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Bill Worthington was a coal miner from eastern Kentucky who also sang with a gospel quartet. He tells the story of the time his group got to play on a program headlined by the great Pilgrim Travelers. Bill's group were local favorites and got to go on next to last, just before the Travelers. They were rehearsed, ready and looking good and played a strong set, confident that they could show the famous Pilgrim Travelers something. They closed with an original, their signature song, to thunderous applause from the local audience. Then the Pilgrim Travelers took the stage. They came out singing Bill's original song, doing it Bill's way - word for word, note for note, harmony for harmony. Then at the turn-around after the first verse, they shifted gears and sang the same verse again, this time rocking it Pilgrim Traveler's style. The audience went wild and the mighty Pilgrim Traveler's soared on from there.

Studio CD's can't capture the magic of nights like that, but there is some fine music here. Take "Something Within Me", which the Travelers make into an exercise in gradually building intensity over repetition, sort of the way Ravel did with his "Bolero". The bass is a constantly repeated lower register chant at a walking tempo "Oh my, lordy lord. Oh my, lordy lord." Switching leads pick up the intensity from a mellow beginning until the turn-around before the last verse reaches a crescendo of chord voicings climbing the scale, each louder and higher then before, climaxing when that bass chant sweeps up a full octave for the last verse and a scorching new lead (Kylo Turner? Keith Barber?) sails in at full roar. It's a moment that will bring you out of your chair with the hair on the back of your neck standing up. Awesome stuff.

This is one of my favorite cds by the Pilgrim Travelers, I've always loved their music, their style and their annointing. Their songs are so full of the Holy Ghost, I can't sit still while listening to it...

I love this type of music. My mother use to play these records when I was young and I'm glad they are now on CD. I have almost collected most of the music she played. I still have a few more to get. I need the Staple singer singing John Brown, the Swan Silvertones with I remember and Oh Mary don't you weep and Sam Cooke sing Oh Mary don't you weep and a few more.

This CD compilation on the legendary Speciality Records combines two "Best of" LP's into one disc for a bargain price. With Keith Barber and Kylo Turner, the group used close and nuanced harmonies and a distinctive lower timbre (more suitable to Turner's baritone voice) to produce a sound that was a bit "smoother" than the "wreck the house" sanctified shouting that made the Soul Stirrers with R.H. Harris (later to be replaced by Sam Cooke) the reigning kings of hard gospel in the 1950's. But make no mistake, the Pilgrims could "lay them out" in the aisles with hard-driving shouters like "Jesus, I'm Thankful," then bring tears to every eye with the low and slow weeper "I've Got a Mother Gone Home."

The Pilgrim Travelers combined everything that typified the best of the hard gospel groups of the 1950's, welded into a distinctive sound that was all their own: "Mother Songs" and "weepers", house wreckers like "Something Within Me" or "Jesus, I'm Thankful," and topical songs like "Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb." Most importantly, the Pilgrim Travelers always had that indefinable thing we immediately recognize as "swing" or sometimes "soul," just like best blues, jazz, and pop music. Listen to "Satisfied with Jesus," and you'll be convinced. Even a weeper like "Mother Gone Home" sets up a loping rhythm that propels and perfects the song. Music was deep in the bones of every song the Pilgrim Travelers sang.

This is great, solid, hard-driving gospel at its best. I've been listening to this CD for over a quarter century and I never get tired of it. Highly Recommended.

Pilgrim Travelers know how to deliver
They will have you patting your feet
and trying to sing along to their intricate melodies
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