5.0 out of 5 stars
Just the Finest Gospel Singer God Ever Gave Breath, June 13, 2004
This review is from: Soul of a Woman (Audio CD)
Born to a poor family in 1911 in New Orleans, Mahalia Jackson grew up singing in her father's church--and soaking up the blues and jazz for which that city is so famous. By the late 1920s she was in Chicago, where her distinctly jazz and blues-inflected singing style nearly got her thrown out of the Greater Salem Baptist Church. But Mahalia persevered, and in the early 1950s a series of radio and television broadcasts launched her first to national and then international acclaim. Some thirty years after her death in 1972, she is still considered the single greatest gospel singer America has ever produced.
Numerous collections of Jackson's work are presently on the market, and while all of them seem to include several basic songs, there is quite a bit of wobble to the wheel from CD to CD. While this particular CD has but twelve selections, it makes up for brevity by including a number of harder-to-find titles, including "Rusty Bell," "Elijah Rock," and "Down By The Riverside"--all of them brilliantly performed.
Although the various cuts are subject to the limitations of the era in which they were recorded, Jackson's great talent easily transcends every issue. Whether the song is up-tempo or slow and dark, she reaches across time and space and transmits the power of her convictions in what can only be described as one of the great voices of the 20th Century, a voice that rings like a bell and that carries a sea of emotion behind every note. Truly a great artist of this or any other age, and strongly recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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