What a sweet discovery! Here's a guitar-heavy gospel soul album recorded in 1969 by the one-man band Famous L. Renfroe. Fans of the Numero Group's outsider soul compilations, you have found your next favorite album. Musically, there's more variety than one would typically find on a gospel record from this era. Songs like "Believe," "And Man" and "His Love" are groove-heavy, languid numbers with a solo singer, while "It's So" is a funky, slow-burning guitar jam — the MGs on laudanum. Renfroe performs everything except the drums. The songs are all original compositions, though true to the gospel tradition there's a bit of borrowing here and there; the wonderful mid-tempo "Circle" is clearly based on "Trouble in My Way," for instance. What's really extraordinary are numbers like "Feed," "Circle," "Why Not I" and "Reaching," where the dude recreates all the parts in quartet style singing: tenor, alto, bass, all of it. These songs are a wonderful and mildly eccentric update of Golden Age gospel. It's not a tight quartet style, and he doesn't perfectly hit every low and high note, but that's part of the appeal.

If you know anything about this guy, please contact me! The record label,… read more »