CD Review: When Gospel Was Gospel

When Gospel Was Gospel – Various Artists
Shanachie SH 6064
2005
www.shanachie.com

I am often asked to recommend a CD that will introduce the uninitiated to the sound of black gospel music. It’s not as easy as it sounds; some compilations are too facile while others are too esoteric to recommend. Thanks to Anthony Heilbut and Shanachie Records, it’s now easy to recommend one gospel primer: When Gospel Was Gospel.

What’s particularly great about When Gospel Was Gospel is that it doesn’t just focus on male quartets, or female groups, or mixed ensembles, or choruses and soloists: it gives the listener a taste of them all. It also doesn’t focus on the gospel hits, and oh happy day, it doesn’t feature the umptimillionth reissue of “Oh Happy Day.” Instead you find an intelligent mix of captivating performances from pioneering artists such as Mahalia Jackson (accompanied by guitarist Samuel Patterson) and the Roberta Martin Singers (from 1947, one of their earliest sides, “Yield Not to Temptation”) alongside Edna Gallmon Cooke with the Radio Four, and classic male quartets like the Dixie Hummingbirds and the Swan Silvertones, the latter featured in a live performance and fronted by the fiery shouter Dewey Young.

Most importantly, the CD includes “Look for Me in Heaven,” a 1948 recording by the trailblazing St. Paul Baptist Church Choir of Los Angeles. Led by the legendary J. Earle Hines, the chorus, also known as the Echoes of Eden, has rarely if ever been included on a gospel reissue CD, despite the choir’s popularity during the 1940s and 1950s and the fact that its original recordings were released on major label, Capitol Records.

But When Gospel Was Gospel has plenty of rarities for those who already know and love black gospel. Included in the collection is an ultra-hyper-rare and previously unissued live performance from the early 1950s by Queen C. Anderson and the Brewster Ensemble at the holy ground of the Rev. Brewster himself, East Trigg Missionary Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis-philes will know East Trigg as the church the hillbilly cat visited in his young and hungry days to take in the sacred music emanating from the diminutive brick edifice. Other unissued live tracks include a 1963 duet by Brother Joe May and Jacqui Verdell (of the Davis Sisters) and a 1960 performance of “Amazing Grace” by J. Robert Bradley who could sing the roof off any church in his day.

When Gospel Was Gospel lives up to its name, affording a tasty glimpse into the genre’s Golden Era.