Turning 40: Cassietta George & Vanessa Bell Armstrong

These releases by two of gospel's premiere vocalists provide a unique look into the wide range of sounds embraced by gospel music lovers in 1984.

Cassietta George—I Want to See Jesus—Savoy Records

“You never know what can happen in a service. People are not the same everywhere. When you are in Rome, you do as the Romans. I’m your servant. I work for God who is my boss.”—Cassietta George to the Clarion-Ledger (1986)

Cassietta George’s discography epitomizes this idea. Her solo career began in the mid-1960s after having spent almost a decade as one of the brilliant artists in Albertina Walker’s Caravans. She had written some of their biggest hits, like “Walk Around Heaven All Day” (a gospel adaptation of “That Lucky Old Sun,” a pop tune popularized by Frankie Laine in 1949), “To Whom Shall I Turn,” and “I’m Ready To Serve the Lord.” While people may not have known she wrote the hits, she electrified audiences with her fervor whether it was on record or in person. A quick listen to “Remember Me” or “Stand By Me” from The Caravans years will make clear to anyone listening just why she became a favorite.

When she left the group that had introduced her to the world, she embarked on a solo career with nearly a dozen albums for the Los Angeles based Audio Arts Records, which earned her two Grammy nominations. Audio Arts gave her the opportunity to explore the full gamut of gospel sounds. She recorded studio albums as if she were in a service, sometimes with just piano and organ accompaniment, but also recorded visionary works that saw her pursuing crossover success like the stellar This Time and Signs. But she was best captured live. 1979’s Grammy-nominated Cassietta in Concert (recorded at LA’s Ambassdor Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove) and 1980’s This Is Your Day share the full spectrum of Cassietta: singer, storyteller and preacher. When her agreement with Audio Arts ended, she re-emerged with 1983’s A Legend, produced by R&B and gospel luminary, DJ Rogers for his Hope Song imprint.

A Legend could have been an incredible next progression in her career. Rogers’ own R&B albums had successfully melded the gospel sound with a R&B sheen without losing the fire (“Say You Love Me” is proof of that!), but his production on A Legend seemed more focused on slick, polished instrumentation than on who Cassietta actually was. She noticed this herself, telling an audience at the Gospel Music Workshop of America, “The singers was singing…the musicians was playing…but the album hadn’t been touched.” In response to this feeling, she delivered the album’s most enduring track, a cover of Gary Paxton’s “He Was There All the Time,” which she’d heard Tammy Faye Bakker singing on The PTL Club. It became a career song for her—something she would re-record three more times across the next decade. When Hope Song folded, she signed a one-album agreement with Savoy Records in 1984.

The resultant I Want to See Jesus, recorded live at Bishop Gilbert Earl Patterson’s Temple of Deliverance Church of God in Christ in her hometown of Memphis, is, in this writer’s opinion, the album of her career—one that was indeed “touched.” Clocking in at just under forty-five minutes, the album captures Cassietta at the top of her game. The album’s title track (famously covered by Cissy Houston in the documentary Sweet Inspiration) showcases Cassietta not just as a singer, but as a writer and arranger whose works were chock full of complex changes and rhythmic variations. She also revisits “Wait For Me,” one of her compositions from her early days with The Caravans, bringing it into the eighties but maintaining her strong quartet roots.

From the modern gospel songbook, she cut Dewitt Johnson’s “Jesus the Miracle Man” a song that became the breakout hit from the album. “Miracle Man” is as contemporary as the album gets, though. The album’s core rests with the heavy songs from the gospel-blues tradition. On “Use Me Lord,” she wrings every bit of emotion she can from the song, moaning, lamenting, wailing and preaching for nearly seven minutes without letting up. It’s the kind of performance that defines what gospel music really is. Similarly on “I’m Going to Work Until My Day Is Done,” she lets the song build, showcasing the influence of Clara Ward on her pacing and tonality, but when she hits the song’s mid-section, she reveals just how deeply her father/preacher impacted her delivery. She and the choir exchange lines in the reprise, climaxing into a shout, simply tagged “Jesus” on this release.

Sadly, I Want to See Jesus didn’t earn the kind of acclaim it deserved and her studio output in the last decade of her life was uneven. She rebounded the year before her 1995 death with a Dorothy Norwood-produced set, Dorothy Norwood Presents…Cassietta George, the Ron Carson-produced Cassietta George Live…48 Years of Gospel Music and two step-outs on Dorothy Norwood’s Grammy-nominated collaboration with the Georgia Mass Choir, Feel Like. In today’s era of praise and worship chants, the 40th anniversary of I Want to See Jesus presents a golden opportunity to relive a more balanced moment when traditional and contemporary gospel could co-exist.

Play the whole album here.

Vanessa Bell Armstrong—Chosen—Onyx Records

When Vanessa Bell Armstrong entered the studio with fellow Detroit-ian Thomas Whitfield, it’s doubtful that anyone anticipated just how magical their collaboration would be. Armstrong’s 1983 Onyx Records debut, Peace Be Still, sky rocked to the top of the national gospel music charts with Whitfield’s rearrangement of “Peace Be Still,” a hymn written by Mary Ann Baker in 1874 that James Cleveland had revolutionized in 1963 with Nutley, New Jersey’s Angelic Choir.

The artist who presented Whitfield’s reimagined version of this hymn was Vanessa Bell Armstrong, a vocalist whose earliest recordings were captured as a teenager in Mattie Moss Clark’s Southwest Michigan State Choir in the 1960s. She’s emerged again in the 70s with the Voices of Heaven’s gospelized cover of “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.” But when she re-emerged in 1983, she was an adult whose voice had matured…and an artist who had come into her own.

Her debut album introduced her as a well-rounded artist, capable of handling contemporary (“Anyway You Bless Me”) and traditional gospel sounds (the title track, “He’s Real”) as well as material that leaned on the contemporary Christian and inspirational side (“For God So Loved the World,” “I Have Surrendered”). The pressure for album number two which would be titled Chosen had to be present—but you’d never know it based on how it plays.

From the first moment of the percussive introduction of “What He’s Done For Me,” the album exudes confidence, mastery and sass. The magic of Whitfield and Armstrong’s collaborations was the delicate way they pushed the envelope with jazz and funk sounds while maintaining the fervor and ‘anointing’ of traditional gospel to satisfy younger and older listeners. “What He’s Done For Me” provides a groove that the unchurched would love with the spirit hard core gospel fans required.

From the opener on out, Chosen moves like a well-oiled machine. The album’s churchiest tunes, Steven Roberts’ “Nobody But Jesus” and Andre Woods’ “Faith That Conquers,” showcase just how unique Armstrong’s vocal delivery was and is. These songs are, perhaps, the most definitive in terms of providing the template most of the vocalists from the next generation would follow in terms of stocking their vocal tool chest. What does one hear in Vanessa’s vocals? The undeniable influence of Aretha Franklin and the flourishes and runs that came from being under the tutelage of Mattie Moss Clark—but there are also hints of Nancy Wilson and Marion Williams. But Vanessa isn’t copying. She took elements from these artists and transmuted them into her own sound. She and Whitfield turn the spiritual “Walk With Me” on its ear, shifting it from a dirge to a jazzy jaunt, with Vanessa taking her time and showing off her ability to stretch out, to almost flirt with the song, taunting the listener with the ease with which she moves all around the song’s melody line, slithering into every possible crevice and making it entirely her own (Don’t miss Tata Vega’s take on the Whitfield/Armstrong arrangement from 1998’s Now I See).

Chosen sets out to establish that there’s not a single genre Vanessa can’t handle. From jazz (“I Feel Jesus”) to R&B (“Waitin’”) to praise and worship (“Teach Me Oh Lord”), Whitfield ensured that Armstrong would be seen as a singer of the highest order. What undergirded that assertion, however, was stellar musicianship and, most importantly, well crafted songs.

If there’s a mis-step on this album, it’s “There’s a Brighter Day,” an overly done, oddly re-written version of Derrick Lee’s “There’s a Better Day,” originally recorded by the Twenty-First Century Singers. It seems patterned after Shirley Caesar’s cover of Leon Patillo’s “Star of the Morning” from the same year, sporting the kind of synthesized orchestration that Loris Holland was introducing in gospel music. But the problem with Whitfield’s revision of Lee’s composition is that it loses the musical grit and political grounding of the original, shifting it from a song that passively implies a reckoning on earth (“He shall separate the wheat from the tares”) with some reluctance (‘better’ is a bit more skeptical than ‘brighter’) to a song about a rapturous escape.

“Brighter Day” aside, Chosen remains the crown jewel in Armstrong’s catalog and one of Whitifield’s most important productions. It would be one of Billboard’s best-selling gospel albums of 1985 and would earn Vanessa her second Grammy nomination, paving the way for her deal with Jive Records which would introduce her to the mainstream market. In 1986, she’d blast into millions of homes singing the theme song for the hugely popular sitcom Amen, and would appear in the film, The Women of Brewster Place. She is undeniably one of the most important vocalists across genres, serving as an inspiration for Mariah Carey, Kelly Price, Faith Evans, and countless others.

Play the entire album here.

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