O.V. Wright & The Luckett Brothers - 4 & 20 Elders

Here is a little icing on the cake for the current O.V. Wright love fest at this blog.  These are about the last remaining recordings of O.V. Wright that have not been posted here yet.  These are also his last recordings, made just one month before O.V.'s untimely death.

Like his first recordings, O.V. Wright's last efforts were in gospel.  He joins the Luckett Brothers on four tracks for this album: Four and Twenty and Elders, Give an Account, He'll Understand and Say Well Done, and Stand Up and Testify.

It would be hard to argue that these are among the best O.V. Wright recordings, and opinions differ as to their merits.  Bill Pollak on his website calls it a "half-hearted attempt late in life by Wright to return to the fold with one of his former gospel groups. Wright sounds lost and uncommitted."   I don't hear it that way.  Of course, Bill Pollak also perceives a sharp decline in O.V.'s work for Hi Records relative to Backbeat, which I also don't hear.   While there may be nothing genuinely earth-shattering here, O.V.'s singing sounds quite good to me on this album, as it does virtually everywhere else.  The words "lost" or "uncommitted" would certainly not come to my mind to characterize these performances.  The Luckett Brothers tacks without O.V. are also quite nice.  

In any case, take a listen yourselves and come to your own opinions.