Nashboro Gospel - I Heard The Angels Singing

Okay - I know that church is late today, but I'm distracted - this one is for our favorite little old lady!

"Ernest L. Young learned the music business from the ground up, starting in the jukebox operating field, and soon became one of the largest suppliers in the Nashville area. He opened Ernie's Record Mart on Third Avenue North in Nashville as a means to move more records, and realizing the advantages in making his own product, he built a small studio in the back of the store, later expanding into a larger space on the third floor of his shipping department building, finally opening the pioneering gospel label Nashboro Records in 1951. Young launched a secular subsidiary label, the more famous Excello Records, four years later in 1955. Always hands-on, Young oversaw every phase of making records at his labels, and gospel artists responded by giving Young's Nashboro imprint one of the finest rosters of gospel in the genre's history, while his roster for the Excello blues and R&B subsidiary was pretty singular too -- but that's another story. This four-disc set, which comes complete in a gatefold LP-sized package, surveys Nashboro's gospel output chronologically from 1951 to 1983, and it's an eye-opening, explosive anthology of gritty, exuberant black gospel from a label that had as much to do with shaping the sound of pop music in the latter part of the 20th century as more famous labels like Sun and Chess Records did. The roots of soul and so much more are heard here, and with the way the set is assembled, one can hear the decades build forward through the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s into the full-band, funky and R&B-influenced tracks from the 1970s and 1980s. The whole anthology is a delight, and there are some familiar names here, like the Fairfield Four, for one, but there are just as many or more obscure artists here making powerful musical statements. A particular high point is the husband-and-wife duo the Consolers' 1957 version of "This May Be the Last Time," a song the Rolling Stones had a secular hit with in the mid-'60s (under the title "The Last Time"). In the Consolers' hands, the song seems so much brighter, jangly and more alive, and it speaks to deeper and wider concerns than the Stones' version does. It's just one example of the many powerful tracks collected in this set. Bravo to Tompkins Square for spotlighting the best little gospel label that ever was." AllMusic Guide

Fire in My Bones Raw, Rare & Other-Worldly African-American Gospel

A repost of the whole thing! This was one of this blog's first Gospel posts more than 3 years ago.

"The majority of this music has never been reissued on CD, or in any other form (most tracks were originally released on regional independent labels). Most post-WWII compilations of African-American gospel music naturally concentrate on the astounding quartet and solo vocalist sounds made during the music’s Golden Age. Fire In My Bones attempts to address and collect more neglected sounds from that era (and on to the present day). Dozens of traditions are represented. Some go back hundreds of years while others seem to have been arrived at as soon as the tape began to roll. Field recordings and studio tracks are all mashed together, with solo performances next to congregational recordings, hellfire sermons next to afterlife laments. Leon Pinson, Elder & Sister Brinson & the Brinson Brothers, Grant & Ella, Straight Street Holiness Group, Theotis Taylor, Brother & Sister W B Grate—these artists will now be just a little less obscure.

Fire In My Bones provides a small peek at the incredible diversity and power of post-war black gospel. Much of this music is raw, distorted and might sound a bit strange. But it is not presented as a novelty freak show or as “outsider music.” This is gospel-which we must always remember translates as “the good news”-as it has been sung and performed in tiny churches and large programs, from rural Georgia to urban Los Angeles. It is clearly among the most vibrant, playful, beautiful and emotionally charged music in the world." Thomkins Square

This May Be My Last Time Singing, discs 1-3

This May Be My Last Time Singing,

"Despite provenance and proliferation on par with other vintage genres, gospel just doesn’t seem to garner the same degree of crate-digging diligence that other types of music foster in collectors. The disparity might have something to do with the one-note topicality of sacred songs: it’s only possible to praise God and Jesus verbally in finite different ways, and many revered gospel artists weren’t prone to experimentation outside of time-tested forms. There’s also the ambivalence or aversion of certain secular ears to such religious sentiments voiced in song. What’s harder to dismiss or refute is the passion and power that so often suffuses a gospel performance by artists wholly invested in the means of expression, whether in person or on record. These vessels of faith through song carry conviction that is both undeniable and largely indefinable on secular grounds. As my brother, an ordained Baptist minister, puts it, “you need not believe what they believe, but you best believe their belief in it.”

A companion compilation to Tompkins Square’s Fire in My Bones, This May Be My Last Time Singing both builds on and diverges from the parameters of its predecessor. Curator Mike McGonigal once again mined deep into his respective collections of records and associated ephemera, but switched gears a bit to focus on a narrower time frame with pieces culled from 45 RPM sides within a quarter-century time frame. In order to maximize the variety of content, he also set a rule to feature each artist or group just once in a track list that runs 72 deep. It’s a rule he bends only slightly in a single instance.

As with the small galaxy of labels excavated by The Numero Group within the realms of soul and funk, the outfits under McGonigal’s scrutiny were nearly all operations of mom and pop-scale. Larger established entities like Specialty, Nashboro and Chalice (Stax’s gospel subsidiary) signed popular national acts and garnered large market shares, while companies like Booker, Bible Days, Sterling Chapel and dozens of others worked the regional fringes. Local focus and financing meant latitude to record the commercially suspect, and the set’s selections bear this out in glorious profusion. Local churches or the artists themselves bankrolled many of the cuts with commercial aspirations secondary, if manifest at all.

Highlights are too numerous to recount at length, but the diversity of tracks goes a long way toward combating the aforementioned redundancy in lyrical content that can sometimes undermine gospel song craft. Electric guitar work by turns gorgeous and bracing abounds, beginning with the delicate preface to Sam Williams & the Harris Singers, “He Will Fix It.” Little more than a fragment, “Jesus Been Good” by The Fantastic Angels hitches a cherub-voiced choir to a bluesy groove laid out by crisp guitar and sparse syncopated drums. R. Jenkins and the Dayton Harmonaires sing praises over a wah-wah-juiced, boogaloo backbeat on “Put Your Hand in the Hand.” The Exciting Traveling Four traffic in the can’t-miss combination of oscillating rink organ and barber shop harmonies on its 1982 opus, “Oh Lord I Have No Friend.” Stacking tracks against each other makes for striking contrasts. Sounds of Soul opt for a percolating drum machine backdrop to its 1970 ode to the savior, “Perfect Like Angels,” while Jessie Lee Harris relies solely on piano and her sweetly serene voice to convey confidence in her savior’s care.

Numerous cuts reflect their age and the effects of avid use of previous owners. Recorded in 1980, Rev. George Oliver’s “I Got to Move to a Better Home” is in worse shape than a Son House Paramount 78, but made all the more affecting because of the washed out, crackle-laden fidelity. Similarly, Elder Robert McMurray’s gravel-voiced sermon, “Walk with God” repeatedly pushes back against an undulating wall of obfuscating sonic sludge.

It’s remarkable how many pieces echo potential counterparts in the blues, soul and doo-wop idioms. Rev. R. Henderson’s spare and repetitive guitar riff on “Stop Living on Me” could easily be the work of some grizzled Fat Possum resident of the past decade. Similarly, The Dedicators’ “So Many Have Fallen By the Wayside” and Brother Smith & His Stars of Harmony’s “God Don’t Take No Vacation” wouldn’t be out of place in rotation on a Southside Chicago soda shop jukebox. The quietly awesome sacred steel & washboard of the set’s penultimate track, Rev. Lonnie Farris’ “Jesus is Living Today,” travels yet another tributary.

The music speaks vociferously for itself, but McGonigal also includes a small fortune of edifying context through track-by-track annotations and photographs. There are even facsimiles of a handful of Sunday School pins from his personal collection. Say what you will about Greil Marcus and his dog-eared catch-phrase “Old Weird America,” but the appellation works just as well in encapsulating the odd and vibrant splendor of many of these sides, as well as the multiplicity of faith-rooted personalities behind them." By Derek Taylor