Delta singer-guitarist Son House felt the lines of blues and gospel should never blur. Playing a juke joint on Saturday night and heading straight for the pulpit on Sunday morning got plenty of musicians, including House, run out of Southern towns. Ray Charles, for one, was a controversial figure early in his career when he began to experiment with gospel vocal techniques and driving rhythms―inventing rhythm & blues.
But today, many decades later, there’s a new breed of gospel performers―some with a deep history in the genre―who are making spiritual music specifically for bars and concert halls. And they’re well loved by believers and non-believers alike.
Among the leaders are veteran gospelers the Blind Boys of Alabama and Mavis Staples, as well as gospel newcomer Mike Farris―former frontman for rockers the
Screaming Cheetah Wheelies.
Fans of the Wheelies may be surprised by Farris’ current path, which runs far from that outfit’s Southern boogie rock. Although the singer’s still based in Nashville, the music on his recent
Salvation in Lights has its roots in the traditional sacred music of New Orleans and Memphis―roots planted by the likes of gospel diva Mahalia Jackson and spiritual songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey. But Farris’ update of this classic sound owes as much to the influence of Stax Records and Al Green’s Hi label. It’s gospel music that, like Charles’ early R&B smashes, has plenty of secular grind.
Backed by a dynamic band front-loaded with horns and the supporting vocals of Ann McCrary, whose father founded cornerstone modern gospel group the Fairfield Four, Farris purrs and powers through both traditional numbers and his own songs. In the Wheelies, and later fronting Stevie Ray Vaughan’s former rhythm section Double Trouble, Farris struggled to overcome addictions that had threatened his life, suffering his first near fatal overdose before he was 21. He sought his salvation through the church and Jesus, and in part has found it in his music.
The Blind Boys of Alabama have been at this considerably longer: since 1939, when the group began at a segregated state school for the blind. But it wasn’t until the folk movement of the ’60s that they began to perform for white audiences at festivals and clubs. And it wasn’t until the late 1980s that they became a significant secular concert draw in their own right.
Over the past decade their popularity has been enhanced by collaborations with Tom Waits, Ben Harper, Peter Gabriel, Allen Toussaint, and other music glitterati, to the extent that they won the Grammy for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album from 2002 through 2005. It’s hard to beat their gorgeous harmonies, from the rumbling bass of original founder Clarence Fountain to the high, wailing tenor of Jimmy Carter.
The latest album by this American musical institution is
Down in New Orleans, generally a return―after some experimentation with more rock and pop style arrangements on recent albums ―to their classic testifying spiritual style.
And then there’s Mavis Staples, who’s been straddling the spiritual and secular worlds of music nearly since the start of her career. That was back in 1950 when she joined her father Roebuck “Pops” Staples’ family group, the Staple Singers, at age 11 and sang leads on such beatific gospel gemstones as “Uncloudly Day” and “I’m Coming Home.”
In the ’60s the Staple Singers became champions of the Civil Rights Movement and signed with Stax Records. Mavis made her first solo album for the label in 1969. At Stax, the Staple Singers wrote positive, spiritually based numbers that also translated to pop music fans. And in the early ’70s that approach paid off when “I’ll Take You There,” “Respect Yourself,” and a string of others became crossover smashes.
Several albums for Prince’s Paisley Park label in the mid-’90s put Mavis back in the spotlight. Her neo/trad soul workout
Have a Little Faith on the Alligator blues label in 2004 made her a beloved figure in the Americana music scene, and her recent We’ll Never Turn Back has cemented her reputation with that supportive audience and other modern roots music lovers.
Staples’ gravel-edged incendiary voice still has all of its fire, smoke, and spirit, applied on her new album to both classic freedom songs and new tunes she and roots guitar king Ry Cooder co-wrote. Supported by Cooder’s dirty guitar and the drumming of studio legend Jim Keltner and Cooder’s son Joachim, Staples huskily evokes the days of Jim Crow in the autobiographical “Down in Mississippi” and “My Own Eyes.” “99 and ½” gets updated, as Staples sings of the racially based neglect that allowed Hurricane Katrina to devastate New Orleans. Like Farris’
Salvation in Lights and the Blind Boys’ Down in New Orleans, although rooted in history, this album’s themes and passion are timeless.