Glad to see the postings! Nice to come home and find so much to respond to.

First of All... Richie, I see we need to get to know each other. I can see it now: The Bluegrass Messengers and the Gospel Messengers. A couple of years ago, we split a concert with an early country music group from California called the Reedy Buzzards... they do earl Delmore Brothers, Blue Sky Boys style country, and we did an afternoon of old gospel and country music. What a kick that was. I'm VERY interested in what you're doing... we come from the other direction, singing black gospel and putting a touch of black in the white gospel songs we do, like Angel Band. It's a fascinating idea merging the energy of bluegrass and the energy of black gospel. We do Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Standing On Jesus too, driven by my electric guitar.

I'll PM you and talk more about what you're doing..

Socorro: Yes, I'm afraid I haven't sent you very much female lead, piano accompanied black gospel. And you're right... there are twenty albums of male quartets for every one of black women gospel singers. Once you get beyond Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe(who played guitar) and a few others, there's not a lot available. I'll go back and listen to my Dorothy Love Coates and Sallie Martine CDs and see if there are any tracks accompanied by piano. There are some old jazz/gospel recordings of black women singing with trumpet, drums, piano and bass scattered around in my collection. I'll have to se if I have enough to send you some stuff..

Wilco: Good to see you here. I'll have a little more to talk about, with Sacred Harp (and I mean a little, because I don't sing Sacred Harp and can't talk particularly intelligently about it.) I have a CD sitting in front of me :The Colored Sacred Harp by the Wiregrass Sacred Harp Singers. I want to listen to it again and read the enclosed booklet. I ran across the CD in a used CD store and was a little surprised because I'd never heard black sacred harp singers.
But, more about that later.

Finally, the 4CD set of 100 Gospel Greats that I won on eBay is available on Amazon.com. (I submitted a request to Camsco to see if they can get it, too, but haven't heard from Dick yet.) It's a great set, and Amazon.com sells it for $23.95. It's a four CD set and has unusually generous representation by most of the key groups and singer, up until the 50's.

The First Volume is almost exclusively very early black gospel quartets (including one track by Josh White and His Carolinians. The groups include The Famous Blue Jay Singers, Mitchell's Christian Singers (one of my favorite primitive, early groups), and the Heavenly Gospel Singers. The second CD has seven tracks by the Golden Gate Quartet, six tracks by the Charioteers, three tracks by the Trumpeteers and six by the Dixie Hummingbirds. The Third CD has six tracks by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, eight by Mahalia Jackson, five by Sister Ernestine Washington and five by the Original Gospel Harmonettes, featuring Dorothy Love Coates. (The third CD sounds promising for you Socorro... I haven't gotten to it, but will listen to it next. The 4th CD has six tracks by the Soul Stirrers, five by the Pilgrim Travellers(an influential group) six tracks by the Five Blind Boys of Alabama and six tracks by The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. A wonderful collection...

More, later

Jerry