TBGB Pick of the Week: May 25, 2009

“You Oughta Help”
Malcolm Williams & Great Faith
From the Malcolm James Music CD In Your Glory (Summer 2009 release)
http://www.malcolmwilliams.com/

“Anybody still like traditional music?” asks Chicago’s Malcolm Williams rhetorically.

Not waiting for an answer – he knows what it is – Williams lifts his voice and his directing hands, and together with Great Faith he launches into “You Oughta Help,” a pulse-raising neo-traditional “choirtet” handclapper with a kicking backbeat.

Williams and choir engage in effective call and response on this crowd-pleasing first single from Williams’ forthcoming CD In Your Glory. They sing:

“Come on and clap your hands (clap your hands)/Stomp your feet (stomp your feet);
Come on and rock (side to side)/Bend your knees (bend your knees).”

Comparisons to another young Chicagoan with an old-school touch, namely Ricky Dillard, are not out of order.

Choir director and youth minister Williams is no one-hit wonder. He was nominated for a Stellar in 2007 for Choir of the Year on the heels of the success of Walking in My Destiny, his third full-length release and the first for Shawn Tate’s Univocal imprint. One of the tracks on that album, “My Everything,” was performed by the GMWA Mass Choir and featured on the 2005 GMWA – Milwaukee compilation. “You Oughta Help” is very much in the same vein as “My Everything”: just plain soul-stirring, old-fashioned enjoyable gospel music.