Soul Full

Praise Be! Boarding The Gospel Train – In Thrall of The Lord. Lux and Ivy Dig the God-Fearing Nation, Various Artists (Cherry Red CD)

The meek may inherit the Earth, but Gospel Music will inherit the airwaves and musical acclaim. Praise Be! is a great compilation of 23 ecstatic gospel tracks, chosen by Lux and Ivy of The Cramps.

To these ears it has more to do with Soul than Gospel, but what do I know? There’s no time or space here to unravel the interconnections of gospel, music and sex, but let’s just say there’s a lot of sensual singing here, along with some religious appropriation, pleading and praise.

It isn’t really until BB King’s version of ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’ (track 5) that the Gospel really kicks in, a basic rhythm and restrained organ underpinning King’s resonant vocals. Mahalia Jackson continues the theme, with her doom-laden and despairing ‘Trouble of the World’, before Patsy Cline kicks Gospel in to touch and we are in the land of country twang for a couple of minutes, before LaVern Baker puts the soul back in with ‘Precious Memories’.

The Famous Davis Sisters (who I have never heard of!) are more what I think of as Gospel Music, all swaying ensemble backing singers and soaring lead vocals, as an organ swells and accentuates the song. Glorious stuff, which subsides only for Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s piercing ‘Didn’t It Rain’, a song about Noah’s Ark. Then it’s hymn time for Ernest Tubb’s ‘The Old Rugged Cross’, which I found a bit of an endurance test apart from the vibrato-laden organ.

Mary Deloach takes the album down a jazzier route, The Aolian Gospel Singers deepen the experience with their male vocal ensemble, The Staple Singers get twangier as they tell us how they know they’ve got religion, then there’s a very overproduced George Jones track before the Man in Black enters. Johnny Cash’s voice is marvellous, whatever the musical context, and ‘God Must Have My Fortune Laid Away’ is no exception, despite the rather awful backing vocals.

The album motors in to its final run after Cash, continuing it’s eclectic mix of soul, gospel and country music, only linked by the religious themes on these examples. No point in resisting it though: the likes of The Mighty Clouds of Joy and The Staples Singers are uplifting, joyous and contagious music. Once again, this compilation evidences the fact that the Devil doesn’t always have the best music and that sometimes the Gospel Train is heading in the right direction. Hallelujah!

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Rupert Loydell

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