Swingin’ on the Golden Gate, Vol. 2 – A Survey of Bay Area Gospel

Swingin’ on the Golden Gate, Vol. 2:
A Survey of Bay Area Gospel
Fog City Music Group (2011)

Available from www.rootsandrhythm.com

Gospel historian and compiler Opal Nations stays close to home this time, scouring his San Francisco-Oakland stomping grounds for a variety of vintage gospel sounds. The result is Swingin’ on the Golden Gate, Volume 2, a two-CD, 53-track compilation featuring 53 different artists.

Soloists, quartets, choirs, preachers and groups are equally represented on the compilation, which focuses on gospel’s Golden Era of the 1940s through the 1960s. While a smattering of better-known Bay Area artists are included – among them Revs. G.W. Killens and Louis Narcisse, and the Rising Stars and Paramount Gospel Singers – the great majority are amateurs, church groups and local professionals who sang the glory down well before the Hawkins Family burst on the scene with “Oh Happy Day.” (Narcisse, by the way, is absolutely buoyant here leading the hand-clapping congregational song, “Glory Glory,” from 1959.)

Deserving special mention are a young Sly Stone, who sings and plays guitar on “Walking in Jesus’ Name” from 1952; and Mabel Henderson, whose huge voice nearly matches the largesse of COGIC chirpers Ernestine Washington and Emily Bram. The rich, vibrant thousand-voice National Baptist Convention choir, under the direction of Jules Haywood, renders a stunningly breathtaking version of “Unclouded Day.”

On “I’ll Make It Somehow,” Brother Green’s Southern Sons cast their sound in the Soul Stirrers mold, while Tommy Jenkins and the Mountain Stars render “Travelin’ Shoes” in acappella jubilee fashion, like a west coast chapter of the Golden Gate Quartet (with the Golden Gate Bridge for added provenance).

The 45s and 78s reissued here may be the sole surviving aural examples of an artist’s work. Nations does his best cleaning up the sound quality of the well-worn and rare records featured on the compilation.

Five of Five Stars