In These Changing Times: October's Good Grooves

Highlights from my latest curation for SoulandJazz.com, includes the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Bob and Pauline Wilson of Seawind & Archbishop William Morris O'Neil

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Fall is here. The temperature in Nashville finally dropped this past week, relieving us of what has been an unbearably hot summer. Since last week’s newsletter, I was able to write 6000 words for the next chapter of the book…which means I just might have a first draft ready to share with the editor by the end of the year! Regular #GodsMusicisMyLife features will be returning as soon as I finish these two chapters!

Yesterday, the October edition of #ChurchOfTheGoodGroove went live on SoulandJazz.com and some of the choices on the playlist coincide with what I’ve been writing about in the current chapter of the book, so I wanted to highlight a few things about some of the songs.

Click here to listen to the playlist!

1. In These Changing Times—Mighty Clouds of Joy (1978)

Last month, I was privileged to write liner notes for an upcoming reissue of the Mighty Clouds of Joy’s 1975 album, Kickin’, which contained their crossover single, “Mighty High.” Their collaboration with Dave Crawford (who also wrote and produced Candi Staton’s “Young Hearts Run Free”), which began with 1974’s It’s Time, marks the group’s transition into contemporary gospel. They were heavily criticized for the shift in their sound by many, but most notably James Cleveland no less, as evidenced by the testy April 1976 JET feature shown above, but they came together with Rev. Cleveland in 1978 to produce half of their Changing Times album. The album sought to reintroduce the traditional sound alongside the disco-oriented material the group was doing.

Frank Wilson (who’d also produced the group’s stunning 1977 album Truth Is The Power) handled the more contemporary cuts, like the album’s title track which was served to discos on a 12” single mixed by John Luongo. The group maintained that despite the change in sound and, often, the venue, they were, indeed, a gospel group. “We have never left gospel music,” group member Richard Wallace told reporter Chuck Lewis. “For years, people have been trying to push us into that direction. Our music has changed, but that change was necessary to expand the audience our music was reaching.” The album won the group their second Grammy Award.

2. Keep My Eyes On Jesus—Bob & Pauline Wilson of Seawind (1981)

   

   Seawind was a jazz-soul-funk fusion band that began turning heads in West Coast clubs and with their stellar debut album on CTI Records. They found a following with Jesus People on the West Coast, with cuts like “The Devil Is A Liar” and “He Loves You,” but did not pursue a career within the Contemporary Christian Music model. Instead, they built credibility among the Los Angeles session musicians. Billboard described Seawind as “a bastion of instrumental skill, producing a hybrid sound of jazz, rock and pop.”

   “On the first album,” Bob relayed in an interview with CCM, “the songs were written out of innocence as a brand new Christian and, all of a sudden, the Christians were going wild over this. I don’t think any of us thought that it would gain the respect of the Christian world.” The group, however, felt committed to being free from the rules and regulations of the Christian music model. He continued,

   "The church has locked up all the art and said it has to have a cross, a dove or a picture of Jesus in it before it’s Christian art. But the artist’s feeling have to encompass more than a picture of Jesus or the name of Jesus in a song. And the church is holding him, and saying ‘You will say the name of Jesus and by the end of this album, you will have X amount of souls or the album has no validity in the Christian community.”

   But in 1981, the group’s drummer, Bob, and lead singers, Pauline, recorded a single album for the CCM label, Myrrh Records, despite the criticism they’’d received from the Christian world. Bob told Contemporary Christian Music, “We were treated worse by our brothers and sisters who said we were out in the world so I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.” The result of their collaboration at Myrrh, Somebody Loves You, is an overlooked and forerunning album that helped clear the way for albums like Amy Grant’s Unguarded or Kathy Troccoli’s Images that reflected Christian perspectives on life, even if they were not as directly Christian as the market was accustomed to.

3. Wings—Christian Tabernacle Choir featuring Archbishop William Morris O’Neil (1964)
   
   When I began my undergraduate thesis on the New York Community Choir back in 2014, I had never heard of Archbishop William Morris O’Neil or his Harlem-based Christian Tabernacle or Los Angeles-based Universal Tabernacle. When my interviews with Bennie Diggs and Arthur Freeman pointed me to him, I did my best to learn all that I could—and have continued to for the past nine years.

   
   In 1964, Christian Tabernacle’s choir recorded a live album (Swing Hallelujah) for Elektra Records, capturing the magic of their Sunday morning services. Archbishop O’Neil leads this arrangement of “Two Wings,” and gives us a glimpse of the magnanimous personality that he was.

   
   When I went to New York in April, I visited the very first site of Christian Tabernacle in Harlem (2230 8th Avenue), which thankfully still exists.

   

   

   You can hear all of the songs highlighted in today’s newsletter—and MORE!—by listening to the entire October edition of #ChurchOfTheGood Groove. To do that, just click here!