STYLE: Gospel RATING OUR PRODUCT CODE: 21405-11931 LABEL: Document DOCD5542 FORMAT: CD Album ITEMS: 1 RRP: £9.99
Reviewed by Tony Cummings
Recording locations stretching from New Orleans to Knoxville, Tennessee to New York point to the differences in the five male vocal ensembles compiled here. St Mark's Chanters were billed as "the South's sweetest singers" and performed for black and white churches with their "So High" a silky crowd pleaser. The Senior Chapel Quartette were less interesting with an uneasy mix of secular and sacred material and the wince-inducing minstrel song "Way Down Home" surely embarrassing even when it was recorded in 1929. The Silver Echo Quartet is much later (1943 in fact) and shows the group making a pretty good fist of copying the Golden Gate Quartet, even covering the Gates' "Jezebel" and "Anyhow My Lord". Unknown (and in truth not outstanding) are the south Carolina Quartette while the last group on the compilation, The Southern Wonders, offer an early version of "I Shall Not Be Moved" (they call it "I Will Every Stand") while their "O Lord, Have Mercy!" is a version of the popular "Four And Twenty Elders". One final point for gospel connoisseurs to note: this Southern Wonders is nothing to do with the postwar group of that name who recorded for Peacock.
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