I believe there's great virtue to enjoying the terrible things in life, and I would count M.E. Rushing's Let Me See Me among them. Despite the dinky Randy Newman sung underwater sound, it's just musical enough and dinky enough to be kind of fun, and definitely funny. Which is more than I could say about Hammond, Louisiana on the whole. Though for some reason I think Ernie Johnson of Ronn Records' "Mouth to Mouth Resuscitation" is from there. Maybe I'm wrong.
Whatever, here you go. Just the A-Side, the B-Side is just pure boring religious country that I really get into.
If there's an easy route to New Orleans gospel collecting it's "if you see Booker Records grab it grab it grab it". Sometimes there's a hidden Charlie Jackson guitar in the background or another wonderful surprise and they can sell for who knows how much. Well, pretty sure there's no Charlie Jackson guitar on this one, and the recording's as lo-fi as Booker Records was ever known for.... especially my copy. If you think that cover looks beat up, I have the other side in the zip file: I don't know what two of the titles are.
I think for a lot of this you've got to be a pretty big gospel fan, but the last two tracks are pretty fun, so I'd say go for these and check out the full thing if you really want to.
What better to celebrate Big J McJeezy's birthday with than music shouting his name repeatedly? Nope, I couldn't think of any obscure rock & roll Christmas gems so here you get some excellent, high-energy, well-done Louisiana gospel (if the different locations on the 45 itself didn't give it away, Rosemont is a New Orleans label).
And to double celebrate, I wanna show off one of my presents to myself: This year Arhoolie released one of the most fiery gospel albums I've ever heard.
Any rock & roll fan owes themselves to listen to this. It's the raw fun type of gospel that sits easily alongside Utah Smith, Rosetta Tharpe and Charlie Jackson. I won't give you a song off that album, but check this youtube.
Cover impressions: this is a seriously hip gospel choir! And it's on a Stax imprint (Gospel Truth)? 1972? Hunter, can you buy a scanner or something?
Yeah, the blog is back and will hopefully be movin' and I thought I'd kick it off with some gospel because I have plenty of it waiting to go. Don't worry, there's still plenty of capital-R-Rock-&-Roll to come, but I think this is plenty enjoyable stuff no matter what your belief set.
This album is not a raw funk masterpiece. If you want to check it out for that sort of reason, I'd go straight for "The Lord God Is On My Side". I wouldn't expect to be cutting breakbeats from it, but it's got some pretty hot little moments. Aw heck, have a listen
But there's also a pretty impressive breadth to this album. My other two favorites are the traditional gospel stomper "Save All Day" and the sweet sweet soul heartmover "God Really Cares For You". I gotta say, the vocals from Dolly Avant here are really sweet throughout, and the Reverend for which this album is named is pretty deserving as well.
This is a reasonably clean rip, though I was too lazy to do anything about some of the clipping. Still sounds good. Here, have a tracklisting.
Clear funk influence. I mean clear as in "check out the Cissy Strut riff jacking on "Working for Jesus".
A little bit of everything: This hits funk gospel, foot-stompers, shouted sermon and even a little bit of a soulful heart jerker.
Despite its existence being pretty recognized, its lack of backstory details are as well, meaning I don't have to feel bad about my knowing nothing as usual
There's a lot of them! Look at it!
Most mentions will say that this is a great album. I think it's definitely a good album, but about 3/4 on the way to great. They've got the energy and they've got some fun bass playing, but the songs are always just shy of having the form and hooks that make a real monster. In fact, I think the most memorable track on here is the much more subdued closer "Somebody's Missing"
I feel like the gospel I've been posting has been sort of skirting the real stuff. Gospel for people who don't like gospel. I like Gospel, it doesn't have to have dirty guitars and strange instrumentation, it just needs energy.
So here you have something pretty normal (not to say "boring"). I don't know much about this album and I don't know whether there's much to know. I know that it's on Savoy, so it's got enough quality to be released on a non-vanity label, which is surprising for a college choir release. Of course, I could listen and tell you that. This is choir heavy, not about crazy impassioned shouting, but a good strong choir with enough instrumental backing for it to be fun.
I'll put it this way, if you're looking for a wild gem of rock & roll hidden in a gospel sleeve, today is not your day. If you just want another gospel album and don't know where to turn, this should be a fun listen
So I've been sorta hinting at how I want to break into Gospel a bit. I haven't really ever considered myself Christian except by birth as it clashed with my preteen love of dinosaurs, but I find it hard to take issue with the passionate hollerin' that comes out of (black) gospel music.
So for a class I decided to a do a presentation on it for my final project. I'm not exactly an expert now, but I found some pretty stomp-worthy stuff. And I'm about to give you a real quick tour. Most of this stuff is actually pretty basic and blogged about in plenty of places, but I'm willing to guess that a lot of y'all are just as dumb as I was about this stuff. I'm not attempting a full-on history lesson here, just sharing some stuff that y'all might like.
Booker records = hot: It was mostly a one-man operation, started out as rhythm and blues but went gospel after just a few. I've got a pretty good 45 of normal semi-musical sermoning off there but the real hot thing is Rev. Charlie Jackson. Think male Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I know, that's no more appealing than female SRT, but more Tharpe in any form is welcome in my book.
Apparently learned guitar from a cousin growing up in Alabama. His mom told him he can't play blues during the week and church music on the weekends, and in a move so un-rock&roll it's rock & roll, he listened to his mother, played only religious music and became a minister. Later he went to Louisiana and headed up a church in Amite LA.
So while he was hangin' out over there he met Elder Utah Smith. Utah's only barely Louisiana related, as he ran around touring all over the country and eventually ran his whole operation out of New Jersey. But who cares, because again Think Male Sister Rosetta Tharpe
This song is sort of his theme song because he would perform with two big ol' wings on his back. And if you couldn't tell, he liked to play LOUD. So when he would come around to middle-a-nowhere towns with no power, he would plug his amp into a car battery and perform that way.
So Mahalia Jackson is probably one of the first names you'll hear of in gospel, so I'm not going to bother finding her funkiest track. But I will prove to you that she's funky, despite how clean people try to keep her image. According to a book I was reading, she started up a fried chicken chain in competition to KFC (pure New Orleans) and was quoted saying "The Colonal says his chicken is finger lickin' good... well I think mine is tongue-lickin' good". Personally, this new light on the New Orleans gospel queen got her records back on my platter lickety-split.
And in case you've never heard of her, there's another New Orleans queen of soul.
Really, gospel is a strange genre to follow, as a lot of good albums were very locally circulated, often just among church members, and there's no real cohesive history (a good thing I think, since most rock&roll histories are incomplete and biased (though it would impossible to tell it right)). But what this means is that blind purchases really aren't such a bad thing. One such blind purchase that paid off is this weirdo.
So while this album is purchaseable purely by diner rules (i.e. if it looks that ugly, the food/album must be great), it's also worth noting the names Milton Battiste, Dejean's Olympia Brass Band, and Frank Minyard MD. (coroner!). Unfortunately, in the few weeks that I've had this album I've been irresponsible and there's a big old scratch on Frank Minyard's part and a few others, so I'll hold off on the whole album, but the best two songs are doin' fine. Jesus What A Wonderful Child (I Found Out It Was) the Holy Ghost This is sitting in a strange middle ground between foot-stompin' big choral gospel, second-line music, and occasionally funk. It's fun.
I could throw a few more in there but this is already one of my longer posts and at the rate I've been making new posts I need to save material. And don't worry, I'll give you some straight rock & roll before I drop another gospel on ya. And if you want more right now, here's a youtube playlist I hastily made a few weeks ago. Further recommendations are always ok, and hopefully I'll clean this up post-July 4th.
I need help y'all. As I keep returning to my Sister Rosetta Tharpe album I start to feel like I want more. While I'm still investigating in my favorite manner: raiding thrift stores and buying interesting 45s, nowadays we've got blogs like this one to open us up to this sort of thing.
However, I've yet to find a good blog full of old foot-stomping Gospel. I'm afraid to delve into the whole genre, since I know a lot of it these days has a cheesy new-age production that I can't stand. I'm not much of a christian... I follow Rock &Roll, but given the amount of surf on here you could guess that lyrics don't matter much. This stuff has OOMPH though, andI'd appreciate it if somebody could point me and the rest of RRHHWW readers to a good resource for more of this sort of stuff.
Anyway, my small amount of headway into this has shown me one certain thing: this HSE label is hot. Thankfully, the Stepfather of Soul blog has already done the legwork of dredging up the information on the label, and he's got some pretty choice comments helping him out.
So what do I know about this particular 45? Zip! I know that I've Got It In My Walk is the better of the two, but not by a whole lot, and "I see the blood" makes up for it with its decidedly metal name.
I just got this album pretty recently in the midst of a week where I would watch the following video at least once per day
Unfortunately you won't hear anything like that monster solo she pulls off about halfway through, but this album managed to knock me off my feet anyway. About 75% Gospel music and 75% Rock & Roll (yes, those are my figures), high powered throughout. While a little bit of internet research and the previous owner's own notes seem to suggest that this is less of an actual collaboration than it is both artists throwing Gospel songs onto the same album, they both sound good together. While I'll admit to not hearing much of Little Richard's works outside all his biggest hits (which I love), his tracks are the more surprising ones; his lunatic screaming replaced by a surprisingly strong, resounding church-singing voice. Not a single WOOOO! to be heard.
Despite my buying the cover in two pieces, this is a pretty clean rip with most imperfections only noticeable in the silence between tracks. Hope y'all enjoy this as much as I did
The music made available on this blog has been posted in hopes of helping the popuarity of culture that I enjoy and in almost all cases I try to post things that are out of print. If your music is featured here and don't like it, please contact me and I will remove it immediately. If you do like it, please drop some knowledge because I tend to be missing some.
I used to run this off my home fileserver. I can't anymore. So a TON of these links are broken. Your best hope for getting them back is to comment!
