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Gospel singers complain, "We keep telling folks gospel's as good and big as any music." The claim shouldn't be necessary: the immense attention to details required in gospel bespeak their art.Gospel's final justification is not social but artistic, and it lives in the work of its best singers. Gospel is their life but it's also their art, and one's mind draws back in amazement at the creative genius that sustains them so long for so little reward. Gospel will continue; no matter what the world says, it'll be where its people are.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, preceding even Mahalia Jackson, was forever her own woman and her music defies all of gospel's categorization. Essentially a Holiness singer, she nevertheless exuded jollity rather than passion and her rollicking guitar-based gospel is quite unmistakable.
She was born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas and debuted as 'little Sister' with her mother Katy Bell in Chicago at the age of six, singing I Looked Down The Line And I Wondered to an audience of a thousand.
Up until her death in 1973, Sister Rosetta Tharpe came to personify gospel to the rest of the world almost as much as Mahalia Jackson did but she was never typical of the gospel mainstream.
________ Professor Alex Bradford - In the mid-1950s Bradford formed the very first all-male gospel group - the Bradford Specials - stunning the gospel circuit with falsetto approximations of the Wards' material and an unprecedented line in choreography. Signed up by Speciality in a rash moment, they suddenly hit with Bradford's own song and subsequent gospel standard Too Close To Heaven. It sold well over a million copies and Bradford camped it up all over as the 'singing rage of the gospel age'.
When Professor Alex Bradford died around 1976, so many people turned out for the funeral that the whole block around the church was roped off.
I'm too close to my journey's end, Too close to turn back in a world of sin, I wouldn't take nothing for my journey right now, Just got to make it to heaven somehow. I'm too close, almost reached my goal. Too close to finally saving my soul, I'm too close to heaven, and I won't turn around, I promised the Lord, I wouldn't turn around.
________ Rev. James Cleveland - The King of Gospel Music, personifies the cultural defender, resolutely defying every attempt to draw him into the mainstream of American entertainment. 'I will not perform for the white man for the purpose of financial profit ... I don't feel I can do much good in a club. I don't feel that the atmosphere is conducive, and I don't feel that the reason for bringing me there is the reason for which I'm singing. I feel that if they want religious music in the clubs, in the casinos where folks are ten feet away and drinking and gambling, then they should get white singers ... But they would not insult the intelligence of white singers by asking them to sing in a club.'
'You'll find that most white folks, when they do come to a Black concert, all they want to hear is your up-tempo stuff. They're not concerned about the message you're trying to give. They just want a funky beat, something they can clap their hands to, and they enjoy it because it's fun to them.'
True men and women of the people are less rare in gospel than in other musics, but even within the select band of saints and survivors who dominate and dominated the modern scene, James Cleveland had perhaps the greatest ability to express the plain faith and exercise the common touch. He was certainly the King of Gospel and the people all loved him.
________ Shirley Caesar - Like James Cleveland, Albertina Walker, Inez Andrews, Dorothy Norwood, Bessie Griffin et al. Shirley Caesar is a graduate of the famous Caravans. She spent eight glorious years with them, first as the opening act in thier program but quickly establishing her own reputation with fiery solos and blistering sermonettes. 'The Lord used the Caravans as a bridge to bring me to where I am today and I praise Him for that.'
Shirley Caesar, without the Caravans, took on the mission of evangelist, holding revivals all over the country, preaching every bit as hard as she sang. 'I have a person-to-person ministry. I'm not a star. You spell star backwards and it spells rats. I'll take time out and witness until they turn the lights out on me backstage. Our mightiest place should be at the feet of Jesus. 'The minute we get too high, the Lord brings us down.'
Shirley is unique in modern gospel music, seemingly able to draw upon all the strongest elements of the gospel tradition and weld them into a thoroughly contemporary and thrilling ministry. 'I can sing for any audience, whether they are young or old. I think it's a shame that many talented singers put themselves into a box. I'll sing for anybody who needs to hear the message I have to share.
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