Artist: Marie Knight
Album: The Gospel Truth Live
Label: M.C.
Release Date: 3.23.2018
On the heels of her release earlier that same year, 2007, gospel great Marie Knight gave an amazing performance at the Church Street Center in North Adams, MA. For this live performance, her lone accompanist was the acclaimed singer/pianist Dave Keyes, who was also Odetta’s pianist of choice. Six of the thirteen selections on The Gospel Truth Live are the same tunes she did on the studio album; others are tunes from her most famous singer partner and gospel innovator, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
The history is interesting. Label chief Mark Carpentieri produced the 2003 album, Shout, Sister, Shout!- A Tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Carpentieri was surprised to learn from Tharpe’s biographer that Marie Knight was still alive. He became Knight’s manager for the last six years of her life, and brought Knight into the studio for “Didn’t It Rain.” That recording prompted requests for Knight to perform, and eventually Carpentieri’s suggested, recorded and released, Let Us Get Together – A Tribute to the Rev. Gary Davis (on which Knight was accompanied by Larry Campbell on guitar), and then The Gospel Truth Live. Knight passed away less than two years later.
Heard for the first time more than 10 years after it was recorded, this live album is part of that last piece in Knight’s career; in just a few weeks, Marie Knight will be posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an Artist of Early Influence. In 2007, she was the last living legend from the Golden Age of Gospel: 1940-1960.
As you listen to this album, the audience response is beyond enthusiastic. Knight turns preacher of sorts between songs and even in those passages, you hear interplay from this rapt audience. According to the liner notes, that wet, overcast day proved to be the perfect setting an artist who rose to fame singing “Didn’t It Rain.” Earlier in the day, Knight conducted a world music class with students, then headlined the Gospel Fest that evening. According to Carpentieri, she gave out more of herself in that concert because she was performing where she felt most comfortable: a gospel setting with a choir and ministers in attendance, rather than in a concert hall or club, where she often sang.
Although it’s the second-to-last song in the album’s sequence, Keyes opened the show with his rolling, boogie woogie piano and heartfelt vocals on “Closer Walk With Thee” before Knight acknowledged the choirs, ministers, and those who had sung before her. Then she launched into Davis’ “I Belong to the Band,” Tharpe’s “Beams of Heaven,” and, after “The Ark Speech,” she gave the audience the song they most wanted, “Didn’t It Rain.” Considering this show was just one vocalist and a pianist, it rocks thunderously. Listen to the call-and-response on “Light of the World,” for example. Although Knight has a low, deep voice which contrasted well with Tharpe’s higher vocals, you will hear Knight’s pure upper range in “Jesus Loves Me” and the closer, “For Thine Is the Kingdom.”
This is as pure as gospel gets. You’ll be swept away by Knight’s enthusiasm and through the many spoken passages get to see several sides of Knight: humor, seriousness, and, of course, the spiritual.
—Jim Hynes
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