16 Gospel Blues Songs You Must Hear

Gospel blues has a long history reaching back to the likes of Blind Willie Johnson and Rev Robert Wilkins right through to recent work by Kelly Joe Phelps and Ry Cooder. It’s not surprising, given the close relationship between the spirituals and the blues. It’s a genre rich in musicality, spirituality and inspiration. Here are 16 gospel blues songs that are really worth listening to.

Blind Willie McTell: I’ve Got to Cross the River of Jordan

Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell, sang Bob Dylan. True, but McTell also left us a fine collection of gospel blues songs, including River of Jordan, which focuses our attention on the inevitable journey we all must take across Jordan – on our own, facing the consequences of our lives. There’s some fine slide playing on the song and McTell’s vocal performance is strong and compelling. The song is essentially another version of Nobody’s Fault but Mine.

Check out Mark Millers 2010 album, The Gospel Songs of Blind Willie McTell.

Blind Willie Johnson: Dark Was the Night

Arguably Willie Johnson’s masterpiece, it is making its way across the universe as part of the musical offering on the Voyager space craft. Recorded in 1927, it features Johnson’s inspired slide playing which creates an incredible other-worldly, eerie effect and his agonized moaning. You really cannot hear the words of this old spiritual which focuses on Christ’s trial in the Garden of Gethsemane, but Johnson’s vocals and slide work more than evoke this terrible hour. Click here for our more detailed look at this song.

Rev. Robert Wilkins: Prodigal Son

Wilkins’ compelling retelling of the gospel story of the prodigal son was recorded in 1935, six years after he had recorded the same song with secular lyrics. Now, having turned his back on the blues and an ordained minister, he re-recorded the song, and eventually performed it at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. For more on the song, go to here.

Skip James: My God is Real

The music of Skip James, the most enigmatic of all the Delta blues figures, was ominous, bleak and mysterious, made primarily for his own emotional release. James was an exceptional guitarist, with a trademark E-minor tuning and an eerie falsetto vocal delivery. After making some seminal blues recordings, in 1931 he moved to Dallas, where he served as a minister and led a gospel group. His My God is Real, speaks of a deep, very personal experience of faith.

Josh White: My Soul is Gonna Live with God

White was a prolific blues artist and civil rights activist in the first half of the twentieth century. He took a clear anti-segregationist and international human rights political stance and recorded a number of political protest songs. He also recorded gospel songs under the moniker, The Singing Christian. His 1935 My Soul is Gonna Live with God puts his guitar playing chops and his fine singing on display and focuses on the Christian hope for after death.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Rock Me

Rosetta Tharpe was a major star during the 1940s and 50s and was an inspiration to the early generation of rock’n’roll artists. She grew up immersed in the church and her faith was a constant inspiration to her music throughout her life. Rock Me, one of her most loved songs, was written by Tommy Dorsey and first recorded by her in 1938. An instant hit, the song contains various Biblical and hymn references. Isaiah 41 comes to mind: “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” The song was also another of Blind Willie McTell’s gospel recordings, under its original title, Hide Me in Thy Bosom, in 1949.

Find our tribute to Rosetta Tharpe here.

And check out this fine recent version by Brooks Williams, accompanied by Hans Theessink:

Mississippi Fred McDowell: You Got to Move

Fred McDowell’s song was brought to prominence by the Rolling Stones on their Sticky Fingers album. It’s essentially a song about the Christian hope of resurrection – “when the Lord get ready, you got to move!”

For a great recent version, check out Paul Thorn’s take on his Don’t Let the Devil Ride album. Check out our conversation with Paul, including his comments on the song here

Sister Fleeta Mitchell & Rev. Willie Mae Eberhard: Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down

Most people are more familiar with Robert Plant’s version of this old spiritual, but Fleeta Mitchell and Willie Mae Eberhard’s stripped down version which appears on Art Rosenbaum’s 2007 album of traditional field recordings is well worth checking out. The song is based on Jesus’s words in Luke’s gospel when he said, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.” For Christians, the power of evil personified by the “Adversary” is under judgement because of the coming of Christ and ultimately we are not to despair, because good will triumph under the Lordship of Jesus.

Mississippi John Hurt: Here Am I, Oh Lord, Send Me (Don’t You Hear My Saviour Calling?)

John Hurt is renown for his blues and his rhythmic, alternating bass guitar style, with fast syncopated melodies. Reputed to be a gentle soul, his music is quite transcendent, whether blues or gospel. Here Am I, Oh Lord Send Me is a fine example of his technique and is based on Jesus’s words in John’s gospel about the fields being ready for harvest. The song has a devotional feel about it, with the singer offering himself for God’s service.

Rev. Gary Davis: I Am the Light of this World

Born blind, black and in the American South, Davis had little going for him, and yet he became a master of the guitar, ending up in New York City where he was recognized for the musical genius he was. Davis stayed faithful to his calling as a minister of the gospel until he died and only in the last decade of his life was he persuaded to sing blues songs publicly. His ragtime, blues and gospel performances are all outstanding. I Am the Light of this World recalls the words of Jesus in St. John’s gospel.

Check out Ian Zack’s riveting biography of Gary Davis – reviewed here.

Larry Norman: Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?

Blues-based rock, rather than strictly blues, but this song from Only Visiting this Planet in 1972 puts to rights the misconception that the blues is the devil’s music. Norman, the father of Christian rock, takes up the line from Salvation Army founder William Booth almost a century earlier and then proclaims loudly, “there’s nothing wrong with playing blues licks.”

Read our review of the excellent Larry Norman biography by Gregory Alan Thornbury.

And in a similar vein, check out Lurrie Bell’s The Devil Ain’t Got No Music, from his 2012 album with the same title.

Eric Bibb: I Want Jesus to Walk With Me

Often played by Eric Bibb in his concerts, he captures completely the dual nature of this old spiritual – on the one hand mournful about the trials and tribulations of life, and yet hopeful about the reality of the presence of Jesus in the midst of those trials. As Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Click here for our recent interview with Eric.

Walter Trout: Brother’s Keeper

From the 2012 album, Blues for the Modern Daze, Walter Trout’s dazzling technique, intensity and emotion seizes you, along with the hard-hitting lyrics. The song recalls the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 and calls for more neighbourliness in our relations. Trout reminds us that “Jesus said to feed the hungry, Jesus said to help the poor,” and finishes he song with a searing criticism of modern “so-called Christians” who “don’t believe in that no more.” For more on the song go to here.

And click here for our interview with Walter where he talks about the song.

Ry Cooder: Everybody Ought to Treat a Stranger Right

Ry Cooder has produced one of the best gospel albums ever in Prodigal Son, reviving and updating a number of old gospel songs as well as a couple of his own. We could have picked almost any song from the album for inclusion, but his excellent version of Everybody Ought to Treat a Stranger right is surely a song for our times, with xenophobia at an all time high. Strangers, sojourners and immigrants were all to be treated with care and welcome according to the Hebrew bible – “And if a stranger dwell with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God,” (Leviticus 19:33-34). And reflected in the words of Jesus in Matthew 25 – “I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me … When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? … Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”

Find our take on Ry Cooder’s album here

Kelly Joe Phelps: Goodbye to Sorrow

Phelps’s 2012 album, Brother Sinner and the Whale, is arguably the best gospel roots album ever. Phelps’s guitar work and slide playing, as always, is immaculate, and the songs are a remarkable testament to Phelps’s rediscovered faith. They brim with creativity, inspiration and spirituality. His reworking of the old hymn, Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah is masterful, but we’ve chosen his own Goodbye to Sorrow here, which is simply a wonderful song and packed with theology:

“My God came to earth a humble man
As part of a divine and master plan
When they crucified our Saviour He set the captives free
That death would lose dominion over you and over me

I have said goodbye to sorrow as I lay before the cross.”

Click here for Down at the Crossroads’ comments on this album here.

Blind Boys of Alabama: Nobody’s Fault But Mine

Singing together since 1944, the Blind Boys have been singing blues tinged gospel for an awfully long time and you’d be hard pressed to pick the best of. For a good list, check out Paste’s take here. We’ve gone with this sparse arrangement of another Blind Willie Johnson song, Nobody’s Fault but Mine, which is full of the personal regret and heartache. The plaintive harmonica, the slide guitar and the tight harmonies combine to make this an outstanding version of the song.

Check out our tribute to the Blind Boys of Alabama here and our comment on Nobody’s Fault but Mine here.

If you’re interested to find out more about the relationship between the blues and faith, get yourself a copy of The Gospel According to the Blues, by Gary W Burnett.

 

Bryan Lee: still travelling that old lonesome highway – and loving it.

“Whether he’s wailing a Freddy King inspired blues ballad, stomping out low down and dirty blues, or getting down with a super funky New Orleans groove, Bryan Lee is gonna grab your soul and squeeze it till you scream in blues ecstasy.” – Duke Robillard

BMA Award winner and Grammy Nominee, Bryan Lee, has had a lifetime in the blues. In his mid-seventies, the bluesman, who lost his sight at the age of 8, is still playing consistently and has just released a new album, Sanctuary. His vocal and guitar playing powers are still very much in evidence in a very fine collection of unabashed gospel blues. A long-time resident and performer in New Orleans, with a Chicago blues guitar style which channels Luther Allison, Albert King and Albert Collins, Bryan now resides close to the beach in south Florida, but his musical enthusiasm and passion for the blues is undiminished.

The new album Sanctuary is a top-notch blues album, well produced, recorded and mastered by Steve Hamilton, and, as well as a classy band, features the wonderful, gospel vocals of Deirdre Fellner. There’s a detectable funky, New Orleans feel throughout, from the opener Fight for the Light onward, and Lee’s and Marc Spagone’s guitar work sparkles. Lee lays out his stall pretty early, telling us in Jesus Gave Me the Blues, that the blues is a gift from his saviour – even though he’s “getting low down and dirty.” There’s humour as well – in U-Haul which gets materialism in firmly in his sights, he sings, “I never saw no U-Haul behind a hearse.” You gotta hold on to things lightly. He follows this them again in Mr. Big – where the guy has the big house, fancy car, a Fortune 500 company – “but you ain’t happy.”

The album concludes with two songs recorded with the Adam Douglas band some time ago, but which make a fitting inclusion in Sanctuary. The Lord’s Prayer is as you’ve never heard it before in church – a blues version, but with a distinctive gospel feel, and reverently sung by Lee.

Down at the Crossroads chatted to Bryan about his life in the blues and the new album. He was upbeat, excited about the release of Sanctuary and about life in general.

 

DATC: Bryan, congratulations on the new album. I’ve been listening to it these past few days, and it’s great, catchy tunes, great musicianship and arrangements. We’ll have a chat about it in a minute. But first of all, Bryan, you’ve had a lifetime in the blues. Tell us about how you got started all those years ago – who inspired you?

BL: I guess in the beginning, the early 50s when I was about 10 years old, I started getting into my folks’ music. I heard Chuck Berry and right away, it was like, “if I could play guitar like that!” And then I heard Little Richard, and I was, “man, I wanna sing like that!” And that kind of drew me into the blues a little bit, but the thing that did it completely – I was 17 years old, and we were getting a new drummer into our band, and we went over to his house. And he played Freddie King’s Hideaway, and we were just knocked out! And then we listened to the B side and it was a slow blues called I Love the Woman. I just fell in love with it and I said, “man, that’s where I wanna go.”

So I went down to the record store looking for Freddie King and found a couple of 45s, and the guy working there sold me an album with Hideaway on it. And I really got into that record – that first song…[breaks into song]…man I was hooked. I’ve heard Wolf and BB and all these guys, but Freddie King is the one that connects to me.

Along the way I got to be good friends with Albert King – he was always nice. I recorded an album way back in 1984 that had four Albert King songs on it, and he came to New Orleans, so I went to see him and gave him a copy of the album. And he listened to it and appreciated what I had done with his tunes. That’s really cool.

But through my 20s my shows were getting bluesier and bluesier and I started getting into trouble with the club owners, who only wanted to hear Top 40 music. But then we had that era when the Allman Brothers hit, and it kinda helped for the blues guys to get their foot in the door.

But, you know, I travelled that old lonesome highway, because that’s what I wanted to do. If you love it, man, you do it.

DATC: What is it about this music that has keep you playing it all these years?

BL: As I get more into the music, the blues gets better with age. It’s the understanding of it. It’s not the devil’s music. You can go to, say, Sao Paulo, Brazil, a very large city, and you get 40,000 people answering you with “hey, hey, the blues is all right”…The blues is a universal language. B B King said it’s places, people and things. It goes to our make up in our soul. You can’t just sit there, you gotta move!

And some guys have that knack. I could listen to T-Bone Walker all day. And probably one of my favourite guitar players of all is Matt Guitar Murphy. I got to be friends with him over the last years of his life. I met him back in 1976 when I opened up for the James Cotton Band and Matt was the guitar player. And he was such a gracious guy. Same with James. James and I were really good friends. There’s something in these people, It’s their soul, that’s what it’s about. You gotta feel it, it’s in your soul.

And you can overcome so much in your life with the power of the blues. And that’s why I made this album, to try and make people understand – Jesus gave us the music. It’s pain, it’s sorrow, but it’s also laughter and success. You gotta fight for the light, you can’t just let darkness break you down. God gave you your life and you gotta respect that. To me, music is the thing that will lift you and will bring you to church and will bring you through stuff.

DATC: And of course, Bryan, your new album, Sanctuary, is an album of gospel blues. And you pull no punches – you’re very explicit about your faith. You say in The Gift, “I’m an old bluesman.” And then you say “Jesus has straightened me out.” Tell us a bit about your journey in faith, how this bluesman found faith.

BL: Well, there was a short time in my life, probably about two years, when I rejected organized religion completely. But I was raised as a Catholic, and we were working in a bar in New Orleans in the early 90s, and we’d have a lot of conventions in the city, there were always people in town. And every evening after dinner, they’d be looking for entertainment. So we would fill the house. Anyway, I met this woman one Friday night, and she was from Seattle, Washington. And she said, Bryan, “I’ve been in town since Monday and I discovered you on Tuesday, and have come every night since” – and she told me she was going to go to the St Louis Cathedral on Sunday and she invited me to go with her.

So we went to church and when I walked up to communion, I knew that was where I was meant to be. And I was like, “Jesus, thank you for not forgetting me.” And she and I had dinner and had a wonderful discussion about things, and we became friends. But she was the one that brought me back to church.

But you don’t just be a good person on Sunday. You gotta be a good person 7 days a week, 24/7. But that’s hard to do, with all the trials and tribulations you might have to go through. Even the rich man has got lots of problems.

DATC: You lost your eyesight when you were a boy. How difficult was it for you to get started playing guitar and start performing and then forge a career?

BL: Well…like most young people I was fearless. So, I’d be up on stage, and to me the place was always full, and people looking at me in a funny way, I don’t see it! I had an advantage!

I remember one night I was walking home. And I had a three-piece suit on, with a fancy tie, and I’m walking home, with a cane in my right hand, and all of a sudden, somebody yells at me, “Stop, stop! Blind man, stop!” So I stopped, and this woman comes up to me and says, “Where is your bucket?” I said, “My bucket?” And she said, “Well you’re blind, you have to have a bucket, I want to put something in your bucket.”

So I said, “Ma’am, that’s all right, give it to the Salvation Army, or the church. I don’t need it, as you can see, I’m working, I’m a musician.” And then she was like, “Aw, shucks.” She’d seen this blind man and thought she better do this man a favour. And I got helped across streets I didn’t want to cross, and up steps I didn’t want to go up. But things like this just always used to make me smile. I think now that people are more aware, it’s not so much like that now.

DATC: You’ve a song on this album Don’t Take My Blindness for a Weakness – you don’t downplay the difficulties, but you sound as if you’ve become very strong through it.

BL: Yes. You got it Gary! It might take me a little bit longer than you, but I will get there. I’ve been playing music since I was 13 years old, and I’m 75 now. I’ve travelled all around the world. I got a chance to play the Montreal Jazz Festival this year – 5^th or 6^th time I’ve done it – and oh, it was so much fun! People say at my age you shouldn’t do a lot of travel – but I want to get my message out.

This is what I’ve discovered through the years – if we were all blind, we wouldn’t have all these prejudices, we wouldn’t have all this hatred and stuff. Human beings would have to come together and help each other. So, who’s blind? For me, if I’ve got a choice between eyesight and insight, I’ll take insight every time.

DATC: Bryan, tell us about The Lord’s Prayer. How did that song come about?

BL: I was doing a festival in Norway in an island called Svalbard. This week is their dark season festival, it’s basically a blues festival. It was a 5-day festival, with quite a few bands. On the last day, the woman who organized the festival picked two groups to play in the church to close the festival. So she asked me if I would work with the Adam Douglas group. So we got together, and they were just a killer band – they could take a Michael Jackson song and make it sound like the blues! Well, the night before the rehearsal, I went to bed, fell asleep and had a dream about the Lord’s Prayer, the arrangement, the chords changes and all. And when I got up the next morning, it still was in my head – lot of time, that doesn’t happen – normally you dream a song but when you wake up you don’t remember it. So I went to the rehearsal and they asked me what I wanted to do. So I went through the chord changes with the band and they said, that’s great, let’s do it.

So we did it in the church, and we also did the other one, Jesus is My Lord and Savior, Then after the festival we went back to Oslo and we had about two days, so Adam said to me, “we should record those two songs.” So we went into the recording studio and we did ‘em! And we hugged each other afterwards and said, you know, we’re gonna have to finish this some day. And we all hoped we could get back together somehow in the future – but that never happened.

So in 2017, I just decided that if I don’t record this record, I’ll feel like I cheated the good Lord. Because I had promised him this album, for all the good music he’s put in our soul, and the ability to entertain people and to communicate with an audience. I can rip up an audience, you know! I tell stories, but I don’t think about what I’m going to say. I call the first three tunes and then after that, it’s what happens happens!

DATC: It’s a great album, Bryan – the arrangements and the musicianship are all wonderful.

Bryan: Out of my brain and out of my soul! And I’m not through – I’ve an idea for another album, and another album beyond that. And I used to do 300 dates a year, now, not so many as that. But it’s quality, not quantity!

It’s a day at a time, one step at a time. And Jesus is there – we just need to go to that place of sanctuary, where it’s real still, it’s real quiet, where you can really touch the good Lord and find answers to your problems.

DATC: Thank you Bryan.