re: A Salute to Gospel Music - Black Gospel & Southern Gospel...

A record I first heard via the great American Roots Radio show:



The Abyssinian Baptist Choir w/Alex Bradford - "Heaven Belongs To You"

Produced by John Hammond, who would discover a guy named Bob Dylan a couple of years later, and Bruce Springsteen a decade after that.

quote:

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What 120 Zealous Souls Can Do

The rhythm sections that toil behind gospel choirs can usually be found way in the back of the mix, providing unobtrusive backbeats designed to send the singing higher with as little fanfare as possible. Professor Alex Bradford, a stage personality, pianist, and singer who was the music minister at Newark's Abyssinian Baptist Church in the 1960s, alters that approach on this live recording, to thrilling effect. The musicians serve as catalysts, not accompanists—their crisp, unified attack sets the tone for the soloists. It galvanizes the choir. Runs the show.

The three mortals who make up this screaming locomotive of a rhythm section jolt the 120 Abyssinian voices out of the Sunday-services routine into near-ecstatic communication they sustain from the beginning of this disc to the end.

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quote:

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Loaded with crackling call-and-response exchanges and outbreaks of intricately contrapuntal soul-clapping jubilation, these feature hot solo singing from Calvin White and Margaret Simpson, but they're never really solo vehicles. The choir is right there, contributing asides and shouts, blasting past doubt and despair with a contagious energy most often associated with the early days of rock and roll.

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LINK