Classic African American Gospel from Smithsonian Folkways

We Say...

Review by Mike McGonigal

This grab bag sampler of African-American gospel from the Folkways archives is a solid, all-encompassing entry point into black gospel music as a folk idiom. It shows the myriad ways that spirituals sprout up in African-American culture. This is gospel as it's been heard over the last hundred years: in churches large and small as well as on street corners and in the fields. We're treated to arcane spirituals and sanctified blues, "Golden Age" style quartets and mass choirs. Some of these artists are well-known — Elizabeth Cotton to folk aficionados; Rev. Gary Davis and Leadbelly to blues fans — but few of them within the larger context of gospel. The songs from more well-known artists are all superb. The infamous Fisk Jubilee Singers are here with their archaic, nostalgic and stiff approach to singing spirituals, which goes back at least to the 1800s. Elizabeth Cotton's "Hallelujah, It Is Done" shows a delicate and nimble folk approach to gospel.

The lesser-known artists here also deserve your attention. The astonishingly mournful sound of the Starlight Gospel Singers on "O Lord, I'm So Glad I Got Good Religion" leaves one wishing that they'd recorded more. Little Brother Montgomery's "Just Got Over At Last" is jaunty and grooving, a more low key version of the rattling sound that Sister Rosetta Tharpe pioneered. The a cappella moan from Horace Sprott — unrecorded until the 1950s when he was in his seventies — will send shivers down your spine. And the Delta blues-ish rattle and roll of street-corner performers the Two Gospel Keys is addictive. The sequencing seems a bit strange; it sounds like someone just filled up their music player with all this amazing music and hit "random." But this is a minor quibble, and one easily rectified with your media player.