Customer Reviews

God's Got It: Legendary Booker & Jackson Singles

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This has got to be one of the most intense, ferocious playing & shouting guitar evangelists I've ever heard, right up there with Rev. Utah Smith & Blind Willie Johnson. Every song here has a raw, relentless primitive funk that has to be heard to be believed (especially "I Gave Up All I Had" - just plain JAW-DROPPING!). It's great to know that music of this order is still alive and kicking. Where has Rev. Jackson been all my life??

I found the following info on Rev. Jackson at the AUM Fidelity web site (...). It describes him more coherently than I can:

"Reverend Charlie Jackson's God's God It is the first release on the brand new CaseQuarter label. After the better part of twenty-five years, the legendary early 1970s New Orleans Booker label (and mid 1970s Jackson label) recordings of the Baton Rouge gospel guitarist have finally been collected on CD. Ever since Reverend Jackson's Booker singles were discovered by gospel collectors in the 1970s and began to trickle out to a wider audience, his primal, funky guitar riffs have astounded listeners. Raw and unadorned and at other times spare and lyrical, these recordings are infused with sanctified energy and singing. In addition to his own singles collected here are records by Brother Ike Gordon and Caravan No. 2 of Zachary, which feature Reverend Jackson as accompanist. Further special features are two very rare songs from his own Jackson label which feature the wonderful vocals of Laura "Tiny B" Davis, as well as a recently discovered (in March 2003 !) Booker single that had seemingly been forever lost."

There is also this snippet of a NYT review:

"Rev. Charlie Jackson has immense rhythmic power, and the recordings bristle with intensity. The music is meant to make you move, and it is hard not to. These songs rock without taking even a small vacation." - The New York Times

Subtitled The Legendary Booker and Jackson Singles, this CD contains 18 tracks transferred from 45-rpm vinyl singles (whose master tapes have vanished) cut in the '70s by Reverend Charlie Jackson. A Fender Mustang-toting Baptist minister, Jackson picks bluesy lines à la Lightnin' Hopkins and sings with the feral intensity of Howlin' Wolf. "The Goodness of God" was recorded during a church service, so Jackson's distorted riffs and wild exhortations are accompanied by much sanctified shouting and communal call-and-response. Other songs -- such as the tremolo-laden "I Gave It All I Had" and the ferocious "Fix It Jesus" -- are performances Jackson recorded live in the studio backed by hand-clapping singers. In several instances, another vocalist takes the lead as Jackson strums churning grooves worthy of Pop Staples. When Laura Davis moans "I Am Thinking of a Friend" over the reverend's subtly throbbing riffs, she obliterates the distinction between a blues lament and a gospel hymn. Have mercy!

If more preachers played Fender Jaguar guitars I might find myself converted.

While not as electrifying as Fred McDowell or Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Charlie Jackson combines raunchy blues licks with rough-edged folk metaphors "Jesus got his hook in me, and I don't wanna get loose"-- all I could want from a 70s gospel record.

I have always been somewhat taken aback when reading the accounts of the 60s "ethnomusicologists" who scoured the South looking for Fred McDowells and Skip Jameses, pegging them as nothing more than academic carpetbaggers competing to see who could find the most authentic old Negro with a guitar.

Occasionally, good music can occasionally be discovered as a byproduct of basically patrician and passively racist hobbies. In this case, someone found a box of old recordings and we are all the beneficiaries. The Reverend Charlie Jackson played Raw Jesus, the kind of stuff you can't hear in the non-denominational stadiums that pass for churches these days. He was the gospel root, walking and talking like a man, playing without need of overdubs, on an obscure record label run out of New Orleans that funded its pressings through chicken suppers.

Reverend Jackson's sanctified voice could be heard for 15 minutes a day in Baton Rouge for several years, on a radio program he paid for himself. Reverend Charlie Jackson died in his sleep on February 13, 2006 - as it apparently wasn't covered on the major networks, it took me awhile to find out. An excellent collection of his work.

If you believe in Jesus and love raw, REAL blues, get this CD! Absolutely GREAT guitar driven gospel with FEELING. Every track is worth it for me. I can't say enough good things about this album. Buy it now, thank me later.

raw, sweet, hypnotic. this is the apotheosis of electric guitar gospel blues evangelism. take it to the bank.

"tangled up in Jesus" and the testimony is worth the price of the disc.

Reverend Charlie Jackson is one of The underrated Great Guitar Evangelists.Powerful Vocals and Raw, Delta Blues Based Guitar delivery will send chills up your spine if you have any Soul at all!I have all his known recordings and Reverend Jackson IS THE REAL DEAL when it comes to Sanctified Holiness Guitar Music!(Rev. Jackson went home to be with Jesus this year in February 2006).