Shirley Caesar

The concept of a compilation of Bob Dylan's gospel songs is certainly an idea whose time has come. That this does not feature Dylan performing the original versions of these songs is yet another. Executive producer Jeffrey Gaskill assembled a wide-ranging assortment of the hottest talent in the gospel arena, both past and present, to perform the songs from Dylan's Slow Train Coming and Saved albums, and producer Joel Moss extracted phenomenal performances from Shirley Caesar, the Fairfield Four, the Sounds of Blackness, Rance Allen, the Chicago Mass Choir fronted by Regina McCrary (who sang backup for Dylan on the 1978 and 1979 tours when these recordings were originally done), the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Helen Baylor (with Billy Preston), Aaron Neville, Dottie Peoples, Lee Williams & the Spiritual QC's, Mavis Staples, and Dylan himself (performing a duet on a completely rewritten version of "Gonna Change My Way of Thinkin'").

Jubilation: Great Gospel Performances, Vol. 1 offers a first-rate introduction and overview of the key players in Black gospel, including stellar performances by Mahalia Jackson, the Soul Stirrers, the Swan Silvertones, Shirley Caesar, Aretha Frankline and James Cleveland, and many other wonderful artists.

Soul Jazz Records’ Holy Church of the Ecstatic Soul: Gospel, Funk and Soul at the Crossroads 1971-83 draws upon the extensive links between black American gospel music and soul music, showing how the sensibilities of gospel artists such as Shirley Caeser, Dorothy Norwood, Andrae Crouch and others crossed over into secular soul music during this period.

This wonderful four-disc, 105-track box of postwar Afro-American gospel releases from the 1940s and 1950s was compiled by record collector and gospel historian Opal Louis Nations, and it perfectly captures what was surely a golden age for black gospel. Gospel as we now know it emerged in the South in the early '30s, an outgrowth of the right to assemble and the advent of gospel songwriters like Thomas A. Dorsey (who had sung previously in the secular arena as Georgia Tom), who brought the blues to church, tossed in some ragtime piano rhythms, and almost single-handedly created the genre to the point that his compositions were simply known as "Dorseys.

Wynton Marsalis - Reeltime (1999) {Columbia–Sony Classical SK51239}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 326 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 143 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 10 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1999 Columbia / Sony Classical | SK 51239
Jazz / Neo-Bop / Jazz Blues / Trumpet

Sometimes even the powerful Wynton Marsalis has to take no for an answer, as his score for the film Rosewood was commissioned and completed but ultimately not used. In this case, it's clearly the filmmakers' loss, for Marsalis has written a soulful, stylistically wide-ranging set of cues that he put out anyway as part of his massive 1999 release schedule. The theme song for Rosewood is a cool, studied, country blues-flavored tune with Cassandra Wilson exploiting the husky tones of her bottom range.