TBGB Reviews...Desmond Pringle

Be Still
Desmond Pringle
Magnum Opus Entertainment 2006
www.magnumopusent.com

Desmond Pringle brings James Cleveland back!

Well, not physically, but on his latest CD Be Still, the Chicago-based gospel crooner manipulates the mixing board to sing a duet with the late King James, just as Natalie sang "Unforgettable" with her father Nat, and Hank Williams, Jr. duetted with his father Hank, Sr. on one of the latter's unreleased acetates.

The song Pringle selects for his otherworldly duet is James' "Jesus is the Best Thing," a reading of the Jim Weatherly composition originally recorded by Gladys Knight as "Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me" but with more sacred covers than secular by this point. The scratchy vinyl backdrop provides the appropriate context to the interpolation of James' shout-inducing singing and Desmond's smoky baritone.

Although this track is the apex of Be Still, there are other high points on the CD, including the single "Let There Be Praise," which is propelled by a motive that sounds inspired by The Wiz dance sequence. "Jesus is All" mixes the old standard "Jesus is All the World to Me" into an updated arrangement, and "Holiness is Right" is a bluesy lesson on living the clean life.

Pringle also duets (in real time) with Pastor Shirley Caesar on Kenneth Morris' prize find, "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," making her the second former Caravan to be featured on this CD (yes, Cleveland sang with the Caravans - check your history!).

Most of the songs on Be Still are penned by Pringle, and feature his melodic, emotional singing (very Luther V.) over an adroit group of background vocalists that includes Felicia Coleman-Evans. I especially enjoyed the "praise break" at the conclusion of "Your Praise," on which the band kicks into Pentecostal overdrive. An instrumental reprise would have made this moment on the project even stronger.

Overall, Be Still is a pleasant project with a "gospel at sunset" vibe.

Three of Four Stars

Another Loss: RIP Mildred Clark

TBGB thanks Tammy Taylor (www.oneentity.com) for passing on this sad news.

Mildred Clark, of the famed Mildred Clark & KC Melody-Aires, passed away this week.

Ms. Clark had been suffering from cancer. She went home to be with the Lord on Saturday, April 21, 2007.

The Melody-Aires were popular in the Midwest during the 70's and 80s. Mildred was honored a few years ago during the Gospel Music Workshop of America in Kansas City, MO.

Her nephew, Carlton Coffield, a gospel music promoter, can be contacted for further details info@urbansourceinc.com Please keep the family in your prayers.

More Information on Life, Homegoing of James Davis - Dixie Hummingbirds

TBGB thanks David April, host of the Philadelphia-based radio show "The Gospel Train" (WRDV-FM), for providing the following press release. Be sure to check out David's show at www.wrdv.org.

PHILADELPHIA, April 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Mr. James B. Davis, founding member and patriarch of the world-famous gospel group, the Dixie Hummingbirds, died in Philadelphia on Tuesday, April 17, 2007. Born June 6, 1916 in Greenville, South Carolina, Mr. Davis was the Hummingbirds leader from their inception in 1928 through his retirement in 1984.

With a fluctuating lineup, the 'Birds spent their first decade doing what Mr. Davis called "wildcatting," performing along the eastern seaboard, establishing their reputation in each small town before moving on to the next. Mr. Davis took pleasure in explaining that he chose the name "Hummingbirds" because it was the only bird that flew both backwards and forwards and that's how their career seemed to be going at the time.

The 'Birds began to fly high in 1939 with their first records on the Decca label. In 1942, Davis relocated the group to Philadelphia for a daily radio show over station WCAU. The broadcasts led to a long-running stand at New York City's Cafe Society where, as the Jericho Quintet with Lester Young backing, they broke down racial barriers performing to integrated audiences alongside Billie Holiday, the Golden Gate Quartet, Paul Robeson, and others.

Mr. Davis guided the Hummingbirds to stardom in the 1950s with a "super group" consisting of leads Ira Tucker and James Walker, bass William Bobo, harmonist Beachey Thompson, and guitarist Howard Carroll. Their post-war recordings influenced singers as disparate as Jackie Wilson, Bobby Bland, the Temptations, and Stevie Wonder, and helped lay the foundation for doo-wop, soul, and Motown. The 'Birds were among the first to bring gospel performance to secular venues like the Apollo, Carnegie Hall, and the Newport Jazz Festival.

In 1973, Mr. Davis and the Hummingbirds collaborated with pop singer Paul Simon on "Loves Me (Like a Rock)," propelling the group to broader fame and winning them a Grammy for their own rendition.

Mr. Davis received numerous honors in his retiring years, including induction into both the Gospel and Vocal Group Halls of Fame and, in 2000, a National Heritage Fellowship. He last appeared publicly in October, 2005 when the city of Philadelphia unveiled a mural and named a street in honor of his beloved Dixie Hummingbirds.

A funeral for Mr. Davis will be held in Philadelphia on Friday, April 27, at the Second Pilgrim Baptist Church at 15th and Ogden with a viewing starting at 9:00 A.M. and a service at 11:00.

TBGB Reviews...Tramaine Live

I Never Lost My Praise – Live
Tramaine Hawkins
Gospocentric Records/Zomba Label Group 2007
www.gospocentric.com

At the beginning of her new live recording, Tramaine Hawkins is introduced as the “greatest female voice to ever sing gospel music.” Such hyperbole probably makes Tramaine blush, since that eliminates other towering giants of the genre such as Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams, and Willie Mae Ford Smith. Regardless, Tramaine has a marvelous voice and stage presence, and certainly hasn’t lost her praise or her energy.

I Never Lost My Praise - Live was recorded on February 18, 2006 at Reid Temple AME Church in Glenn Dale, Maryland (Rev. Dr. Lee P. Washington, Pastor). Tramaine turns the power up right from the start with an anthemic-like reading of “Excellent Lord,” complete with a marching-band beat and exuberant instrumental accompaniment. While introducing “You Get the Glory,” Tramaine talks about doing some old-time traditional singing “like when the choir would march down the aisle.” Although this song's arrangement doesn’t seem one bit old-school, Tramaine’s Patti LaBelle-like high notes and trademark melismatic singing infuse it with plenty of COGIC magic.

Gospel superstars Kurt Carr and Richard Smallwood lend their estimable talents to the live project, as do members of Tramaine’s family. In fact, Tramaine's son Jamie is musical director and daughter-in-law Sunny contributes vocals; both handled some of the writing, too.

The hands-down highlight is the title track, written by Kurt Carr and rendered flawlessly by Tramaine with superb background vocals from Patrick Lundy and the Ministers of Music. More than any other track, “I Never Lost My Praise” builds perfectly in intensity and emotion – just like a good sermon – until the live audience can’t contain themselves and is up and shouting well after the song is over. Definitely a single deserving of a Stellar nomination, if not also a Grammy.

Before she does her “own version” of the iconic crossover hit “Oh Happy Day,” Tramaine sings “I Need You," a soulful melody with crossover hit written all over it. “Like Never Before” brings Lundy and the Ministers of Music back. At the end of this track, Tramaine calls for a little “COGIC style” ending, and the musicians quicken the tempo accordingly.

I Never Lost My Praise - Live is nicely constructed and shows that after more than forty years in the gospel spotlight, there’s no stopping Tramaine. The title track alone makes this project worth a listen.

Four of Four Stars

More Loss: Kayla Parker-Tolbert - Gospel Songwriter, Producer, Backup Singer

TBGB received this press release from Black Gospel Promo, and passes along its deepest sympathies to Kayla's family and friends. Too young, too young...

Kayla Parker - Tolbert's remarkable talent has earned her an enviable place on the modern musical landscape. Her music was part of the funeral of Coretta Scott King and of the healing process after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. As a songwriter, producer and backup singer, she has worked with a Who's Who in both gospel and R&B music, including CeCe, BeBe and Vickie Winans, Brandy, Anthony Hamilton, Michelle Williams of Destiny's Child and Mark Kibble of Take 6. She has appeared on Oprah, David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and her songs have been performed on Good Morning America, CNN, BET and TBN, among others.

After being so much a part of the success of others, Kayla was about to step into the spotlight on her own. As a solo artist, she was making music that defies easy categorizing, blending her gospel roots with a sleek and savvy musical approach and an honest look at the trials and triumphs of present - day life - something the cancer survivor knows very well.

"My music is definitely inspirational," she says. "I can identify with people who've been through hard times because I've been there myself and have come through it. I think people will also appreciate my candidness - I don't sugarcoat things."

The result is music as full of emotion and uplifting as any on the nation's airwaves, music that fulfills the promise evident since her days as a teenager in Detroit's Pershing High School. There, she formed an all - female vocal group that quickly put her on the map. Taking the name "God's Special Gift" after a woman called them that at a performance, the group won a talent show and went on to become widely known in the city's churches. As their fame spread, Anita Baker producer Michael Powell heard them and began working with them. They became Special Gift, and their recordings and performances, riding the strength of Kayla's songwriting, quickly earned them national recognition.

It was success her parents had seen coming since she was tiny. Her mother, Aseneth Parker, was a jazzy nightclub singer, stage named "Anita James," who turned her energy and talent toward the church; her father, Richard Parker, was a songwriter, producer and label executive who was discovered by the legendary Sam Cooke and worked with Little Richard, the Supremes, and an early version of the Temptations, among many others. As a child of just 2 or 3, Kayla would sit on his lap as he wrote at the piano. From childhood through her teenage years, Kayla listened to her mother's jazzy choice of notes as she moved audiences in church, and she drew a love of music from both her parents and her wider surroundings.

"I used to enjoy getting my hair done at one lady's house because she had a piano," she says, "and I would try to play it. Then at night I would ask the Lord to take me in my dreams to a piano just so I could play while I slept." Eventually her mother, by that time divorced and struggling, managed to surprise her with a piano and instill in her daughter the desire to draw on her own talent and resources, even as Kayla drew inspiration from DeBarge, Michael Jackson, the Clark Sisters, the Winans and Stevie Wonder.

"'I didn't buy you a piano to have you play other people's songs,' my mom told me at one point," she says, "and that's when I started to write my own music."

Soon she was pulling together that group of friends at Pershing High, teaching them harmonies, earning a wide reputation as "the musical girl" and signing eventually with Powell. She learned ever more sophisticated harmonies listening to Take 6 and others, and continued to improve as a writer. In 1989, at the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses, she won a nationwide award for Song of the Year for "Since Jesus Came Into My Heart," recorded on the album Ronald Winans Family and Friends Volume 3.

"I began meeting my idols and working with them," she says. When Twinkie Clark left the Clark Sisters, Kayla was chosen as their first background singer, a slot she held for a year. She worked with Mark Kibble of Take 6 on gospel's Grammy and Stellar award - winning Donnie McClurkin's first solo project. She did commercials with Fred Hammond and Eric Dawkins, wrote songs for Hammond's second album, and wrote the hit "Now Are We" for Marvin Winans and the Perfected Praise Choir.

Kayla then sang backup for BeBe Winans, traveling to Europe and performing on Oprah's and Jay Leno's shows. She met superstar producer David Foster and sang on Brandy's record, then moved to California, learning the streets of Los Angeles through her play - brother, comedian Jonathan Slocumb, while conducting seminars and working with church ministries' praise and worship departments across the country.

It was then, in 1999, that she was diagnosed with cancer, returning to Detroit to undergo treatment and to recover.

"When I got my strength back and grew enough hair on my head, I went back to California," she says with a laugh that belies the level of strength and courage it took to come through her ordeal. She threw herself back into her writing, and learned to engineer her own sessions. Working with a producer friend, she pulled together recordings of a number of her songs, both gospel and inspirational R&B - - "life music," she calls it - - and looked to develop her own artistry. She met and married David Tolbert and found renewed success as a songwriter. CeCe Winans recorded "He's Concerned About You," a song whose message of hope found a natural audience in the wake of Katrina, and Vickei Winans cut "It's Alright," which quickly became a hit. Others including Rodney and Joy Jenkins and gospel jazz artist Tim Bowman cut her material as well.

Meanwhile, Kayla was drawing attention as an artist, packing crowds into B.B. King's in Universal City for a series of shows and putting the final touches on her own recordings. Songs like "Here I Go" and "Survivor," about coming back from cancer, "I'm OK...With The Things That I've Got," which urges day - to - day gratitude, and "Some Things Just Happen," mark the flowering of one of modern music's most complete talents.

"For me," she said, "the goal is always a song you can sing forever, a song that will mean something to people of all kinds."

Kayla's works live on...
2006 - Vickie Winans - Woman To Woman, It's Alright, Madly In Love, Go Go Praise, Never Separate, Trust Him, Falling In Love, God of Comfort, We Need Your love, and A Thousand Pains
2006 - Vickie Winans "It's Alright" Single - Writer, Vocal Producer
2005 - CeCe Winans - Purify - "He's Concerned About You" - Single - Writer, Vocal Producer
2004 - Tim Bowman - This Is What I Hear - "Angels" - Writer, Vocal Producer, Artist
2003 - Bishop T.D. Jakes MegaFest Commercial - Writer, Producer
2002 - Michelle Williams - Heart To Yours - "Heart To Yours", "The Sun Will Shine Again" , "Rock With Me" , "Better Place", "Everything" - Writer, Vocal Producer
2002 - Mary Mary - Incredible - "Little Girl" - Vocal Producer
2002 - BeBe Winans - BeBe Live And Up Close - "Do You Know Him" - Vocal Producer
2002 - Shirley Murdock - Home - Vocal Producer
2001 - CeCe Winans - "CeCe Winans" - More Than Just A Friend" - Writer, Vocal Producer
2001 - Fred Hammond - "In Case You Missed It" - Vocal Production
2001 - Fred Hammond - Christmas - ' God Has Been So Good" - Writer
2001 - Marvin Winans "Friends" - "If God Said It" - Writer, Producer
2001 - Regina - It Ain't Over - Vocal Producer
2000 - Michael and Regina Winans - Vocal Production
2000 - Bishop Clarence McClendon Harvest Fire Mega Mass Choir - "I Call You Faithful" - Artist
1999 - Men Of Standard - Feels Like Rain - "Come Back Home" - Writer, Producer
1998 - Greg O Quinn - Conversations - "Know You" - Writer, Producer
1997 - Oleta Adams - Come Walk With Me - "I Will Love You" - Vocal Producer
1996 - Special Gift - Yours With Love - Founder, Writer, Producer, Artist
1996 - Ron Winans Family Friends IV - Writer, Vocal Production
1995 - Keith Staten - No Greater Love - Writer, Vocal Producer
1994 - James Moss - Keep On - Vocal Production
1993 - Thomas Whitfield A Tribute To The Maestro - Vocal Production
1993 - Fred Hammond - Deliverance - "Love You Forever" - Writer, Vocal Production

Samples of her songs can be heard at:
www.kaylaparker.com and www.myspace.com/kaylaparker1

The Homegoing Service is as follows:
Funeral Arrangements
Saturday, April 28, 2007
11:00 a.m.

Faithful Central - The Tabernacle
321 N. Eucalyptus Avenue
Englewood, CA 90301
Church: 310.330.8000
(Send all flowers to the Church)

Dixie Hummingbirds' James Davis Dies

For those who have contacted me to learn whether James Davis, longtime member of the Dixie Hummingbirds has passed, I have confirmed that he died on Tuesday, April 17. The funeral will be on Friday, April 27 in Philadelphia. I will post more details as I receive them.

In the photo, Davis (left) poses with Rev. Joe Williams who will officiate the homegoing ceremony. Special thanks to David April for providing the photo.

RIP, James Davis -- you deserve your place in glory!

Amazing, Amazing Grace!

TBGB correspondent Matt Garret from Australia brought this website to our attention (thanks, mate).

Quoting from the site's home page:

"Since its creation in 1779 in England, 'Amazing Grace' has grown in popularity to become one of the best-known hymns in America. This Web site explores its history through items from the collections of the Library of Congress, from the earliest printing of the song to various performances of it on sound recordings. Also included is a searchable catalog of the Chasanoff/Elozua Amazing Grace Collection at the Library of Congress, which comprises published recorded performances of the hymn 'Amazing Grace' by more than 3000 different individual musicians or musical ensembles."

Check it out!

http://memory.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/grace/grace-home.html

Special thanks to the Library of Congress for making this information available to the public.

TBGB Reviews...7 Sons of Soul

Witness
7 Sons of Soul
Zomba 2007
www.7sonsofsoul.com

From Washington, D.C., the 7 Sons of Soul – Cliff Jones, Dave Lindsey, Deonte Gray, Kenneth Epperson, Doug Hayes, and Sam Kendrick – blend today’s beats with south of the Mason-Dixon line quartet singing, complete with backbeat, bluesy guitar riffs, lead trading, and hard singing.

In fact, on the mid-tempo “Clap Your Hands,” the Sons sound eerily similar to the modern-day Supreme Angels or Violinaires. “Prayin’ 4 You” could have been produced at Memphis’s Hi Records by Willie Mitchell, it’s that soulful. Speaking of soul, on “After-While,” the lead singer channels Luther Vandross in a slow, emotive reading of a melody with a high tessitura.

“Thank You Jesus,” billed as a tribute to the Dixie Hummingbirds, isn’t performed in the ‘Birds style, but its playful call-and-response lyric and heavy beat make it an effective track. On the other hand, “Trouble in My Way” is a cover of the Hummingbirds classic, albeit with a slower, bluesier reading than the Birds’ frenetic 1952 disc. Clearly the 7 Sons know their quartet history.

The obvious single is “Don’t Worry (He’s on Time), a radio-friendly rouser featuring the classically-trained Richard Smallwood who, like Kendrick and Hayes, graduated from Howard University. Overall, Witness, the quartet’s sophomore recording, makes for powerful good listening.

My only question is...there are only six members. Who is the 7th son?

Three out of Four Stars

TBGB Reviews...Katie Sankey

My Best to You
Katie Sankey
Meltone Records 2007
www.meltonerevue.com

Katie Sankey’s voice is so large it can hardly be contained within the borders of her home state of Alabama, where she is a Jefferson County native. It’s no surprise Katie won the Dorothy Love Coates Life Achievement Award at the 2006 American Gospel Quartet Convention: she reminds me of singers like Dot Coates and Ernestine Washington who didn’t need a stage full of instrumentation to turn a church out.

The finest tracks on Katie’s CD, My Best to You, released earlier this year on Melvin Couch’s Meltone Records, focus on her God-given voice, with just a trickle of accompaniment (piano, organ, drums). These tracks include the traditional “I Don’t Know Why,” “He Touched Me,” and “I Need Thee,” though the background musicians do a fine job on “He Made Me,” also known as “I’m Glad.” Katie’s rendition of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” sounds as if Ray Charles arranged it.

Other tracks, like “God Always” with its incessant disco beat, tend to distract from, rather than add to, the overall experience. Nevertheless, Katie sings with complete abandon, oblivious to the fact that the instrumentation on some tracks is completely out of step with her traditional sound.

Whether it’s a hymn or gospel song, Katie Sankey sells it by squeezing every ounce of meaning out of it. The gospel world needs more singers like her.

Two and one-half of Four Stars

TBGB Pick of the Week: April 9, 2007

“Fisher of Men”
Batiste
From the DaMil Records CD Love is Your Greatest Gift 2006
www.batistemusic.com

DeLois Barrett Campbell believes that the Barrett Sisters blend harmonies so well because they are blood-related sisters. If kinship breeds quality harmony, it’s no wonder brothers Lionel (Ray) and Lyndon Batiste create such a heavenly sound together.

Not steeped in the African American gospel experience – they grew up in the Roman Catholic Church – the brothers Batiste nevertheless call upon their RnB influences to soulfully render “Fisher of Men,” a beautiful, meditative song with a lullaby-like melody. It's the kind of song that is likely to be covered by dozens of gospel and CCM artists in the years to come. Also guaranteed to inspire audiences coast to coast to raise hands and sway in place.

TBGB Reviews...Tramaine Hawkins

Tramaine Treasury
Tramaine Hawkins
Light Records 2004
www.lightrecords.com

Edwin and Walter Hawkins may have smoothed the edges of gospel music with jazz chords and soft-rock arrangements to render it more appealing to the masses, but Tramaine’s churchy shouting was a constant reminder of its raising.

A product of the Church of God in Christ, Tramaine Hawkins (nee Davis) recorded her first single at the age of ten as a member of the Heavenly Tones. She later sang with the Northern California State Choir, where she was in the right place at the right time: the magical moment in 1968 when Hawkins’ “O Happy Day” became a crossover classic. When the choir reorganized as the Edwin Hawkins Singers, the COGIC soprano remained with the group, becoming its star vocalist.

The best tracks on this Light Classic Gold compilation are those Tramaine sings with Walter Hawkins and the Love Center Choir, particularly the marvelous “Changed” and her magnum opus, what I consider to be one of the 100 best gospel songs of all time, “Goin’ Up Yonder.” The latter gave the listener an opportunity to hear all the colors in Tramaine’s vocal repertory, from her sweet melodic reading of a lyric to church wrecking preaching and shouting.

“Call Me” hearkens back to gospel’s thankfully brief, misguided dalliance with disco. Other tracks are from her earlier solo days with Light/Myrrh in the late 70s and early 80s.

Of course, since the CD is limited to Light Records property, the listener will not find some essential Tramaine tracks, including 1986’s “Fall Down,” which singlehandedly made it to the top of the dance charts and put Tramaine at loggerheads with traditional gospel fans. Regardless, it's important that some of Tramaine's vinyl work is making it onto CD for a new generation of gospel fans to enjoy.

Two and one-half of Four Stars

TBGB Reviews...Mavis Staples

We’ll Never Turn Back
Mavis Staples
Anti- 2007
www.mavisstaples.com

“It’s the 21st Century – it feels like it’s 1960!”

Mavis Staples’ lament in “99 and ½,” a track on her new project, We’ll Never Turn Back, pretty much sums up the album’s theme. A revisiting of the Civil Rights Movement's musical lexicon, We’ll Never Turn Back is Mavis’ chance to tell it like it was and is (“I wouldn’t lie to you; I’ll leave that to the politicians”), and to encourage people to again stand up for their rights.

Over the years, Mavis has developed an effective, gritty gospel cry-shout, perfectly suited to the content of this album, which seethes with rightful outrage and frustration. On "Down in Mississippi," Mavis sings about having to drink out of a “for colored only” water fountain in Jim Crow South. Back to "99 and 1/2": Mavis recounts how she was thrown in jail "by some Southern racist cop" in West Memphis, Arkansas during 1965, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. The CD does have some lighter moments, as when Mavis sings about how as a little girl she accidentally integrated a local washeteria and became a hero among the locals.

Mavis’ point, made most determinedly on “My Own Eyes,” is that nothing has really changed since the days of Jim Crow, whether it’s the state of education for poor African American children in Mississippi or the breached levee in New Orleans. Of the Crescent City, Mavis changes the focal point from “I saw it” to “We saw it” – accompanied by a marvelously wry gospel laugh – to hammer home the point that all of us witnessed the sloppy and indecisive handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster by those elected to protect the people. At the conclusion of “My Own Eyes,” Mavis heaves a soul satisfying sigh, not that things are any better, but that singing about it can soothe the spirit, even if only temporarily.

A testimony to their timelessness, many of the songs of the Civil Rights Movement started their life as spirituals or in dog-eared hymn books. Lyrics of songs in this project, such as “We Shall Not Be Moved,” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “Eyes on the Prize,” are ancient but still apropos to the times. In the 1950s and 1960s, they energized the masses to undertake non-violent protests against people who were anything but. Their inclusion here is a not-so-subtle reminder that their messages are still valid today: it’s high time to take a stand against injustice and political gamesmanship.

“I’ll Be Rested” is the most haunting of the tracks. Central to the song is a litany of those who lost their lives during the Civil Rights era, including the four young girls killed in the 1963 Birmingham Church Bombing, the murder of the three voting rights workers in Mississippi, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, and others who died supporting freedom. Mavis concludes the song with a reading of gospel pioneers who passed on, including Mahalia, Marion Williams, Archie Brownlee, and of course her father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, who made it safely through the gates of Heaven, guitar and all.

Musically, We’ll Never Turn Back glistens with the heavy humidity of an August mid-afternoon in the Deep South. Producer Ry Cooder manages an awesome cadre of artists, including South Africa’s Ladysmith Black Mambazo and former members of the famous SNCC Freedom Singers who sing background and can testify to the truth told through the music.

We’ll Never Turn Back could very well be the best release – gospel, roots, blues, or otherwise – of 2007. Certainly it’s the most meaningful and relevant.

Four of Four Stars

TBGB Reviews...Gospel Dream

Gospel Dream
Various Artists
Verity 2007
www.verityrecords.com

Gospel Dream is the debut compilation of performances by the Christian and Gospel finalists from the popular Gospel Music Channel program based on you-know-what ubiquitous television sensation (unnecessary hint: one judge wears a black t-shirt).

The project demonstrates aurally what we already know intuitively: that any Gospel Dream finalist could single-handedly take on the sum total of the American Idol finalists in a sing-off (except for stone singers Ruben Studdard and Jennifer Hudson) and come out the clear winner. In other words, the devil may possess the good beats, but God still has the good singers.

Brian Smith – who sounds somewhat like Darius Rucker of Hootie & the Blowfish – was crowned 2005 Gospel Dream champion out of more than 2,000 hopefuls, and he does an admirable job on his assigned tracks. If I had been offered a vote, however, I would have selected the deep alto Christina Perrin. On “Your Grace is Amazing,” Christina doesn’t just sing the notes: she sends them on a rollercoaster ride of melismatic adventure. That girl is going places!

The production tends towards the lavish, as befitting its origins in television, but it doesn’t get in the way of the voices, which possess an innocence that never comes off as disingenuous or synthetic.

The finalists combine to make a great choir on “Power of the Dream,” which expresses genuine hope that the world will someday accept differences of color without judgment. True, there will always be times when people are “voted off,” figuratively speaking, but someday it won’t be because of the color of their skin.

Three of Four Stars

TBGB Pick of the Week: April 2, 2007

“You Can Make It”
Terrence Mackey & Nu Restoration
From the CD Nu Restoration - Vol. 1 (Spiritual City Music 2007)
www.spiritualcitymusic.com

While “Crossover,” with its fresh hip hop beats, is the signature single from Dallas native Terrence Mackey and Nu Restoration’s debut project Nu Restoration - Vol. 1, I’m partial to the traditional flavored “You Can Make It.”

The 29 year-old Mackey is gospel-singer-turned-preacher on this track, with Nu Restoration supporting him resplendently throughout the song’s slow, incremental rise in intensity. “Crossover” may get bodies swaying, but “You Can Make It” will get the shouting started.