Five Star Review: Bessie Jones with the Georgia Island Singers - Get in Union: Recordings By Alan Lomax 1959-1966

Handclaps and vocals. You have real talent, real soul, and everything else is redundant. My opinion that gospel (traditional black gospel, according to RYM, which knows little about it and even less about any other kind) possessed (or possesses) an integrity and sublimity that very little other music can touch has recently been solidified by my (re)discovery that Mississippi Records' vintage gospel compilation In the Storm So Long simply might just hit me the hardest and take me furthest heavenwards of the I-don't-even-like-to-think-about-the-number records I've mostly wasted time with in my life. But we're not hear to talk about that unparalleled soul-scorcher.

So, Bessie Jones. This is some good music. Like it just is so self-evidently wholesome and worthwhile pointing that out seems redundant. One wants to call it "raw" but "raw" implies danger, potential for e. coli, and this music is so sweet and kind. One wants to call it "minimalist" but that brings to mind, unbidden, Glass' ass and Part's farts, and we don't need to taint this beautiful music with those images. The appeal of this compilation lies in great part with the fact that it honest-to-Goddess slaps: listen to "Moses Don't Get Lost." That's an unreserved, 100% true club banger as sure as Lil Jon says YEAH. Yeah. Handclaps and stomping? More like the world's first 808. It's literally too much for the microphones to take: blowed-out gospel folk. What a time to be alive.

Sometimes it's somberer than that: "Got to Lie Down (How Shall I Rise)" consists of one plaintive voice and a barely audible foot-tap that add up to an effect similar to the legendary triangle in Blind Mamie Forehand's "Honey in the Rock" (which'll scratch your Blind Willie J. and MazzaCath itches simultaneously.) Occasionally there's a banjo or penny whistle (both on "Beulah Land!") which just make the whole thing even more ebullient. And then there's the cultural angle! These are the children and grandchildren of the enslaved - these songs have provenance! And they can be so strange - I wish I had all the lyrics of "Uncle Ned" or "Turkle Dove" (not a typo) to post.

One thing I love about this music is how many songs are sung in a cadence reminiscent of my (racist white) nana singing while she hung wash or cooked Sunday dinner or sang me to sleep and coming just a few days after the first anniversary of her death, it's weirdly comforting to hear echoes of her from this radically different source.

If you wonder if two disks of this stuff might be too much, just sample "Sheep Sheep Don't You Know the Road" and if that makes you anything less than utterly giddy, then it will probably prove too much for you. Makes me giddy, though!