Father Father
Ry Cooder, who produced two tracks on Pops's landmark '92 recording, "Peace to the Neighborhood," produces two more on "Father Father." Cooder's guitar and Jim Keltner's drums lock in with Pops's guitar and voice to negotiate the smallest shadings of tone and time on "Downward Road" and "Jesus Is Going to Make Up (My Dying Bed)"; the results are hypnotic. Pops's best-known daughter, Mavis (a.k.a. "Bubbles"), coproduced two of the album's best songs, the title tune and "Hope in a Hopeless World." Pops's thin, whispery, low moan conjures up a sense of dread on these two prophecies about a world falling apart, and Mavis joins her sisters Cleotha and Yvonne in full-throated, answering shouts.  Elsewhere on the album Pops recounts his friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr., gives a nicely understated reading of Bob Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody," remakes Mack Rice's "Getting Too Big for Your Britches" from the Staple Singers' '74 album, "City in the Sky," and turns once again to his favorite pop gospel songwriter, Curtis Mayfield, for an exhilarating version of "People Get Ready."--Geoffrey Himes