The first of three volumes surveying surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all.
Stomping, rollicking gospel music, intermingling with raw soul, searing blues, hard-rocking doo-wop and jazz, and storming r&b.
Infused and incandescent with the hurting, surging indignation of the Civil Rights movement, here are twenty-four precious scorchers by giants like the Staple Singers and Jimmy Scott, alongside devastating sides by less celebrated names like the Harmonising Five of Burlington, North Carolina, and teen-group the North Philadelphia Juniors, culminating triumphantly with slamming, sanctified versions of Hit The Road Jack and Wade In The Water. Drawn from nigh-impossible-to-find 78s, sevens and LPs, hardly any of these recordings have been reissued since their first release.
Presented in a gatefold sleeve, with full-size booklet; beautifully designed, with stunning, rare photographs and original Savoy artwork. Sound restoration and mastering at Abbey Road; pressed at Pallas.
Co-curated by Greg Belson, compiler of Divine Disco; with deep, extensive notes by Robert Marovich, author of A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (University of Illinois), and host of the award-winning radio show Gospel Memories.

An extensive, sumptuous survey of surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all.
Sixty-one gems of stomping, rollicking, desolate, ravishing gospel music, intermingling with soul, blues, doo-wop, jazz, r&b, disco and boogie.
Presented as a sixty-page mini-book, with CDs suspended in card sleeves; perfect-bound, exorbitantly expensive to produce, lovely.

Harry Smith’s monument.

Her 1956 Atlantic debut, key to the splitting of jazz singing into rhythm and blues and soul. Lavern was Memphis Minnie’s niece. Her stage-name in her teens was ‘Miss Sharecropper’.

For Your Precious Love started out as a Bandera recording (subsequently leased to Vee-Jay), made by co-owner Vi Muszynski — and there are eleven Impressions sides here, seven of them previously unissued.

Gospel soul classic from 1971, with Gene Barge, Phil Upchurch and Richard Evans, besides the rapturous Youth For Christ Choir. Good enough for Donny Hathaway, good enough for us.

‘This sequel to their landmark 1971 masterpiece Like A Ship finds the young Chicago preacher and his Youth for Christ Choir continuing their genre-bending spiritual journey. Banging drums, soaring falsettos, euphoric tambourines, effulgent horns, and Barrett’s unwavering devotion spark off a forty-piece choir, working up a sanctified slab of gospel funk. Pressed in a minuscule quantity in 1973, Do Not Pass Me By was sold primarily from the pulpit of Barrett’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church, disappearing into Chicago’s south side for forty-five years.’

Hats off every time to the founding father of New Orleans rhythm and blues. DB holds the master recipe for soul-ska-rhumba-blues gumbo. Just check the tracklisting for a sense of his achievement. Don.

Thoroughly entertaining downhome blues, intricate ragtime, hokum and instrumental guitar stomps.

The greatest gospel bluesman; one of the very greatest bottle-neck guitarists.
Almost overwhelmingly intense and gripping.

Classic New Orleans rhythm and blues, same cloth as Lee Dorsey and Ernie K Doe, before funk got a hold.

‘The best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced,’ says Dr John.
The first half of this disc gathers all the sevens Booker cut under his own name at the start of his career, for labels like Imperial, Chess, Ace and Peacock, already evincing his inimitable blend of R&B, gospel, blues, boogie woogie and jazz. The second half features legends like Dave Bartholomew and Joe Tex, during the same period, with Booker as sideman. The likes of Lee Allen, Alvin ‘Red’ Tyler chip in.

Sensational Texan guitar blues. Gatemouth comes out of T-Bone Walker. Don Robey started the Peacock label, just to put his records out. Without Clarence there is no Johnny Guitar Watson. Killer, killer, killer.

Riding in resplendently on the cassock tails of The Gospel According To Budgie mixtapes and The Good Books (with Alchemist): still deeper, giddier blends of nineties gospel and nu bounce. Back in.

Digging yet deeper and more devastatingly in the gospel bins of the Black Atlantic, HGZII has its genesis in work undertaken for Kanye West and the Sunday Service in Wyoming, before enfleshment and fine-tuning back at home in the City of Angels.