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Zion Harmonizers: Best of New Orleans Gospel, Volume 2 |
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Reviews
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Thursday, 09 February 2006 09:00 |
Best of New Orleans Gospel, Volume 2
The Zion Harmonizers
Special Guests: Olympia Brass Band
Mardi Gras Records 1018
Review by John Sinclair
The Zion Harmonizers have been producing heavenly music in the Crescent City for more than 55 years, thrilling both ecclesiastical and secular audiences with their a capella sounds and their repertoire of timeless gospel music classics. Their many albums and their impressive personal appearance schedule attest to the group's continuing popularity, while their music itself seems to grow stronger and stronger with each passing year.
The new Zion Harmonizers release, Best of New Orleans Gospel, Volume 2, offers a pleasing program of spiritual favorites sung without accompaniment and the added attraction on several outstanding tracks of backing by producer Milton Batiste and the Olympia Brass Band.
The Harmonizers begin their program with typically soulful vocal harmony performances of "Jesus Is on the Mainline," "I'll Fly Away" and "Walk That Milky White Way" before bringing on the Olympia Band for a rousing version of the classic spiritual number, "When I Laid My Burden Down."
Another wonderful composition, "Standing in the Safety Zone," one of the album's many highlights, features the group alone in top form. Another harmony number, "Brother Moses Smote the Water," follows before the band returns to fire up that "Old Time Religion" with characteristic zeal.
Here the seamless wedding of gospel harmonizations with the relentless rhythmic thrust of the Olympia Brass Band offers inescapable testimony to the shared cultural matrix which gave rise to both the jazz and gospel idioms.
Another exquisite hymn, "God's Gonna Rise on a Reigning Tide," features the Harmonizers plus rhythm, and the group sparkles again on "Jesus Gave Me Water." The Olympia is back for the stately "Thank You Lord," an extremely hip rendering of "I Shall Not Be Moved," and the rousing anthem "When We All Get to Heaven."
The Zions close out the program in fine form with two moving harmony numbers, "He Never Left Me" and "Blessed Quietness," followed by renditions of the Negro National Anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," and the American National Anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner."
All in all, a splendid addition to the Zion Harmonizers' collected works, especially notable for the sympathetic presence of the Olympia Brass Band. Highly recommended.
--New Orleans
1994
(c) 1994, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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