Happy Sunday, Chitlins' people! Please allow me to make an offering today for your spiritual nourishment - vintage recordings of Hardie Clifton and the Brooklyn All Stars. Hardie Clifton may not be a household name in the USA, but he most certainly had one of the great voices in gospel during the late 50s through the 80s. He possessed a powerful, soaring falsetto that he could alternatively drench with Sam Cooke-esque sweet soul or break into rough scream. I have packaged together here three dynamite singles that the Brooklyn All Stars waxed under their first recording track for Peacock, together with a collection on Nashboro that was briefly available on CD under the title "The Best of the Brooklyn All Stars."
The first six tracks here come from Peacock, while the remaining 14 tracks comprise the disc pictured on the right.
The Brooklyn All Stars were formed by Charlie Storey in New York immediately after World War II. He recruited the exceptional bass-baritone Thomas Spann, who took over the leadership of the group in the mid-50s when Storey left for other waters. Thomas Spann continued to lead the Brooklyn All Stars well into the new millennium. He is very much alive today, and just celebrated his 90th birthday last month.
The Brooklyn All Stars rose to prominence after Spann recruited the teenage Hardie Clifton in the latter 1950s and trained him vocally. This led to recording opportunities with Peacock and the the three precious singles included here. They are all superb, with "Careless Soul" perhaps the greatest of all of them, a true masterpiece and showcase for Hardie Clifton. "Singing for the Lord" is another stone masterpiece.
By the time that the Brooklyn All Stars signed with Nashboro in the 1960s, Jimmy Outler had briefly joined the group. A dedicated disciple of Sam Cooke, Jimmy Outler had just succeeded remarkably well in the very challenging job of filling Johnnie Taylor's shoes, who had filled Sam Cooke's shoes as lead singer of the Soul Stirrers. A run-in with the law soon forced Outler into hiding, however, and his work with the Brooklyn All Stars here was actually done under an assumed name. On the Nashboro sides included here, Clifton and Outler alternate leads. There are many highlights among the Nashboro recordings. I have a particular attachment to Hardie Clifton's delivery of "Nobody's Fault But Mine."
The Brooklyn All Stars went from Nashboro to Jewel in the 1970s, and released a number of high quality albums, many of them featuring Thomas Spann more prominently that had been the case in the past. Hardie Clifton passed in 1990, but the Brooklyn All Stars kept going.
