From: barnhart@netcom.com (Aaron Barnhart)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Black Gospel, White Gospel
Date: 18 Aug 92 00:46:40 GMT
Reply-To: barnhart@netcom.com
Organization: Netcom

Excerpt from "A Ride on the Gospel Train"
(review of "Jubilation!" 3 CD set from Rhino Records)
by Nat Hentoff
Wall Street Journal / August 17, 1992

The artists on these songs, recorded from 1929 through 1980, are both white
and black.  As in blues, country music and jazz, much borrowing and 
transmuting went on between the races.

The first two "Jubilation!" sets are of black gospel, including Mahalia
Jackson, who had been a domestic and a nurse until Decca talent scouts
heard her sing at a funeral.  Also present on volume one are the Famous
Blue Jay Singers of Birmingham, Ala., and Swan Silvertones, Aretha
Franklin, and the Dixie Hummingbirds with "Christian's Automobile"
("I'm not worrying about my parking space/I just want to see the Savior
face to face").

Considering the abundance of compelling but hardly famous gospel quartets
I used to hear in Boston, before I came to New York, I expect there were,
and still are, many around the country unknown except in local churches or
to aficionados.  Volume two of "Jubilation!", for example, has the Original
Gospel Harmonettes from Birmingham and the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet.  Much
better known, because they have appeared in secular settings, are The Staple
Singers, whose "Uncloudy Day" conjures up mysterious danger in a gathering
twilight.

The third volume is white country gospel, starting with Hank Williams's
unwittingly ironic "I Saw the Light" (he never did) and moving to Patsy
Cline's "Life's Railway to Heaven."  Cline was as naturally sensuous in
religious as in two-timing music.  Also indispensable to this kind of 
collection are "The Great Speckle Bird" (not Charlie Parker), sung by Roy
Acuff, and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," with a number of country luminaries
("Undertaker, please drive slow/This body, I hate to see her go").

Country music like this used to appeal to Charlie Parker, who -- to the horror
of some jazz musicians -- used to like to play it on the jukebox in a
musicians' hangout in New York.  In this last Rhino volume, there is a
performance by Webb Pierce of "Bugle Call from Heaven" that both distills 
the message of black and white gospel music and might also have appealed
to Bird's continual self-questioning, which was not unlike that of certain
wayward white country stars, such as George Jones:

	When that bugle sounds in heaven
	Can you stand that last inspection?
	Can you answer that final bugle call?

One of the most penetrating, satisfying gospel singers was Sam Cooke of the
Soul Stirrers.  He later became one of the great crowd-lifters in after-dark
secular soul music.  Cooke was killed by a motel manager who claimed he
attacked her.  I remember gospel singers telling me that's the kind of thing
that happens when you cross over.  And then what will you say when that final
bugle call sounds?

Copyright 1992 Dow Jones and Company (The World's Most Expensive On-Line
Service -- And Worth It!).  Posted w/o permission.

-- 
Aaron (Barnhart@netcom.com) -- posting from Evanston, Illinois
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american