| One gem of New Orleans culture was long gone before Hurricane Katrina hit, but her music and message are poised to reach larger audiences when a Philadelphia-based production team rolls out its remix and tour.
Sister Gertrude Morgan was born in 1900 in Alabama and died in 1980. At age 39, she decided to carry God's message to what she called the "headquarters of sin," New Orleans. It was there she preached, painted -- and recorded an album.
Let's Make a Record, issued in 1970, was a cappella gospel with Morgan's tambourine as accompaniment. Though her paintings became widely collected and displayed, the album remained obscure.
Last year, a traveling exhibition of Morgan's work organized by the American Folk Art Museum prompted Preservation Hall to re-release Let's Make a Record. Now, Philadelphia DJ King Britt has put his own spin on it, positioning Sister Gertrude for exposure to a wider audience. NPR Recording information: Prayer Room Studios, New Orleans, LA.
While Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980), is still celebrated as one of the great American outsider artists whose sacred paintings are collected and written about all over the world, few know her as a powerful, haunting, and enigmatic gospel singer and preacher. Thankfully, the good folks at Preservation Hall Recordings — who have already issued five previous volumes of forgotten or little-known American roots music — do. Let's Make a Record is an album of Morgan's homemade gospel songs, recorded somewhere around 1960.
This is deeply prophetic music; music of praise & worship that sits on the fissure line between pre- and post- WWII black gospel traditions. Under 40 minutes in length, this is nonetheless a powerful, even earthshaking collection of Morgan's own tunes, where she, accompanied only by her tambourine and stomping foot, calls the listener's attention to the kingdom of God as it came for the Israelites; as it has come in the minds and hearts of believers, and will come in glory at the end of the world. This is praise music that exhorts, pleads, wails, shouts, growls, prophesies, and longs for the Jesus of the New Testament to make his presence known, and celebrates it as it does. It also puts to shame much of what passes for praise music in our own century.
Fans of blues and gospel music are fortunate to have such a treasure-trove available again,complete with a stunning package featuring a reproduction of one of Morgan's paintings covering an oversize, heavy cardboard gatefold sleeve. Just amazing. AMG |
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