Overdose of The Holy Ghost

Description

Overdose of The Holy Ghost, sub-titled The sound of Gospel through the Disco and Boogie eras, is a multi-artist double disc compilation released on Z Records in April 2013. Compiled by David Hill.

I’ve been waiting for a compilation like this one for years. Thanks to pioneers like Andrae Crouch by the ’70s black gospel was finally beginning to awaken to the fact that despite all the superlative vocal talent at their disposal accompaniments consisting of little more than a guitar or an organ made their music anachronistic and out of step with the ’60s soul music explosion. So some gospel acts began using full bands and slick arrangements in their recordings, no easy thing considering the limited studio time usually available. Such R&B gospel pioneers like Tramaine and the Clark Sisters were occasionally rewarded with “crossover” hits. In fact it’s a track by the Clark Sisters that gives this album its arresting title, a simmering piece of slow funk penned by the redoubtable Twinkie Clark. This two CD package neatly celebrates church singers embracing the rhythms of disco and funk and in doing so offers a few cuts from some of gospel’s biggest names (the aforementioned Clark Sisters, BeBe & CeCe Winans, Shirley Caesar) together with a welter of obscure artists whose music is now finding an unexpected bit of exposure on Britain’s jazz funk and rare soul scenes. No better example of this is Rahni Harris, represented here by «He’s My Friend» from his 1977 ‘A Different Drummer’ album. Rahni’s instrumental «Six Million Steps», according to the sleevenotes, “made its way onto the dance floors of Essex, quickly gaining classic status.” Those impressively researched sleevenotes were written by David Hill who compiled the album and we must thank him for bringing to the CD racks such gems as D J Rogers’ «All I Gave Him Was My Heart» where the rasping R&B and gospel man’s tones are perfectly offset by the McCrarys’ repeated refrain; The Young Delegation’s «I’ll Keep Holding On» which sounds like a lost Womack & Womack track which it largely is; BeBe & CeCe Winans’ «I Really Love You» taken from their hard-to-find ‘Lord Lift Us Up‘ album from the era when the brother and sister were regular contributors on TV’s subsequently discredited PTL (Praise The Lord) Club; and possibly best of all, the dazzling «Heavenly Father» where gospel matriarch Shirley Caesar shows she is able to sing across a slickly funky groove put together by producer Michael Stokes without losing any of her soul power. Once or twice the standards drop on this set, particularly when church acts try covering R&B hits of the day so that Ricky Womack & Christian Essence’s attempt to gospelize «I Need You» or Kristle’s «I’ll Go» (which uses the Emotions’ «Best Of My Love» as its foundation) are a little underwhelming. But with 24 tracks, some of which would cost you an arm and a leg to purchase in their original form, this is a compilation to be heartily recommended both to those music students wanting to understand how gospel moved from its “golden age” of the quartets and Mahalia through to the Kirk Franklins and Mary Marys of today and also to those who, like me, find soulful singers, tasty disco funk grooves and lyrics which lift up the living God an irresistible combination. [Tony Cummings, Cross Rhythms, April 2013]

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2CD tracklist:

Disc One

1-01. The Clark Sisters – Overdose of The Holy Ghost – 4:24
1-02. Shirley Caesar – Heavenly Father – 4:46
1-03. Ricky Womack & Christian Essence – I Need You (Joey Negro Edit) – 5:33
1-04. Dan Greer – Love Is The Message (Joey Negro Edit) – 4:17
1-05. Kristle – I’ll Go – 3:50
1-06. D.J. Rogers – All I Gave Him Was My Heart – 3:54
1-07. The Young Delegation – I’ll Keep Holdin On – 4:10
1-08. Linda Evans – I Am Gold – 4:21
1-09. Elbernita ‘Twinkie’ Clark – Awake O Zion – 5:55
1-10. Tommy T & Company – Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere – 4:08
1-11. Truth & Devotion – I Must See My Lord – 4:08
1-12. Norman Weeks & The Revelations – Hold On – 14:02

Disc Two

2-01. The Clark Sisters – Everything’s Gonna Be Alright (Joey Negro Edit) – 6:50
2-02. Gloster Williams & Master Control – No Cross, No Crown – 9:06
2-03. Roslyn & Charles – Was Not Intended (David Hill Edit) – 2:39
2-04. The Dynamic Clark Sisters – Ha Ya (Eternal Life) – 4:50
2-05. The Young Delegation – He Lives – 4:43
2-06. Sharon Johnson – A Better Day – 3:28
2-07. BeBe & CeCe Winans – I Really Love You (David Hill Edit) – 3:33
2-09. Shirley Caesar – Message To The People – 4:36
2-10. Ronia La Vee – Lead Me – 3:56
2-11. Rahni Harris & Family Love – He’s My Friend – 5:00
2-12. James Moore – As A Nation (David Hill Edit) – 3:12

Note: Released both as a double CD and as a 12-inch double LP by Z Records.

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I offer apologies to you readers and DJ/post-producer/Z Records U.K. chief Joey Negro for the delay in getting this review written. My getting of it occurred around the time some of my screen time was spent watching all the online documentaries about the development of disco culture and music to be found on YootOob. Exactly how to contextualize the symbiotic relationship between Afrimerican club music and church music – and keeping it succinct – became a conundrum.

But the gist of the first half of that last sentence well summarizes the spirit (heh heh?) of Overdose Of The Holy Ghost. At least since Thomas Dorsey’s jump from jubilee singing to the soul gospel he innovated, based in part on the blues in which he got his professional musical start and would occasionally return after his Christan conversion, the sounds sung from pews and danced to in nightspots have shuffled influence among each other. This aesthetic exchange takes place in parallel manners sartorially (depending on the congregation and occasion, dressing to impress can still be common on Sunday morning as it is Saturday night) and sexually (right or wrong, black gays and lesbians have found solace and acceptance in the church, often significantly contributing to its music, long before New York City’s 1969 Stonewall riots led to the sociological conditions that led multi-cultural homosexuals to find alternative “worship” experiences in discotheques).

So, it should be no surprise that soul gospel would draw from disco and the more down tempo, groove-intensive boogie R&B that followed in the ’80s. Though the musical relationship on record goes far back as the mid-’70s when the same producers helming albums by R&B acts on ABC Records also going into the studio with soul gospel acts on the Word label it owned at the time, most notably The Mighty Clouds Of Holy and The Beautiful Zion Choir, Overdose’s purview runs from 1977-84. Friends for the rarefied niche in which this compilation trades, few though we may be, may wish for a start date some time in the second Nixon administration, but this double-CD set serves a useful overview of the time and cross-genre fusion it surveys.

Its titular tune comes from the only act here to merit more than one tune, The Clark Sisters. The ladies’ «You Brought The Sunshine» made a slightly reggae-ish club and R&B radio splash in ’82-’83, but «Overdose…» from the same album as that hit offers a more stutteringly funky offering that acts as a lesson in the baptism of – you guessed, yes? – the Holy Spirit. «Ha Ya (Eternal Life)» ups the beats per minute for a hearty piano-heavy Hebraic chant featuring their mom and Church Of God In Christ national choir director Mattie Moss Clark. Negro’s own edit of the gals’ «Everything’s Gonna Be Alright» beans with four-on-the-floor disco oomph not dissimilar to the ’93 remix of The Doobie Brothers’ «Long Train’ Runnin’» that hit the U.K. pop Top 10. Keeping it further in the fam’, Elbertina “Twinkie” Clark’s «Awake O Zion» brings a more urgent, nigh breathless sort of mantra over a musical framework that redolent of ’70s Philadelphia International Records’ house band, MFSB (with drummer Earl Young, the skins man reputed to have “invented” disco with his beat on Harold Melvin & The blue Notes’ «The Love I Lost»).

Other acts with bits of general market success made the licensing cut as well. Six years after his late ’70s top 20 entry «Love Brought Me Back», D.J. Rogers was more overtly Christocentic in his vocal tack and recording the stomping «All I Gave Him Was My Heart». And a few years before their retrospectively strange late ’80s-mid-’90s run of urban radio successes at Capitol and Sparrow, BeBe & CeCe Winans were PTL Club regulars, recording slickness like «I Really Love You» (quoting Johnny Bistol’s «Hang On In There» in the process) on their one long-player for Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker’s own label; the one presented here is an edit by Overdose compiler/noted English club DJ David Hill.

More roundabout crossing over comes from Rahni Harris & Family Love, whose «He’s My Friend» is one of the most straightforwardly gospel songs here, but its bubbly instrumental version b-side, retitled «Six Million Steps», would strike a note with England’s nascent jazz funk scene; Harris would later change his last name to Song, and the 1977 album whence «Friend» comes would lead to a career shifting between the urban gospel of bands such as Kingdom to singing with funk band Dayton and playing keyboards on George Clinton’s ’83 funk colossus «Atomic Dog».

Best known of the remaining acts over the set’s 24 tracks would have to be Shirley Caesar, whose «Heavenly Father» dates from her late ’70s tenure with United Artists’ Roadshow imprint, where fitting the former Caravans singer into a variety of styles was thought to be a road to broader general market appeal. Nothing from that era of hers worked well as her semi-spoken word Mother’s Day chestnut, «No Charge», but «Father» works up a hearty funked-up disco’ness to abet her praises. «Message For For The People» from the same era simmers like the soundtrack music for a driving scene in a lost blaxploitation movie as she offers eqial helpings of encouragement and foreboding. Another female singer, Linda Evans (no relation to the Dynasty actress), put her spin on a track from the first album by Earth Wind & Fire’s Phillip Bailey’s for the cCm and gospel markets, «I Am Gold»; eschewing the more famous tenor’s slow intro’ she gets the affirmation of the Lord’s trying a believer by fire straight to the dance floor.

Lesser known, but often even more collectable, names don’t disappoint, either. Some, such as Kristle’s «I’ll Go» succeed at an established template like the dancey, Godly female vocalist; Norman Weeks & The Revelations’ «Hold On» may have been a jazz funkster holy grail, with what’s probably one of the few recorded examples of gospel scat singing. The Fannie Clark Singers (related to the other Clarks here? can’t say, but they share a former record company in Sound Of Gospel) bring fulsome mid tempo, low down stomp to «Lord, Use Me», as do Rosalyn & Charles on their entirely too brief «Was Not Intended». James Moore concludes the santicifed shebang by finding a bumping compromise between jazziness and Earth Wind & Fire’s sunny side and a near-skewing toward ’70s Staple Singers‘ “message music” over outright gospel on «As A Nation». But the entire collection merits exploration.

Licensing issues, the possibility that tracks may be too commonly heard within the compilers’ immediate circles of fandom and other matters may have limited Overdose’s chronological and stylistic scope, so here’s hoping this isn’t Z’s only double-disc dip into this pool of danceable inspiration. [Jamie Lee Rake, The Phantom Tollbooth, 25 February 2014]