This wonderful four-disc, 105-track box of postwar Afro-American
gospel releases from the 1940s and 1950s was compiled by record collector and
gospel historian
Opal Louis Nations, and it perfectly captures what was surely a golden age for
black gospel.
Gospel as we now know it emerged in the South in the early '30s, an outgrowth of the right to assemble and the advent of
gospel songwriters like
Thomas A. Dorsey (who had sung previously in the secular arena as
Georgia Tom), who brought the
blues to church, tossed in some
ragtime piano rhythms, and almost single-handedly created the genre to the point that his compositions were simply known as "Dorseys." Then, in the early '40s, performers like
Sister Rosetta Tharpe added a kind of theatricality (not to mention electric guitar) to the mix, and this generous box chronicles the confluence of all this. There is so much to marvel at here, including the opening track,
"Walk Around," by
the Five Soul Stirrers,
Tharpe's jazzy, bluesy
"Didn't It Rain" (complete with her concise electric guitar runs),
the Five Blind Boys of Alabama's beautiful and haunting
"Mother's Song," Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers' intimate
"Pilgrim of Sorrow" (the take included here has some off microphone conversation that only adds to the song's feel of immediacy),
Lou Rawls & the Pilgrim Travelers'
doo wop-inflected (before
doo wop was even a named genre)
"Come Home," and
Sister Marie Knight's uptown
jazz version of
"Trouble in Mind," a song that had long been performed as a secular
blues, albeit with a high degree of spiritual overtones.
Gospel, of course, traveled back to the secular side of the tracks when
soul arose in the 1960s, but the roots of that explosion are here in this delightful collection. ~ Steve Leggett
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