Mighty Day 25 Gospel Greats

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The Document catalogue can truly boast that it covers the birth and ensuing development of recorded gospel music. It is a fascinating musical journey. Yet despite the music's unwavering popularity for the last hundred years, it has not spawned the same magnitude of analytical literature, articles and papers, so beloved of the Blues and Jazz fans, that one can turn to for musical guidance in discussing its development as a definative musical genre. So, perhaps it is true to say that the Document Catalogue spans the earliest recorded religious black music with a formal feel of "Spirituals" to the later urban religious recordings that we would now call "Gospel".

Godspel is an elision of 'God' and 'Spel'. Spel being old English for story. The concept of Gospel music is considered to have begun in America during the latter part of the 19th Century, first appearing in 1874 with the publication "Gospel Songs" by Phillip Bliss.

As you will hear on this CD the music lifts the spirits with its emphasis on love, freedom, forgiveness, judgement and righteousness. It speaks of the human condition and to the human condition. Gospel music can bring the sublime to the world of the ridiculous. It was and is the music of soul. Despite it's Christian history it transcends any one religion to speak to us all.

This CD features such artists as Thomas A. Dorsey, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sister Ernestine Washington, Golden Gate Quartet, Rev. Utah Smith and many more.


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