Req: (Prof) Alex Bradford anecdotes

Subject: RE: Req: (Prof) Alex Bradford anecdotes
From: GUEST,Keith Wiltshire
Date: 31 Oct 22 - 11:51 PM

I saw the ‘prof’ in Melbourne in the mid 1960s. My mother and I traveled from Albury and saw ‘Black Nativity ‘. I was about 14 years old. I loved the show and convinced mum to buy the album. I must has played it a thousand times and was instrumental in my life long love of rock, r+b, soul and blues

Subject: RE: Req: (Prof) Alex Bradford anecdotes
From: Margret RoadKnight
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 06:45 PM

Ah yes, Jerry, fair enough observations....
Alex Bradford (& his Bradford Singers) certainly crop up on many compilations - often his '53 hit "Too Close To Heaven" - and the popularity of his Abyssinian Baptist Choir's 1960 "Shakin' the Rafters" album does seem to have kickstarted the modern gospel choir movement (John Hammond writes interestingly in his autobiography about producing that album, where Alex was contractually unable to sing a note).
Btw, Anthony Heilbut's brilliant book "The Gospel Sound" devotes an entire chapter to Professor Alex Bradford.

Apart from that rockin' choir album, some "Best of.." compilations, and original cast albums - "Black Nativity", "Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope" and "Your Arms Too Short To Box With God - I'm lucky enough to have 7 Bradford albums (mixed LPs & CDs) but there are another seven I'd like to add ...... I figure SOMEONE in the southern hemisphere oughta have his complete output, so as opportunity and finances allow....

Subject: RE: Req: (Prof) Alex Bradford anecdotes
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 03:22 PM

I have a fair amount of his music scattered around on several CDs, and one full CD, but don't have any personal knowledge of him... Some consider him the "Father" of the mass choir.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Req: (Prof) Alex Bradford anecdotes
From: Margret RoadKnight
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 12:38 AM

Great one, English Patriot!!
Definitely has the ring of truth about it, what with Alex's wonderful way with words, and his constant juggling of the sacred & the secular.
Appreciate it!

Possibly should have mentioned in my previous post that "Black Nativity" (staged in the early-to-mid-'60s) had a name change in the Antipodes to "Go Tell It On the Mountain", and that Alex died in '79 at the much too young age of 51.

Subject: RE: Req: (Prof) Alex Bradford anecdotes
From: GUEST,An English Patriot
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 09:49 PM

I remember listening to Alexis Korner on the radio in the late 70s. He played a record by Alex Bradford and then told a story of how he had met Alex Bradford in a bar and they fell into conversation. Alexis asked how he squared drinking in a bar with preaching, and Bradford said that he made sure that he "never drank in the same block as the flock."

Subject: Req: (Prof) Alex Bradford anecdotes
From: Margret RoadKnight
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 09:36 PM

Further to the Influences thread where I neglected to mention my gospel mentor Prof Alex Bradford, I'm wondering if any 'older' Mudcatters in Australia, New Zealand, England, Italy, Germany and of course the U.S. have any reminiscences of "the Singing Rage of the Gospel Age" (Alex starred in "Black Nativity" which played all the above regions)