EnduranceRight On Time
SCCME Records (2012)
By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog
In a music industry that has all but snubbed the time-honored gospel quartet community, Houston’s Endurance has garnered six Stellar Award nominations for its smooth but meaty harmonies, hard-singing lead work, and memorable songs.
Right On Time, the quartet’s latest album, finds the men working squarely in their trademark style. Endurance songwriters, including group member Prathan “Spanky” Williams, borrow liberally from the thematic lexicon of gospel quartet singing to construct the album’s lyric content. For example, the group harmonizes on the hereafter (“Few More Miles”), the conversion experience (“New Way”), and mother (“Thank You Lord for Mama”). The thoroughly southern-fried “Mama,” an ode to the steadfast love of a good mother, is ideal Mother’s Day radio programming. It appeared originally on the group’s 2008 release, I’ve Got a Home.
The album’s top two selections are its most traditional. Opening with plinks from a slightly out of tune upright piano (like the one Nashboro used in the early 1950s), the bouncy “Old Fashion Church,” also from I’ve Got a Home, hankers for the time when believers “had church sunup to sundown.” The drive-tempo handclapper, “That’s What Jesus Did,” features the Williams Brothers’ Andre Tate in a personal declaration of how Jesus pulled him safely from the dangers and snares of life.
Just as on I’ve Got a Home, Endurance includes instrumental versions of two selections on Right On Time. I would have preferred two new songs instead, and would also trade the horn-mimicking synth licks for an honest-to-God brass section. Nevertheless, for that southern-style quartet sound that sticks to your ribs, you can’t go wrong with Endurance.
Three of Five Stars
Picks: “Old Fashion Church,” “That’s What Jesus Did.”
Written by : Bob Marovich
Bob Marovich is a gospel music historian, author, and radio host. Founder of Journal of Gospel Music blog (formally The Black Gospel Blog) and producer of the Gospel Memories Radio Show.
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