Dave's Top Eight

1. Jerry Reed...Revisited by Darrell Toney (reviewed 6/07) (5 Stars)
2. Sounds Like Sunday by Janet Paschal (reviewed 5/07) (5 Stars)
3. True To The Call by Kingdom Heirs (reviewed 3/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
4. Revival by Gold City (reviewed 10/06) (4 1/2 Stars)
5. Get Away Jordan by Ernie Haase & Signature Sound (reviewed 2/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
6. Breakin' Chains by Three Bridges (reviewed 5/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
7. Big Sky by The Isaacs (reviewed 4/07)
8. Skywriting by Mercy's Well (reviewed 7/07)

Click title to purchase at CBD.com...click artist name to read Dave's Review. A CD will automatically fall out of the Top Eight after twelve months if no CD surpasses it before then.

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November 19, 2005

Golden Gate Quartet (Old Clip Link)

Reading about groups from days gone by can only go so far. Written descriptions can never substitute for actually hearing the music, though. I ran across a neat website while browsing earlier this evening. It's called "BT Memories." WBT is a radio station that was established in Charlotte, NC in 1922. The website is maintained by former station employees and features a rich array of photos, articles and soundclips.

Fans of old-time Southern Gospel music will want to check out an 11 minute sound clip by the Golden Gate Quartet from 1942 available HERE. (It's in RealAudio format.) Scroll down to the section titled "Oldtime Radio Sounds." The site also has a photo of the group HERE.

This black group was very versatile as the clip demonstrates. They perform with acoustic guitar for accompaniment, as did many of the groups during this era. The program featured in the clip is mostly secular music, but there's a sacred number just before the clip fades out.

The Golden Gate Quartet does not sound at all like a "black group" to me. I've heard the Fairfield Four, Blind Boys of Alabama and others who sing in a traditional black gospel male quartet format. The Golden Gate Quartet is much more polished...less emotion driven. Their blend is sensational, and they have a precise rhythm that makes me think of the Melody Masters of the late 1940s. They sound like they could have sung right alongside the traditional white quartets of the day, and indeed they did share the stage with the Statesmen, Blackwood Brothers, and others in the late 1940s.

This all changed after the Brown Vs. Board Of Education decision by the Supreme Court raised racial tensions in the South. The group left the US to tour Europe in the mid-1950s and eventually relocated there...an unfortunate turn of events for Southern Gospel music, because the genre has been almost exclusively segregated as a white form of music ever since. There have only been five major black groups in Southern Gospel since that time...Teddy Huffam and the Gems, Charles Johnson and the Revivers, Don Degrate and Strong Tower, the Gospel Enforcers, and the Reggie Saddler Family. Only two major groups that started out as all white Southern Gospel groups have had a black member...the Imperials and the Gaither Vocal Band.

It's been over fifty years since Brown v. BOE. You'd think with all the pressure to stand out and be unique in a genre where so many groups sound the same, at least a few major groups in SG would actively pursue black candidates whenever they have an open vocal position...but no, the few active black groups that we do have in SG are all black and the other groups are all white...with a few Native Americans thrown in here and there.

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posted by David Bruce Murray @ 12:15:00 AM


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