The Mighty Clouds of Joy on WUNC's 'The State of Things'

The Mighty Clouds of Joy

The State of Things with Frank Stasio | WUNC-FM 91.5

They’ve played with the likes of Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye, and their music has been a gospel mainstay for more than 50 years. The Mighty Clouds of Joy with lead singer Joe Ligon play live in the studio for host Frank Stasio.

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Gospel Legend DeLois Barrett Campbell Goes Home

Gospel Great DeLois Barrett Campbell Dies

by Stella Foster | Chicago Sun-Times

DeLois Barrett Campbell--one of three sisters who made up Chicago’s legendary gospel trio the Barrett Sisters--died Tuesday.

She was in her 80s.

The Barrett Sisters began singing and harmonizing gospel music during the 1940s in a religious family of 10 children on the South Side of Chicago.

Their father, Lonnie, was a singer and deacon at the Morning Star Baptist Church here, where young Billie and DeLois Barrett Campbell first sang with a cousin, Jonnie Mae Hudson.

When Hudson died in 1952, sister Rodessa Porter joined the trio, creating the Barrett Sisters

During the formative years of the early 1950s, the Barrett Sisters were inspired and influenced by the rich harmony, detailed phrasing and expressive presence of the Roberta Martin Singers.

Campbell, who suffered from acute arthritis in both knees, was confined to a wheelchair in her later years.

Before spending her 71st birthday at Trinity United Church of Christ in 1997, she told the Sun-Times, “I’m doing pretty good, although I’m completely confined to a wheelchair. We just returned from doing 10 concerts in Switzerland. You just keep going. For 60 years, I’ve been singing nothing but gospel.”

Does Conscious Music Still Matter? John Legend and the Roots

Has Conscious Black music gotten more of a voice in the Obama era?

'How We Got Over?': John Legend and The Roots Look Back
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

As the myth goes, Clara Ward, one of the most influential Gospel singers of the 20th Century, wrote the song “How I Got Over” after a racist incident in the deep South. The Clara Ward singers were driving down South when their Cadillac was surrounded by a group of White men, upset that a group of Black women were driving in such a fine car. Supposedly Ward feigned being possessed by the devil and the men ran off. The subsequent song “How I Got Over,” which was later popularized by Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin, and recently invoked by The Roots, is not only a testament to “God’s deliverance,” but also a tribute to African-American ingenuity in the face of danger and trauma.

Ward knew, as well as anyone, that the song’s title tapped into the spirit of improvisation that manifested itself in the everyday survival skills of African-Americans, and it was the music that animated both that creative spirit and the will for freedom that marked earlier generations of Black culture. Conventional wisdom suggest that the irrepressible spirit that help Blacks transcend From Slavery to Freedom, to invoke the late great historian John Hope Franklin, is not present among this generation of artists and creative intellectuals. Wake Up! by John Legend & the Roots, suggest the error of conventional wisdom.

The thing that is perhaps most striking about Wake Up! is that it was even made; prior to Barack Obama election it’s easy to imagine record labels frowning on such project, particularly for artists who already presented a mainstream marketing challenge because of their “conscious” personas. It’s a different story in 2010 and what the Obama era has meant for many recording artists, is the total collapse of the music industry’s most recent business model. While the industry tries to chart an exit strategy (perhaps mirroring the Obama administration), some artists are suddenly finding the freedom to just simply get back to the music. Longtime Public Enemy front-man Chuck D, for example, recently suggested that conditions for recording artists are the best they have been in more than a generation.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

From The Lost Soul Archives: Raymond Myles @ Greater St. Stephens in New Orleans

The Late, Great New Orleans Gospel artist Raymond Myles performing at Bishop Paul Morton's Greater St, Stephens in New Orleans.