Posts Tagged Gospel
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December 5, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
Mavis Staples: If All I Was Was Black
Mavis Staples If All I Was Was Black Anti/Epitaph What a decade it’s been for Mavis Staples – riding on a high note ever since 2007’s We’ll Never Turn Back with a constant victory-lap of touring and this now deep collaboration with Jeff Tweedy’s Wilco. It hasn’t all been amazing, I couldn’t get too excited […]Archive
April 2, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
Johnny Cash: Forever Words – The Unknown Poems
Forever Words: The Unknown Poems Johnny Cash Blue Rider Press/Canongate Johnny Cash, famously, never threw anything away…ironic given he all but threw his career away a number of times. But the work within and around that career always stayed. He kept it all. As evidenced by the amount of “lost” recordings resurfacing…and in his after-life […]Archive
January 16, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
Aretha Franklin’s First 12 Sides: You Have To Hear Them
In 1960 and 1961 Aretha Franklin recorded her first 12 sides. Well, she had – at the age of 14 – released a gospel album (in the mid 1950s). But at 18 she walked in to the studio and laid down some tracks; two sets of sessions – she was making songs to exist as […]Archive
May 29, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
V/A: The Rough Guide to Gospel Blues
Various Artists: The Rough Guide To Gospel Blues World Music Network These sorts of compilations are dime a dozen, in terms of where you find them, but really what it’s about – almost always – is how you find them, and The Rough Guide to Gospel Blues is a pretty terrific long-play single-disc workout. Giving […]Archive
May 18, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
The Vinyl Countdown # 694
Jerry Lee Lewis, Would You Take Another Chance On Me? (1972) I haven’t actually listened to this yet – but I do know a lot of the songs, I got quite hooked on the country/gospel phase of Jerry Lee Lewis’ career (as important as his part in rock’n’roll, well maybe not as important but certainly […]Archive
February 13, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
The Vinyl Countdown # 750
V/A, An Introduction to Gospel Song (1962) If you strip away the wars, and the Facebook arguments – even if you’re not religious at all, I find it hard to believe you could deny the power of religion as guiding force for some good in the world. I think primarily of all the amazing music […]Archive
December 30, 2015 by Simon Sweetman
The Vinyl Countdown # 773
V/A, Worried Now, Won’t Be Worried Long: Field Recordings from Alan Lomax’s “Southern Journey”, 1959-1960 (2010) The record store I go to most often has this little pile of LPs down the end of the shop, near the counter…that’s where you find the gold; the stuff that’s just about to hit the shelves for the […]Archive
October 27, 2015 by Simon Sweetman
The Vinyl Countdown # 802
Aretha Franklin, Amazing Grace (1972) Recorded at The New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in LA, with the help of the incredible Southern California Community Choir (and of course her ace backing band with Bernard Purdie as bandleader/musical director) this is Aretha Franklin’s third live album, part of a magnificent run of nearly a dozen must-have […]Archive
August 30, 2015 by Simon Sweetman
Mavis Staples: Your Good Fortune (ep)
Mavis Staples Your Good Fortune (ep) Anti/Epitaph Mavis Staples is a survivor and striving on – she doesn’t ever sound like some geriatric party-trick, she sounds like a vital artist, pushing herself on, compelled to work. That was largely the tone of the recent, celebratory documentary. That documentary’s one big failing was in not acknowledging […]Archive
August 7, 2015 by Simon Sweetman
Mavis!: Film
Mavis! Director: Jessica Edwards Film First Co./Home Box Office (HBO) It pretty hard to fault Mavis! – the feature-length doco covering the life of living legend Mavis Staples. I’ve seen Staples perform three times in recent years, highlights in every show and I’ve been charmed by her as an interview subject. She’s funny, wise – […]Archive
May 11, 2015 by Simon Sweetman