CD Review: La Varnga G. Hubbard – Nobody Else Compares to You

Nobody Else Compares to You
La Varnga G. Hubbard
LA Sing Management 2006

This is the best gospel album I’ve heard this year. And it’s not on a major label. In fact, it’s not really attributable to any label. It’s independently produced. But to paraphrase the title, nothing else compares to it.

Nobody Else Compares to You makes up in musical energy what it lacks in top-shelf packaging and marketing. La Varnga Hubbard is well schooled in Chicago gospel and it shows in her irrepressibly sassy, raw-throated vocals. Mix the spunk of Evangelist Shirley Caesar with the metabolism of the Warriors’ Dianne Williams and you have LaVarnga Hubbard. The chorus that accompanies La Varnga is also cut from Chicago cloth in that it is extremely comfortable singing with almost athletic prowess and at marvelously ear-splitting decibels, much like Ricky Dillard’s New Generation Chorale (in fact, Dillard makes a special appearance on the project).

Most of the performances on the album, especially the workouts “Don’t Judge My Praise” and “Call Him Up,” are reminiscent of the high-octane singing of the Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer Warriors and the Chicago Mass Choir. Listening to the electrifying rawness of the performances on this album took me back to my earliest exposure to gospel music, when on Sundays in the 1970s and 1980s I would tune my transistor radio to the soulful singing of South Side choirs and congregations.

Other standout performances on the album include the foot-stomping, blues-tinged “He’s Already Done Enough,” and La Varnga’s interpretation of Roberta Martin’s “God’s Amazing Grace,” during which she all but channels the vocal intensity of Dot Coates.

The project was produced by the prodigious Vashawn Mitchell (he also directed the choir) and recorded live in the best of all Windy City venues, Sweet Holy Spirit Church. Although for many years Chicago gospel music was committed to tape at Universal or Paul Serrano’s P.S. Studios, Sweet Holy Spirit is where the tape rolls today.

So will somebody please offer this lady a record deal so many more ears can hear what REAL Chicago gospel sounds like? Amen!