#violinaires

V/A

"Get right with God (Hot Gospel vol.2)"

(LP. Krazy Kat. 1984 / rec. 1948-7?) [US]

Violinaires - All The Way (Jewel)

The Violinaires - "Today" A Change Is Gonna Come: Modern Gospel Jewelry Song released in 1972. Compilation released in 1980. Gospel

Really such a shame how constantly overlooked gospel music is in the grand scheme of things. Like, I get the desire to preserve and engender a secular society so as to not saturate the airwaves with potentially alienating religiosity, but I mean, if the music's good, short of calling for an incitement to violence or use of hate speech or something of that nature, shouldn't everything get its proper showcase regardless of its lyrical content or the message that it's trying to portray? Doesn't it do everyone a disservice to keep high-quality music hidden away from the masses? Like, at the end of the day, gospel is essentially the most soulful kind of soul music that there is, and it's not like there's some sort of lack of mass appeal when it comes to soul music. Plus, in the long history that encapsulates both R&B and soul, gospel is a genre that predates the advent of both, and is foundational to their growth as well. Unfortunately, there is such a rich history of this stuff that most everyone chooses to sidestep and/or gloss over 😔. And some people have gotten their due, like Mahalia Jackson, but really, it's not nearly enough for this genre as a whole. And all of these observations are coming from someone who is really as atheistic as they come too, by the way.

So, you've probably never heard of a group from Detroit called The Violinaires, who, oddly enough, and despite their name, were not noted for using violins at all. But two claims to fame that they did have were that the great Wilson Pickett was a brief leader for them before he'd go on to fashion himself as a secularly solo R&B and soul superstar, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have actually written some songs for them too.

And 20ish years after their founding, like plenty of other gospel groups, they'd undergone fundamental changes while maintaining the same name. By '72, with Robert Blair as their latest frontman, they'd released an LP on the Shreveport, Louisiana-based Jewel Records called The Upper Way, which included a song on it called "Today." And eight years after that, "Today" was also included on Japanese reissue label P-Vine's A Change Is Gonna Come: Modern Gospel Jewelry in 1980 as well.

So, adopting a notably southern-bluesy sound that I'm sure was provided by Jewel's own backing band, here we have a deeply underappreciated Robert Blair shining brightly as a deeply effective, soul-stirring shouter, particularly hitting his most satisfying points whenever he wincingly howls, while being backed vocally by the remainder of his quartet's falsettos, whose light and feathery harmonies serve as an ample contrast to Robert's own full-throated exultations. The combined guitar, organ, piano, drums, and bass make for some nicely rich accompaniment too, but the star of this one, like so many other Violinaires songs from this point forward up until his death in 2001, is undoubtedly Robert.

So, pretty ridiculous just how under-the-radar this guy and his group managed to fly throughout his whole career, right? But that's gospel, folks; some of the most satisfying soul music ever recorded, but largely ignored anyway. Really shouldn't be this way, but that's unfortunately just how it's been 😕.