Gospel is a music best served hot. With their new CD Good Old Way, the Legendary Singing Stars carry on this crucial African-American tradition, bringing the scorch across nine tracks recorded live at the 2022 Telluride Blues and Brews Festival. As the performance unwinds, the link between gospel and classique soul shines through with raw and loud clarity. The disc is out January 12 via the Music Maker Foundation.
Formed in 1960 in Brooklyn, NYC by Tommy Ellison and Billie Hardie and originally named The Five Singing Stars, this band’s endurance is a major achievement, particularly as they remain a powerhouse live unit. Having left to form his own group, Hardie returned to the Stars in 2008 per Ellison’s request, as he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer and was hoping Hardie would carry the torch. Renamed The Legendary Singing Stars to honor Ellison after his death, the founder’s spot is now filled by the 21-year-old Michael Boone, a member of the Stars since age 15.
Good Old Way delivers hot gospel complete with a dash of ensemble flair that deepens rather than dilutes the whole. There is electric guitar and bass, always a good sign, additions that make The Legendary Singing Stars not just a highly effective vocal group but also a rock solid band. As is immediately clear by looking at the tracklist, “The Walk Off” is an instrumental that closes this release.
Hot gospel is a music of high energy and deep conviction. Many hungry record hounds got their first taste of the stuff through the two Get Right With God compilations the Krazy Kat label released in 1983-’84. In the decades since, a wealth of material has emerged or been rediscovered, including the Arhoolie label’s blistering Sacred Steel comps, individual artist spotlights like Arhoolie’s Rev. Louis Overstreet collections, Dust-to-Digital’s Johnny L. Jones set The Hurricane That Hit Atlanta, and CaseQuarter’s Reverend Charlie Jackson collection God’s Got It (The Legendary Booker and Jackson Singles).
But the motherlode is really a handful of box sets illuminating the widespread and diverse nature of this gospel impulse. There’s Fat Possum’s The Pitch/Gusman Records Story and three collections from Tompkins Square, This May Be My Last Time Singing: Raw African-American Gospel On 45RPM 1957-1982, Fire In My Bones – Raw + Rare + Otherworldly African-American Gospel [1944-2007], and I Heard The Angels Singing: Electrifying Black Gospel From The Nashboro Label 1951-1983. The fourth disc of the Nashboro set features “Come on Home” by Tommy Ellison and the Five Singing Stars.
If steeped in tradition, The Legendary Singing Stars don’t come off like an uncovered relic. The opening title track here achieves a sweet trick, deliberately referencing “Proud Mary” and in turn pulling in the festival crowd. But the emotional root of “Good Old Way” is the harmonizing, which carries right over into the following track “At the Gate.”
Both “Good Old Way” and “At the Gate” are described by Hardie on the mic as having a country flavor (interesting for a group from Brooklyn) but from there the Stars pivot into an uncut gospel groove with “Jesus Is Walking With Me” and follow that with some spoken pulpit fervor (the track labeled simply “Testimonial”) that reinforces how this tradition was sharpened during weekly church services. “I Want to Be Loved” extends this atmosphere with crowd interaction that includes lifting up a child from the audience.
Along with sharp musicianship, an essential element in the equation is sincerity. “Somewhere to Lay My Head” has it, as a drum kit gives it an extra boost. But it’s really the full band mayhem of “Holy Ghost Jubilee” and “Holy Ghost Jubilee (Reprise)” (two more instrumentals) that solidify the Legendary Singing Stars as keeping the hot gospel flame alive. And Good Old Way has the rough verve of a field recording, which only adds to the appeal.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
