Bishop Joseph W. Walker III Presents
Judah Generation
Light Records 2006
Junior (or youth) gospel choirs have been around since the early 1930s, when Theodore Frye organized the very first junior gospel chorus at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Chicago’s south side. As if Professor Frye didn’t provide the group with enough star power, an attractive twenty-something named Roberta Martin served as the chorus’s accompanist. With such a royal birth, Ebenezer’s choir was destined for greatness. And so it was: out of this aggregation of young people came the charter members of the Roberta Martin Singers.
Notwithstanding this example, most junior gospel choirs toiled in relative obscurity. Yes, they sang for God and their respective church congregations, and it was good, but they were relegated to the first rung of the gospel music ladder all the same. This changed in the early 1960s as America became a youth-oriented country. Groups such as the Helen Robinson Youth Chorus demonstrated that youth choirs had more than the cute factor going for them. They were not just singing Sunday Schools or gospel music training camps but could sell records, tour nationally, and wow crowds at churches and auditoriums across the land and country.
Today it’s a whole different story. There are plenty of superb young gospel choirs working up and down the gospel highway, and Judah Generation is one. Its CD, presented by Bishop Joseph W. Walker III of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Whites Creek, Tennessee, not only offers up energetic urban choir sounds, but features gospel lights Benita Washington and Lisa McClendon (gospel’s answer to the suave Norah Jones) as special guest artists. In fact, Washington’s lead-trading with Judah Generation member Adrian “A.J.” Wells on “The Blood Medley” adds just the right amount of excitement to a true tambourine-slapping, pulse-quickening, traditional outing. It’s the project’s best track hands-down, and would have given the aforementioned Professor Frye soul satisfaction were he around to hear it.
Light Records has historically been associated with the smoother, contemporary sound of gospel, but not anymore: Judah Generation’s CD offers up hefty handfuls of hip hop and plenty of urban swagger. And when on “Dance Dance Dance” someone shouts, “We’re about to send up a crunk praise for the Lord!” you know it’s a whole new era! Amen!
Three of Four Stars
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Written by : Bob Marovich
Bob Marovich is a gospel music historian, author, and radio host. Founder of Journal of Gospel Music blog (formally The Black Gospel Blog) and producer of the Gospel Memories Radio Show.
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I am so sorrowful to just now read about Howard Slim Hunt passing in 2007. You see during that time I was taking care of my husband Charlie who was an admirer of Slim and we would go to see their performance whenever they came to Mississippi and we have so many of their recordings from way back when. Like Slim, Charlie went home to be with the Lord July 2008 after suffering a stroke in 2000. I, Ruth will join them both when HE calls my name and I will answer.