Sings Gospel

Roy Acuff - Sings American Folk Songs / Hand-Clapping Gospel Songs (1963) {2004 Ace Records CDCHD 999}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 380 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 156 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 28 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24bit remastering
© 1963, 2004 Hickory Records / Ace Records | CDCHD 999
Country / Country Folk / Gospel / Traditional Country / Honky Tonk

UK twofer combines 'Sings American Folk Songs' & 'Hand-Clapping Songs' (both originally released in 1963), the country legends fifth & sixth albums for the Hickory label. Features 24 beautifully remastered tracks from original first-generation Hickory Records master tapes, making their CD debut. Includes 12-page booklet with extensive liner notes, photos & memorabilia. Two of Roy Acuff's 1963 albums, Sings American Folk Songs and Hand-Clapping Gospel Songs, are combined onto one disc on this CD reissue. Sings American Folk Songs was the third album that he recorded in the early '60s for his own Hickory label, and might be less essential than some of his other work from the era, simply because most of the songs are folk tunes rather than his own compositions. That doesn't automatically mean they're not of interest. But Acuff is simply a more distinctive talent when working with the country compositions of his own and others than he is as an interpreter of folk songs.

General critical consensus holds Mahalia Jackson as the greatest gospel singer ever to live; a major crossover success whose popularity extended across racial divides, she was gospel's first superstar, and even decades after her death remains, for many listeners, a defining symbol of the music's transcendent power.

Various Artists - Bring It On Home: Black America Sings Sam Cooke (2014) {Ace Records CDCHD1420 rec 1959-1976}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 319 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 148 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 31 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1959-76, 2014 Ace Records | CDCHD 1420
R&B / Soul / Black Gospel / Early R&B

Previous entries in Ace's Black America Sings series have focused on Bob Dylan and the Beatles, but also Otis Redding – a singer/songwriter who shows up on Bring It on Home: Black America Sings Sam Cooke singing "Shake," a song that became more identified with Otis than Sam. This alone suggests how great Cooke's legacy is: he wove his way into the very fabric of pop culture, quite clearly influencing generations of soul and rock singers, but also shaping how R&B could cross over into pop, along with the parameters of how black musicians could set up their own independent enterprises in the music business.

The line dividing black gospel and so-called secular music has always been a thin one, and musicians have rarely been afraid to step over it. In the 1920s, the blind singer “Arizona” Juanita Dranes wed ragtime and boogie—rhythms associated with saloons and barrelhouses—to Holiness movement hymns. Later, Mahalia Jackson, who refused to record secular records, nonetheless achieved massive popularity outside the sanctified confines of the gospel scene. A true pioneer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe scandalized the church by performing in nightclubs, practically inventing rock & roll in the process. By the early 1970s, blockbuster Stax singles by the Staple Singers proved artists could exist comfortably in both worlds, or suggested that perhaps these distinct spheres actually overlapped.