A Gospel Calling: Mahalia Jackson Sings (DVD)

A Gospel Calling: Mahalia Jackson Sings
Hollywood Select Video/Infinity Entertainment Group (2010)

Although Nat Cole’s television variety program in the 1950s helped open the door a little, by the early 1960s, African Americans were still relegated to the same old stereotypical images on the squawk box. Diahann Carroll and “Julia” were still years away.

But when “Mahalia Jackson Sings” aired on NBC in 1961, the nation had a chance to see as well as hear a better image: a regal-looking, royally-robed gospel artist whose comportment was befitting her title as Queen of Gospel, even if the conservatism of the time still kept her enthusiasm straitjacketed.

This week, Hollywood Select Video and Infinity Entertainment Group, the same team that released two DVDs full of “TV Gospel Time” in January, made available all 58 brief episodes of “Mahalia Jackson Sings” on two DVDs.

While the episodes do not present the holy dancin’ Halie from “back a’town,” what you see is not necessarily the smoothed-over Columbia Records artist, either, even though by then she had been with the major label for seven years. In the episodes, Mahalia is accompanied variously by longtime pianist Mildred Falls, and also by a combo featuring Eddie Robinson and Louise Overall Weaver on organ, Barney Kessel on guitar, Shelly Manne on drums and Red Mitchell on standup bass. The result is that the hymns are given Apollo Records-style gravity and the up-tempo songs jump.

The sets are Dali-esque when there is anything at all in the studio other than Mahalia and her musicians (mostly off camera or silhouetted). Mangled, grotesque trees and two-by-four arches, the latter presumably meant to resemble a church steeple, meet scaffolding on which band members are sometimes perched as if preparing for a gig on “Top of the Pops.”

Among the finest moments preserved on the DVDs are Mahalia’s “Come on Children, Let’s Sing,” which she sings with such fervor that it must have killed her to not be able to walk the stage. The loveliest setting was given to “Somebody Touched Me,” when Mahalia sings surrounded by her musicians like a jazz singer in session. “When the Saints Go Marching In” lights up her face as if recalling the marching bands of her native New Orleans.

Despite the programs’ age, the audio and video are surprisingly well-preserved, and straitjacketed or not, Mahalia trumpets her songs with aplomb. With the paucity of Mahalia Jackson videos available, A Gospel Calling: Mahalia Jackson Sings more than fills the void.