It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry

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Sometimes exploitative impulses yield good art. Despite the way it's presented, Dylan's Gospel, the sole album by the Brothers and Sisters (aka the Brothers & Sisters of Los Angeles, aka the Los Angeles Gospel Choir—it's been reissued a few times), did not arise from a group of L.A. area gospel singers deciding what they really wanted to do was record some Bob Dylan songs. The idea came from producer and Ode Records chief Lou Adler, who can't help but have noticed that the Edwin Hawkins Singers' "Oh Happy Day" had recently become the first full-on black gospel choir recording to hit the Pop Top Five.

Adler's choir and soloists had, indeed, mostly learned to sing in church. But the "Brothers and Sisters" were recruited from the L.A. backup-singer circuit—if you've seen 20 Feet from Stardom, you've seen a lot of their names, and if you've ever listened to classic-rock radio, you've heard their voices on other people's records. Over two days in July, 1969, the group recorded churchified versions of 10 familiar Dylan tunes

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it's way better than it has a right to be: it's always at least interesting, and often pretty delightful. If you didn't catch the words, Dylan's Gospel could pass as a solidly played, splendidly sung "contemporary gospel" record, and if you can overlook the choir keeping a straight face as they raise the roof about "her fog, her amphetamine, and her pearls", it can pass as that even if you do catch the words

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the language of "Chimes of Freedom" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'" makes the stylistic transition beautifully. His lyrics were also open wide enough to interpretation that it wasn't hard to come up with a reading of, say, "The Mighty Quinn" as an impassioned if slightly eccentric parable about Christ's return, which is exactly how the great Merry Clayton delivers it here.

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