Search - Various Artists :: None But the Righteous: Chess Gospel

Great Gospel from Chess Records

Tholly Rosmundsdottir | Reykjavik, Iceland | 04/28/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Chess records may not be a label generally associated with gospel music; it's probably better known for Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, etc. But the label recorded a large body of fine gospel music and this collection gives an introduction to the breadth and variety of these fine recordings.The collection includes both well known artists and other fine artists that are little known, such as Cleo Jackson Randle, Sammy Bryant and Elder Beck. These three all do a fine number on this cd, but recordings by these artists are hard to find.
Martha Bass, a gospel diva of St.Louis is not as well known as her daughter, Fontella Bass, who hit the pop charts in the 60's with "Rescue me", and joins in on keyboards and backing vocals with her mother on the song "You've got the Jordan river to cross". More known artists on this cd include The Soul Stirrers, with two selections on this cd from 1966, featuring Martin Jacox's growling and Willie Rogers as singers. Other well known artists here include Alex Bradford and The Five Blind boys of Mississippi.
But the best known of them all is the daughter of the preacher whose sermons were already being issued by the label and luckily they did not only record the sermons of that preacher but also some of the singing of his young teenage dauhter - Aretha Franklin. Her singing was just beginning to show the maturity that would make her "the Queen of Soul". On "Never grow old", perhaps her greatest early recording, you hear her unhurried approach driven by the claps and hollers of a responsive congregation as she sings of the joy of heaven, the "land where we never grow old.""