Since Christmas is now so close, it was only right that I chose some gospel music for this week’s Hole. The Staples Jr. Singers are guranteed to brighten up the coming days.
They are a family band that used to constantly travel around the American south in a van and perform, sometimes even multiple times a day. They only ever recorded a single album together and, until recently, that album was out of print, and very hard to find. (The last time the original LP was sold online it went for ~$1100.) Thankfully, it has just recently been reissued, with fresh MP3s to boot.
Don’t let the tag ‘gospel’ put you off listening to this thing. Even though it is a gospel album, it is also much more than that. This thing is bluesy, funky, catchy, sometimes blistering, sometimes simmering, and always, most of all, this thing is soulful. Virtually every song has an impressively passionate vocal delivery, no doubt worthy of its object, and always able to melt the sympathetic listeners heart. This album ranks up there with some of the best soul albums I’ve listened to.
However, this is not just a great vocal album. The instrumentation is not that of your typical choir band. Rather, it seems that the Staples Singers took on board many of the lessons given to us by their immediate forebears. Even though the instrumentation is rather minimal, you hear in their sound streaks of Otis Redding, James Brown, The Meters, and even some psych rock in the guitar work. They are perhaps closest to a kind of gospel version of Lee Moses.
There are many great songs on this thing, so I’ll just remark that they cover a satisfying range of ideas during its course. The album opens with slow and haunting soul, Get On Board, before transitioning into a funkier cut: I Know You’re Going To Miss Me. Later on you hear a simmering blues piece, Somebody Save Me, transition into the organ-backed sermon-like Trouble of the World.
In sum, this thing is just oozing soul, this soul is supported by a constellation of ideas percolating in the sonic consciousness of the time, and it brings them together into this tight, satifying, gospel project.
Merry Christmas!
- Rowan
Recommended Songs: Trouble of the World, When Do We Get Paid
Listen: Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube
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