Sunday morning gospel: The Southern-Aires Gospel Singers--Heaven Is My Home (Westwood Record Co. 1016)

Whenever you see R.E. Winsett, Luther G. Presley, and Albert E. Brumley in the composer credits, and titles like Jesus Is Coming Soon, He Bore It All, and I'll Have a New Life, you know you're in for some country and/or bluegrass gospel.  But you have no way of predicting how country and/or bluegrass it's going to be until you lay the needle down.  In the case of the Southern-Aires Gospel Singers, a group the internet gives me no information about, the sounds are as down home as down home gets.  Anything more down home than this, and... I don't know.  It's impossible to imagine.

And it's impossible to imagine worse sound engineering.  If this material wasn't so fascinating, I wouldn't have bothered with it, because the voices are distorted, with an extremely exaggerated treble response.  Then again, we don't know what the engineer was handed in the way of a master tape--the singers could simply have been too close to the microphones during the taping.  At any rate, combining the channels and cutting the treble made for halfway listenable sound.  For significantly less terrible sound, at least.  I'm guessing early 1970s for the recording date--discogs has a very limited discography for the label (Westwood Record Co.), with no LP dates, right here.

You could easily believe these were recorded in 1928 or so--they have the sound of some of the family gospel quartets recorded during the early electrical era, if in somewhat better fidelity.  By "better fidelity," I mean a wider frequency range, though not much of one, considering.  All I know is that I've been astonished, ever since I thrifted this disc a couple decades ago, that a style of singing this old-fashioned would have survived into the 1970s.  I have a few other examples of stuck-in-place quartet singing, but this may be the example.  And, as for why there are five people pictured for a quartet, I believe the shyly smiling blonde is Bonnie Moore, pianist.  The singers are the older folks.  And if this LP has a handed-out-at-personal-appearances look, I'm sure it's because it was.  We usually call such LPs vanity projects, but these records were the bread and butter of these groups, so I don't think that term really applies.  "Very limited production" comes to mind as a phrase.

"The singers are originally from West Virginia," read the liner notes, and my reply is, No kidding!  These highly enjoyable and wonderfully old-fashioned (but not so skillfully recorded) performances make those of outfits like the Blackwood Bros., not to mention some of the smoother quartets of the 1920s, sound slick and urban by comparison, though, as is often the case with gospel, the biggest difference is in the delivery, not the material or even the actual harmonies.  I think it would be a mistake to categorize these performances as folk in any way, as Appalachian as they sound, because the popular gospel music of the 20th century is hugely a product of song books, the singing school tradition, and highly disciplined singing, regardless of the form in which it reaches us--either as a style that sounds fresh from the hills or, say, one that sounds more RFGH (ready for the Gaither Hour).  It's all from the same pool.  Anyway, to our offering.  Bad sound, but music that makes up for it.




LINK: Heaven Is My Home--Southern-Aires Gospel Singers





Theme
Heaven's Really Gonna Shine (Brumley)
He Bore It All (Baxter, Jr.-Stamps)
I'll Have a New Life (Presley)
Angels Rock Me to Sleep (Ramsey-Easterling)
Gonna Rise up and Shine (Eugene Wright)
Salvation Has Been Brought Down (Brumley)
Heaven Is My Home (Baxter, Jr.-Swilling)
Jesus Is Coming Soon (Winsett)
Hide Me, Rock of Ages (George)
When I Looked Up and He Looked Down (Brumley)
Echoes from the Burning Bush (Foust-Summar)
Shurley (sic), I Will Lord (Brumley)
Just a Little Talk with Jesus (Derricks)

Southern-Aires Gospel Singers--Heaven Is My Home (Westwood Record Co. 1016)

Lee