Essential Gospel – Classic Recordings: No. 135

“Pray On My Child”
Missionary Travelers
Sensational 1823
ca. late 1960s/early 1970s

The name of the record label best describes the recording it carries by Chicago’s Missionary Travelers, led by Rev. D. Hardiman: sensational.

While the story of The Dying Mother has been sung so often on gospel recordings as to be cliché today, the Missionary Travelers treat their variation on the theme with elegiac dignity and reverence. In fact, most of the song focuses on Rev. Hardiman’s reminiscences of the life lessons that Mother taught. It is only in the last minute that we learn this honorable woman is walking the last mile of the way.

During the final line of Rev. Hardiman’s soulful gospel performance, “Then she closed her eyes/And went on home to glory,” you feel as though you are right there at Mother’s bedside, weeping with her loved ones, experiencing the moment of grace firsthand. The peaceful, sadness of the instant of death is captured more vividly here than on most gospel recordings. Indeed, the final grooves alone make your hunt to find this record very much worth the effort.