Bergenfest has booked this fantastic act from Daptone Records to play on Saturday the 15th of June 2013. This is gonna be a great show, We’re really looking forward to see these fabulous soul/gospel women.
Naomi Shelton is no ordinary gospel singer. Though she, like many others, grew up singing with her sisters in their Alabama church, she has also spent much of her life in the soul clubs around New York. Now, with her first official full-length release released in May 2012, it’s clear that her singing is equally influenced by both facets of her life.
This is soul music – informed by the church, perhaps, but soul music nonetheless, relatable to all. Which means that What Have You Done, My Brother?, an uplifting record that conveys Naomi’s energy, her excitement, her love of music, her compassion, is no ordinary album.
What is it about this album?
Why is it so important in the americana /country/gospel music canon?
Satan Is Real is a gospel album by American country music duo The Louvin Brothers.
Released
November 16, 1959
Recorded
August 8–10, 1958
Genre
Country, Gospel
Length
31:54
Label
Capitol
Producer
Ken Nelson, John Johnson (Reissue)
The gospel/country duo Charlie and Ira Louvin was born and grew up in the Sand Mountain region of Alabama, they lived on a cotton farm south of the Appalachian Mountains, that’s where they developed their distinct harmony style in the deep Sacred Harp tradition of the Baptist church.
Ira Louvin died in a car wreck in 1965. Charlie Louvin died last year at 83 just a few months after publishing his story about The Louvin brothers.
In The recently published book, Satan is Real, the ballad of the Louvin Brothers, Charlie talks about their singing style.This is not a straight quote, but it goes something like this:
…people who saw the Louvin Brothers perform were mystified by the experience. Ira was a full head taller than me, he played the mandolin like Bill Monroe and sang in an impossibly high, tense, quivering tenor. I(Charlie) strummed a guitar, grinned like a vaudevillian and handled the bottom register. But every so often, in the middle of a song, some hidden signal flashed and we switched places — with Ira swooping down from the heights, and me angling upward — and even the most careful listeners would lose track of which man was carrying the lead. This was more than close-harmony singing; each instance was an act of transubstantiation.
I could not find any live footage from Satan is real, but this clip of them singing, I don’t belive you’ve met my baby is a fine showcase for their intricate singing style:
“It baffled a lot of people,” Charlie Louvin explains in his fantastic memoir. “We could change in the middle of a word. Part of the reason we could do that was that we’d learned to have a good ear for other people’s voices when we sang Sacred Harp. But the other part is that we were brothers.”
Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.
~Mahalia Jackson
I close my eyes when I sing so I can feel the song better.
~Mahalia Jackson
Amazing Graze:
From Wikipedia:
Birth name
Mahala Jackson
Also known as
Halie Jackson
Born
October 26, 1911
New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Died
January 27, 1972 (aged 60)
Evergreen Park, Illinois, U.S.
Genres
Gospel
Occupations
Singer
Instruments
Voice
Years active
1927–1971
Labels
Decca Coral, Apollo & Columbia
Associated acts
Albertina Walker, Aretha Franklin
Dorothy Norwood, Della Reese &
Cissy Houston
Mahalia Jackson (October 26, 1911 – January 27, 1972) was an American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful contralto voice, she was referred to as “The Queen of Gospel”. Jackson became one of the most influential gospel singers in the world and was heralded internationally as a singer and civil rights activist. She was described by entertainer Harry Belafonte as “the single most powerful black woman in the United States”. She recorded about 30 albums (mostly for Columbia Records) during her career, and her 45 rpm records included a dozen “golds”—million-sellers.
From allmusic.com – Jason Ankeny; General critical consensus holds Mahalia Jackson as the greatest gospel singer ever to live; a major crossover success whose popularity extended across racial divides, she was gospel’s first superstar, and even decades after her death remains, for many listeners, a defining symbol of the music’s transcendent power. With her singularly expressive contralto, Jackson continues to inspire the generations of vocalists who follow in her wake; among the first spiritual performers to introduce elements of blues into her music, she infused gospel with a sensuality and freedom it had never before experienced, and her artistry rewrote the rules forever .. read more @ allmusic.com
