Javon Jackson (tenor sax); Jeremy Manasia (piano); David Williams (bass); McClenty Hunter (drums) + Nikki Giovanni (vocal on Night Song); Christina Greer (words on Wade in the Water).
As it's Sunday this seemed an appropriate moment to review what is a deeply emotive album. A combination of Jackson's big tone tenor and 78-year-old poet Giovanni who sings a faltering but deeply moving vocal on Night Song and provides a poem - A Very Simple Wish - for Christina Greer to read over Wade in the Water.
As the title implies the material is a mix of spirituals and hymns very much associated with civil rights and the fight for freedom put into the modern age by a quartet not just playing the changes but playing them with genuine feeling for the sentiments expressed.
I've Been 'Buked, sung by Mahalia Jackson after MLK's famous I Have a Dream speech back in 1963 has both an intro and outro of some dramatic unaccompanied bowed bass by Williams. Jackson blows like Rollins on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot played as a calypso which provides a lighter moment in a deeply thought provoking album typified by the tenor/piano duet Lord, I Want to be a Christian before swinging out on I Opened my Mouth to the Lord. All four are heading for the Gloryland but, hopefully, not for a long time - I want more - Amen. Lance
Didn't my Lord Deliver Daniel; Wade in the Water; Night Song; Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child; Mary Had a Baby, Yes Lord; Leaning on the Everlasting Arms; I've Been 'Buked; Swing Low, Sweet Chariot; Lord, I Want to be a Christian; I Opened my Mouth to the Lord.
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