The Gospel Music Celebration Pt. 2: Tribute to Bishop G.E. Patterson

Various Artists
The Gospel Music Celebration Pt. 2
Tribute to Bishop G.E. Patterson
TYMO Gospel Music (2011)
http://www.tymogospelmusic.com/

By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog.

“Act like the devil’s in between your hands and clap them,” Bishop Albert Jamison directs the live audience, as he launches into the joyous “Jesus I’ll Never Forget” on the second installment of the musical tribute to the late Bishop Gilbert Earl Patterson.

An all-star lineup of gospel artists gathered in Memphis to pay tribute to the former Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ, whose dedication to singing “in the old time way” was the subject of his own multi-CD set. In retrospect, listening to the second part of this tribute, produced by organ whiz Moses Tyson, Jr. and Edwin Hawkins, is bittersweet, because two of its participants – Rev. Timothy Wright and Bishop Walter Hawkins – have since gone on to join Bishop Patterson in eternal rest. Still, it’s a second line type of bittersweet: celebratory, not cheerless.

As if to set the proper tone, COGIC style, Bishop Andrew Cheairs opens with the incendiary “Tell Somebody,” a call-and-response gospel on which Cheairs shouts so hard, he almost sends the service into early doxology. The late Rev. Wright and Michelle Prather offer up “Magnify Him,” the album’s tuneful single, and Patricia Jackson squalls over a hauntingly beautiful “Oh Jesus.”

“I Love You Lord” features the late Walter Hawkins singing his own composition in duet with firecracker vocalist Stefanie Bolton. The song is lovely, but the extended interplay between Hawkins and the audience is too long and should have been left off the final cut.

There are plenty of old-fashioned handclapping opportunities on the album, most especially the rollicking “Thank God for Saving Me,” led by Ruby Terry and Gwen Turner.

The conclusion, a reprise of the hit “I Feel Like Going On” from Part 1, brings together serious singing heft. Bishops Marvin Winans and Walter Hawkins, Beverly Crawford, Dottie Peoples, Rev. Timothy Wright, Bishop Darrell Hines and Ruby Terry take turns on the album’s singular poignant moment, a fitting farewell to Bishop Patterson and, in hindsight, Walter Hawkins and Timothy Wright.

The Gospel Music Celebration Part 2 is an outstanding album. It contains the unpretentiousness and soulfulness that makes the traditional sound timeless.

Five of Five Stars

Picks: “Tell Somebody,” “Magnify Him,” “Thank God for Saving Me.”