God Will Take Care of His Own – Pleasant Green MB Church Choir (JR Murray Group 2005)

God Will Take Care of His Own
Pastor Walter W. Matthews, Sr. presents
The Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church Choir
JR Murray Group 2005
www.pleasantgreenmbc.info

What better time than Christmas to talk about gospel choirs?

This CD, created in 2005, comes from one of the city’s older African American churches, the Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church, founded in 1918 toward the beginning of the Great Migration.

Located at 7545 South Vincennes since 1972 – a cool four miles south of Ebenezer MB Church and gospel choir Ground Zero – Pleasant Green is alive and well, with Pastor Walter W. Matthews, Sr. the angel currently in charge.

God Will Take Care of His Own is a something-for-everybody release, equal parts contemporary, praise & worship, and traditional. The project opens with several mostly contemporary choir performances, but by “God’s Been Good,” a bluesy piece led by the talented Percy Gray, the choir gets in touch with its churchy Chicago self. The thunderous “Shelter” and gospel waltz “See His Face” also fall squarely within the Chicago choir tradition. Joey Woolfalk, a Chicago artist steeped in the traditional sound, renders ample guitar licks throughout.

Praise & Worship enthusiasts will enjoy “In His Presence,” “He’s Worthy,” and the junior choir’s hypnotic “I’m A Child of the King.”

The title track is the project’s top attention-grabber, a bass-heavy antiphonal piece that but for being on a self-produced CD and not a major label, could easily have become a popular radio hit. Well, no time like the present.

The great thing about gospel music recordings – and why it seems as if the discography is infinite – is that churches such as Pleasant Green invest their own money to share their musical gifts with their congregations and the greater public. While not all of these vanity recordings hit the mark – many don’t hit it by a Kansas mile – projects such as Pleasant Green’s make it worth the pursuit.

Three of Four Stars