones), TV broadcast
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“Doctor Jesus” (featuring Percy Griffin and Johnny Jones)
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lagniappe
listening room
Sly Stone, gospel singer
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Happy Birthday, Louis!
Louis Armstrong Birthday Broadcast, WKCR-FM (’til 9:30 a.m., 7/5/10)
2010
Sunday, 6/27/10
Two minutes not enough?
Do what I just did—play it three times.
Five Blind Boys of Alabama (featuring Clarence Fountain), “Too Close to Heaven,” live (TV broadcast), 1960s
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lagniappe
Five Blind Boys of Alabama, “Send It On Down” (1969)/mp3
This is another track from The Widow’s Might, the wonderful DVD—nearly 700 (!) gospel songs in mp3 format (everything played on Sinner’s Crossroads [one of my all-time favorite radio shows] in 2009)—that’s available as a $75 premium from WFMU-FM.
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lagniappe
What I want to do is sing so good that the people who don’t believe in God will have an idea that there is a God . . .
—Clarence Fountain
2010
Sunday, 6/20/10
Decades have passed since the performances featured a couple weeks ago. The voice has lost some of its strength—the heart none.
Inez Andrews (April 3, 1929-)
Live, Arizona (Tucson, Mt. Calvary Baptist Church), 2007
“The Lord Will Make A Way”
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“Mary Don’t You Weep”
lagniappe
listening room
The other night, in the wake of posting Artur Schnabel’s recording of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata, I listened to pianist Andras Schiff’s lecture-recital on this piece, which is wonderful and revelatory and can be heard here.
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punctuating with pizzazz
2010
Sunday, 6/13/10
You can’t lip-sync this stuff.
The Pilgrim Jubilees, live (TV broadcasts), c. early 1960s
“Testify for Jesus”
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“Old Ship Of Zion”
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“Wonderful”
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lagniappe
Thanks . . . for the music selections.
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Of course, we’ve been enjoying your MCOTDs—especially lately the Inez Andrews clips [6/6/10].
2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Fierce, insistent, soaring—this voice, which I first heard over 30 years ago, still gives me chills.
Inez Andrews
With the Andrewettes, “Let the Church Roll On,” live (TV broadcast), 1964
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With Rev. James Cleveland & the Metro Mass Choir, “We Are Soldiers in the Army,” live, 1981
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“A Stranger in the City,” “He Lives In Me,” “Lord, Don’t Move The Mountain,” “Mary Don’t You Weep,” live, Chicago (Apostolic Church of God), 1988
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With the Caravans, “Mary Don’t You Weep” (1958)/mp3
This track comes from The Widow’s Might, a wonderful DVD with nearly 700 gospel songs in mp3 format (everything played on Sinner’s Crossroads in 2009) that’s available as a $75 premium from WFMU-FM.
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lagniappe
The Caravans’ star then was Inez, whom they called the High Priestess. She looks the part. A coffee-colored woman with high Indian cheekbones and an intense, almost drugged stare, she can sing higher natural notes than anyone on the road. Tina [Albertina Walker] said, ‘The rest of us sang awhile, but the folks really wanted to hear Inez whistle.’
—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (6th ed. 2002)
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Determination is important. You’ve got to be determined to live what you sing as well as sing what you sing. God understands the . . . difficulty that we go through for the truth. The Bible says your determination will be rewarded because God sees it when no one else does.
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art beat
The Matisse exhibit at Chicago’s Art Institute (which I returned to yesterday) closes on June 20th, then opens at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on July 18th. I have only one word of advice: Go!
Interior with Goldfish, 1914
music clip of the day 
