Reviewed by Tony Cummings

The Acappella Series has been running two or three years now and has taken us through endless 'concepts' - children, classical, spirituals. There's certainly little continuity of style or approach other than the fact that the tracks are unaccompanied vocals (except for The Acappella Company's occasional cheat instrument - a drum box). Who are the singers? Seemingly whoever producers Keith Lancaster and George Pendergrass can entice into the studio. On some of the spirituals here like "Joy In Da (Da?) Morning" and "Poor Pilgrim Of Sorrow" there are either enough singers to constitute a Sounds Of Blackness size choir or alternatively the engineer has been busy tracking up the vocalists (I suspect the latter). The singers bring the ancient material into a more soulful style than the Fisk Singers-stylings of Sounds Of Blackness and it's pretty good, if very contrived. One note to The Acappella Company, Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" can not, by any definition of the word, be considered "a spiritual".

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