Previous Page: Sam Cooke, for example, was one of the greatest if not the greatest soul singers of all time, was born and bred in the gospel milieu and began his career in the 1940’s as part of a family gospel group, known then, as the Singing Children. As the links among gospel, R&B, and then eventually rock ‘n’ roll were gradually forged, gospel groups along the lines of the Delta Rhythm Boys, Harmonettes and the Zion Travellers found their secular counterparts. Popular mainstream acts included the Dominoes, a group boasting Clyde McPhatter and the keening pathos of Jackie Wilson whose legacy has been echoed in the works of many notable singing talents ranging from Smokey Robinson to the preacher: Al Green and even Michael Jackson. The debt owed to gospel by musical genres such as soul, R&B, and nearly all kinds of pop music, is in fact quite huge indeed. Mississippi was mimicked in the vocal acrobatics of countless R&B ravers and screamers, including James Brown and Wilson Pickett. In 1952, Clyde McPhatter and the Dominoes cut the blistering Have Mercy Baby, a quick tempo pulse upbeat based on a gospel favourite known as Baby for Lord. This hit-making formula was repeated on countless occasions. Still a whole collection of hard-core gospel singers stayed closed to their origins in the church Foremost amongst them was the legendary gospel vocalist Mahalia Jackson, who perhaps did more than any other single artist to popularise the gospel form. |
