Tompkins Square’s I Heard the Angels Singing: Electrifying Black Gospel from the Nashboro Label, 1951-1983 is a 4CD chronicle of an essential Nashville-based gospel imprint, and the level of quality that’s sustained across its 32 years and 80 tracks is a major achievement. While the set sadly lacks a vinyl edition, the music that it contains is such an educational treat for the ears that the circumstances of format are in this case beside the point. This is a finely-detailed look into one segment of last-century’s profuse musical history, and the fact that it’s easily obtainable is an indisputable positive.
The opening cut on the first disc of this simply fantastic collection essentially vindicates the entire endeavor. The song is “Since Jesus Came into My Heart,” recorded in 1951 by the Silvertone Jubilee Singers, just one of many names unearthed herein, and like much gospel it’s built around vocal harmony.
While not a cappella, it might as well be, since the basic strumming of an acoustic guitar is immediately relegated to the background. This is gospel after all, a style that’s foremost concern is voices delivering a message. A minute into the tune comes a rise in intensity executed with such purity of focus that the hairs on my arms instinctively stood on end in response.
By song’s end that guitar has been completely overtaken by the unison singing; while “Since Jesus Came into My Heart” is a vessel of deftness it also has no need for extraneous layering or unnecessary subtleties. Concise at two and a half minutes, it works its magic with directness and assurance of vision and then leaves the listener to ponder what they’ve heard.
It’s a testimonial, and no doubt the performers would be overjoyed that its effectiveness has spanned generations. But the fact remains that the Silvertone Jubilee Singers were concerned with a different kind of immortality than an artistic one. So it is with all of the performers on I Heard the Angels Singing, and while some of the talents included did achieve widespread popularity, most are unknown outside of the genre.
Nashboro Records was founded in Nashville by Ernest L. Young as the result of smart but non-grandiose entrepreneurial decisions. Working in the jukebox business after World War II, he soon branched out and opened Ernie’s Record Mart. Not long after that, Young decided like many others to cut out the middleman and began cutting discs in a small studio in the back of his store.
In June of ’51 he commenced Nashboro, but it’s likely that many listeners, in particular mavens of uncut Southern blues, are more familiar with the subsidiary label Young set up in August of the next year. The name of the imprint was Excello, and amongst a seemingly constant flow of 45s it was instrumental in documenting the swamp blues of Louisiana through notables like Slim Harpo, Lightnin’ Slim, Lazy Lester, and Lonesome Sundown.
Interestingly, Excello was started to issue additional gospel product, and in fact its first five releases weren’t blues or R&B based but religious themed 7-inches. And it wasn’t until 1955, after Young hooked up with dealer/producer Jay Miller, that Excello became an exclusively secular enterprise and one of the prime pockets in mid-20th century USA’s onslaught of blues and hot rhythm.
But the narrative detailed here belongs to Nashboro. From the very beginning their spiritually concerned directive kindled interest, in part due to a constant blanket of radio play. From there Nashboro methodically grew into one of the most successful, and as the years covered in its full title illustrate, long-serving gospel labels in the entire country.
While Young had connections to area talent including Sister Lucille Barbee (known as Nashville’s Queen of Gospel), The Radio Four (led by the powerhouse Rev. Dr. Morgan Babb, the label’s first talent scout and DJ for local gospel station WLAC, though the Babb Brothers actually hailed from Logan, KY) and the amazingly still active Fairfield Four, with the latter two being amongst Nashboro’s biggest names, his company was far from regional in focus.
Two more of the imprint’s bigger acts, The Consolers and the Swanee Quintet, were formed in Miami and Augusta, GA respectively. Additionally, The Supreme Angels hailed from Milwaukee, The Gospel Keynotes and The Chosen Gospel Singers started in Texas, The Jewel Trio began in Cleveland, and The Pilgrim Jubilees and The Salem Travelers derived from Chicago. I’ll give you one guess where the Brooklyn Allstars came from.
This geographical diversity in large part stemmed from the presence of Shannon Williams, who joined the label in 1960 in the capacity of producer and A&R man after initially working in Young’s record shop. Williams eventually became vice president of Nashboro and took over most of the operations after Young sold the business to the Crescent Company in 1966. In this set’s terse but very informative liner notes, writer Opal Louis Nations credits most of the outfit’s later prominence to Williams.
Indeed, after the building that housed the label was sold and turned into a parking lot, Williams quickly reestablished Nashboro in a new location to unprecedented success, not just commercially (another subsidiary Creed was inaugurated, though this time the output retained the spiritual focus) but artistically.
For the recipe to I Heard the Angels Singings’ outstanding accomplishment is that its quality doesn’t diminish as it navigates into disc four. While it would be inaccurate to describe Nashboro as a stylistically cutting-edge operation (because that frankly wasn’t the point), never does the music’s impact become hackneyed, though just as winningly, the label was also resistant to jumping onto secular trends in an attempt to shift units and remain relevant.
This is not to infer that the artists were oblivious to or disdainful of the progress in 20th century black music. To the contrary, where the first disc and much of the second is dominated by gorgeous vocal harmony, manic shout groups and ecstatic singing preachers, as the set unwinds this environment gives way to a vibrant engagement with R&B, soul and the rise of black consciousness in accord with the Civil Rights Movement.
But what makes these developments so refreshing lies in how they contrast with rather than strictly mirror secular music’s progressions. For decades, the main interest in black gospel for non-religious minded consumers was dominated by its status as an indispensible ingredient in Soul music and especially to the oeuvres of its titanic practitioners Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, and The Staple Singers.
And if that’s what you require, then you’ll find a healthy dose of that here. By the point of their recording for Nashboro, The Chosen Gospel Singers featured none other than the magnificent Lou Rawls, who led the group alongside Robert Crutcher. And Sam Cooke’s predecessor in the Soul Stirrers, Rebert H. Harris turns up in The Christland Singers, a group he co-lead beside Rev. Leroy Taylor.
Naturally, the recordings of those two acts have become highly prized collectors’ items, and it’s excellent to have the music affordably available as part of this copious historical survey. But if you need a few more instances of this collection’s significance to non-religious musical modes, you won’t be disappointed.
For there’s The Fireside Gospel Singers’ “Get Your Soul Right,” which like the set’s opener begins in a fairly reserved manner only to quickly explode into Little Richard-levels of sheer gusto, The Blair Gospel Singers’ massive “I’ve Got Heaven on My Mind,” a song of immaculate vocal construction that’ll knock any Doo-Wop nut sideways, and most notably, the husband-and-wife duo The Consolers’ “This May Be the Last Time,” an exquisite slice of tandem harmony and Brother Sullivan Pugh’s splendid guitar, that just happens to be the basis for one of the early singles of The Rolling Stones.
And these three examples all sit on disc one. But really, at this late date there’s no need to be such a godless heathen, since I Heard the Angels Singing is but the latest in Mike McGonigal and Tompkins Square founder Josh Rosenthal’s invaluable multi-disc studies into the glories of gospel, an imperative that sensibly emphasizes and celebrates this music not for its influence on soul or rock but purely for its own unique qualities.
First came ‘09’s Fire in My Bones: Raw + Rare + Otherworldly African-American Gospel [1944-2007], and then two years later arrived This May Be My Last Time Singing: Raw African-American Gospel On 45RPM 1957-1982. Both 3CD sets are packed with a wide range of material that as their titles imply share a bountiful combination of grit and fervor; it’s no surprise that variations upon Sanctified Blues are well-represented in both boxes.
I Heard the Angels Singing, which adds a disc and finds Kevin Nutt, known by many as the host of WFMU’s excellent weekly hour-long gospel radio program “Sinner’s Crossroads,” stepping up from his previous role as an advisor/assistant and becoming a full-fledged co-producer, registers differently. The desire here isn’t to explicate rawness (though there’s plenty of that to be found here) but to tell the tale of an important American independent label.
The release that immediately springs to mind in relationship to this one is the marvelous Fat Possum/Big Legal Mess 3CD compilation The Pitch/Gusman Records Story, which was issued back in 2010. The comparison is similar but different, though. Like Nashboro, Pitch and Gusman sprang to life in association with a record shop, but unlike Young and Williams’ venture, the labels of Waymon Jones were regionally based, dealing almost exclusively with small outfits located in Georgia and South Carolina.
Nashboro’s scope was much bigger however, and these four CDs find the higher profile acts sharing the load with lesser known but just as vital entries. And what the participants all wanted is described succinctly in Nations’ liners; radio exposure and records to sell at performances. That I Heard the Angels Singing offers Nashboro’s evolution as an end to itself only amplifies the constant stream of joys it holds.
Along the way the ear is treated to The CBS Trumpeters’ sublime ’59 re-recording of their ’48 hit “Milky White Way,” the Spiritual Keynotes’ quaint on the surface but intense underneath “Ashamed of Jesus,” Sister Lucille Barbee’s near-gutbucket “Let the Church Roll On,” Bonita Cantrell’s superb and Nina Simone-esque “Wait on the Lord,” and Brother Joe May’s emotionally resonant version of “Silent Night,” his reading likely to boost the esteem of even the most hesitant of Xmas music listeners.
The Fairfield Four surprisingly don’t turn up until the final song on disc three with “Don’t Drive your Children Away,” the track a glorious blend of old-time spiritual and elevated Doo-Wop. And again, I can’t stress enough how necessary the tunes on disc four are in shedding full light upon the Nashboro scenario. It opens with Ethel Davenport’s uplifting ’68 tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. “Free At Last,” segues directly into Jonathan Greer’s curious but fully-realized organ-led instrumental “Gospel Train,” and rolls with confidence from there.
The Consolers display real staying power with ‘68’s deeply soulful and just as string-drenched “Keep on Marching.” And Bevins Specials’ ’69 track “Everybody Ought to Pray” finds the vocalist in full roar as the guitars rise to a plane of power remindful of Arhoolie Records’ blistering comp Sacred Steel, though a true beauty of a Stax-like breakdown also gets thrown in.
Further contrasts in Soulfulness are in evidence. 1970’s “That’s the Spirit” from Rev. Willingham and The Swanee Quintet is a fabulous mixture of rough-edged ministerial shouting and in-the-pocket full-band groove invention (it’s no shock that Swanee toured in support of James Brown), while the Brooklyn Allstars’ nearly six-minute long “I Stood on the Banks of Jordan,” also from ’70, is smoother but no less intense, updating the vocal group approach to a place that should satisfy any fan of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.
And I’ll add that the four cuts detailed in the two paragraphs above appear in consecutive order, so it’s not like I’m cherry-picking highlights from the set’s last disc. And thankfully, while the tunes that close out the program are chocked with studio brightness, they also don’t OD on production sheen; the bass playing on ‘77’s “It’s Time to Serve the Lord” from Bright Stars is much appreciated, the same year’s “Movin’ On” by the Salem Travelers is rich but not sugary or frothy, and ‘82’s “Come on Home” by Tommy Ellison and the Five Singing Stars is an extended chunk of sweet testifying.
‘83’s “Bless Me” from Willie Neal Johnson and the Gospel Keynotes closes this box with assurance, the impassioned lead singing meshing with lush harmonies as the instrumentation combines the expected organ with the far less anticipated addition of violin. Really, the only disappointing thing about I Heard the Angels Singing is that it’s not (currently?) available on vinyl.
But hey, the proliferation of box sets shaped up as one of the few welcome developments in the whole compact disc boom, and while that era is now over, it’s sorta understandable that labels of modest means have elected to employ the format for crucial sets like this one. Like Nashboro, Tompkins Square isn’t into manufacturing pricy boutique objects but is instead interested in getting this music into as many homes as possible.
If your abode no longer contains a CD player, I totally understand. But I’d bet the proverbial farm that you could find one of those appliances second-hand for not too many dollars, and trust me this set is worth the investment. And if your digs no longer feature a CD shelf, don’t worry, for I Heard the Angels Singing comes packaged in a gatefold sleeve. Which means it can be stored with all those LPs you’ve amassed without spoiling the interior design of that plush listening den.
What a thoughtful gesture. It’s enough to make a person want to give thanks. But if your gratefulness isn’t directed to that multi-purpose nondenominational being upstairs, please be sure to choose an appropriate earthy recipient. It’s really the least you could do. Ya’ infidel.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A+
