The stupendous early recordings of the Gangster of Love. Get a load of Too Tired.

Hard-rocking, rawly soulful gospel.
The highly-prized original LP was issued by Hoyt Sullivan on his HSE label out of South Carolina and then Nashville.
Nuff highlights but Hold Out is utterly devastating and unmissable (the band almost nodding out with tribulation).
Hotly recommended.

‘Former Mind & Matter bandmates James ‘Jimmy Jam’ Harris and Michael Dixon teamed up for this 1978 gospel-boogie banger, originally on the private Mad label.’

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.

‘Classic Louisiana swamp soul / R&B, recorded in the early to mid 1960s. Includes the popular dancefloor fillers I Got Loaded and Stop, as well as some real beautiful obscurities. Ballads and stompers to make life better. Old school tip-on cover.’

The Clarks’ fourth, pivotal album for Westbound’s Sound Of Gospel label, from 1979, hustling them firmly towards the dancefloor. Traditional soul-based gospel like My Cup Runneth Over alongside disco-influenced gems like My Life Is Complete With Jesus and ‘Everything Is Gonna Be Alright.

Stokes, Memphis Minnie, Furry Lewis, Gus Cannon and co. 180g, well-pressed.

‘The trance blues stylings of Otha Turner and his Rising Star Fife And Drum Band should be a music classification unto itself, a whole new primitive take on drum and bass. This music is the oldest still-practiced post-colonial American music, and Turner was one of its greatest artists of the 20th century. Blowing the cane fife with a band of drummers as back up, The Rising Star Fife And Drum band was legendary in the hills of Tate County, Mississippi, where they would perform during the yearly goat picnics on Turner’s farm. These tracks were recorded by Luther Dickinson during such picnics and released when Turner was ninety years old. Everybody Hollerin’ Goat shows firsthand the hypnotic and rhythmic style of fife and drum music at its best — raw and beautiful. It is every bit as essential a document of America’s folk-music heritage as anything Harry Smith or Alan Lomax ever offered up for posterity. This first ever vinyl release of Everybody Hollerin’ Goat contains a whole side of unreleased recordings from one night of the picnic and is intended to bring the experience of hollerin’ for goat in Senatobia, Mississippi to the living room. Dancing around the plants is recommended (but don’t eat the pickled eggs).’

Killer diller guitar blues.
‘Rock and blues guitarists alike owe a gargantuan debt to Ike Turner. His ferocious whammy-bar hammering, choppy chording, and ultra-aggressive string-bending solos were way ahead of their time from the mid-1950s onwards.’

Stinging electric blues and sparkling Texas stride-blues piano, and dapper, sad, droll singing, with a measure of the slurred wit and poise of Percy Mayfield.
Mercy Dee picked cotton like his parents, and his writing about rural poverty is unforgettable: check his first, minor hit Lonesome Cabin Blues, and the bigger One Room Country Shack, covered by Mose Allison, Jr. Wells and co. ‘If I ever get from around this harvest, I don’t even want to see a rose-bush grow / And if anyone ask me about the country, Lord have mercy on his soul.’ He also richly and lovingly disses various girlfriends: ‘the mule-head woman… her mind in the gutter, and her hands on my pocketbook’; ‘the bird-brain baby, with a heart the size of a mustard seed…’
These sides are from 1949-55 — for Spire, Imperial, Colony, Rhythm, Flair, and Specialty — but don’t miss his comeback LPs for Arhoolie, too.

‘My life is blank and empty, like a pea out of a shell.’
‘I’ve tried so hard, and failed, baby.’

Outstanding, laid-back gospel from 1979 — possessed by the sublimity of Bobby Womack — originally issued on its own S&K label by the Sanders family, from the Witness Of Jesus Christ church in Fresno, California.
The opener is the killer shit; knockout soul music about dying. We could listen to it for days on end.