Tony Cummings remembers the brief gospel music career of Chicago's CLEO JACKSON RANDLE

Cleo Jackson Randle

Some years back a various artists album was released, 'None But The Righteous: Chess Gospel Greats', exploring the archive of Chicago's renowned Chess/Checker record labels. Among the "gospel greats" on the compilation, alongside The Soul Stirrers, The Violinaires, Prof Alex Bradford and Aretha Franklin, was a track by one Cleo Jackson Randle. In fact the late Cleo Randle was never to receive any recognition outside of her Chicago home town. In his book Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopaedia, Bil Carpenter wrote "with the big voice similar to Chi-Town neighbour Mitty Collier's high-voltage range, Randle was a great performer of both gospel and R&B music in the '60s who never made it big outside of Chicago".

Cleo was born Cleopatra Jackson and grew up singing in church. Possessing a power house voice she was soon singing in churches across Chicago both solo and with choirs. In 1965 she came to the attention of music biz entrepreneur Bob Lee. The '60s were an era when hundreds of tiny independent record labels across the US, responding to the huge popularity of soul music, persuaded church-based singers to "crossover" and sing R&B. Lee was able to cajole Cleo to record some secular songs and the soulful ballad "Big City Lights" was released on Sta-Set Records, one of the many labels owned by Lee. The track got some local radio exposure and on YouTube there is a video of Cleo performing the song for a local TV station. But with no national distribution "Big City Lights" was quickly forgotten. Cleo played a few clubs but a year later had returned to her gospel roots and recorded a single for Checker, the powerful "Life In Heaven Is Free" backed by "No One Cares For Me Like Jesus".

Bil Carpenter briefly documented the last period of Cleo's life. "She sang in the COGIC circuit under the leadership of Bishop L H Ford and Prof A Samuel Hawkins. Perhaps best known for the song "Walk With Me, Lord", she passed away in March 2004 in Chicago." In many ways the story of Cleo Jackson Randle has been replicated thousands of times in music industry history - a church-based singer of major talent given few opportunities to record and those recordings given even less chance of being heard by Joe Public. In Chicago, however, there are still churchgoers who remember Cleo's spirit-lifting music.