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artist.....: Naomi Shelton And The Gospel Queens
album......: Cold World
year.......: 2014
label......: Daptone Records
DAP-033
source.....: CDDA
moodswing..: Soul
releasesize: 55.56 MB
tracks.....: 12
length.....: 38:34
encoder....: VBR LAME 3.98.4 -v0
quality....: avg. 201kbps
scenealized: 04.10.2015
Naomi Shelton has been singing the
Lord's praises longer than most of us
have been alive. Born in the early
1940s, she began performing with her
sisters at their small church in
Midway, Alabama. After graduating high
school and discovering soul music, she
moved first to Florida and then to New
York City, where she continued singing
in church but also held court in
Brooklyn nightclubs under the name
Naomi Davis. Like many African American
singers at the time, her repertoire
balanced the secular and the spiritual,
the worldly and the heavenly. Even
though her singing career spans half a
century, her recording career has been
much shorter. In 1999, she and an old
friend/collaborator named Cliff Driver
formed a gospel group that attracted
the ear of Gabriel Roth. At the time he
was running a label called Desco, for
which Shelton recorded two sides; when
it folded, she signed with his new
venture, Daptone Records.
She's been a major presence on that
label's roster, touring the world with
the Daptone Super-Soul Revue and
singing with the Sugarman 3. Never
quite as popular or as prolific as
Sharon Jones (who is Daptone's flagship
act), Shelton has proved a powerful
vocalist and performer even into her
70s. In 2009, she finally released her
debut full-length for the label, What
Have You Done, My Brother?, which
closed with a soul-stirring cover of
Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come".
Five years later, she's finally
following it up with Cold World. As the
title suggests, Shelton is concerned
not just with the individual sinner but
with the sad state of the world. Faith
is never a private matter; because it
informs how we treat ourselves and
others, it is a social concern.
Consequently, Shelton is drawn to songs
that address social issues and paint
the world bleakly. "It's a Cold, Cold
World" describes the back-stabbings and
betrayals among humans ("They'll step
on you every every day!") and points to
a certain carpenter as the truest
friend possible. With Shelton and the
Gospel Queens (Bobbie Jean Gant and
Edna Johnson, plus newcomer Angel
McKenzie) delivering a lively call and
response, the song itself sounds
steeped in 70s R&B, as though making a
conscious nod to the heyday of the
Staple Singers. Yet, the conviction in
their voices rescues the song from any
sense of nostalgia, lending it some
persuasive topicality beyond its
musical reference points.
Roth, producing under his alias Bosco
Mann, has put together a band of R&B
veterans to back Shelton and the Gospel
Queens on Cold World. If they weren't
such fine players, sensitive to the
cadence of Shelton's vocals and the
sentiments of these songs, you might
think they were hired for their
historical connections to artists who
likewise blended the secular and the
spiritual. Driver himself has played
with Sam Cooke and Solomon Burke; bass
player Fred Thomas was a JB in the
1970s. Somehow, the music occasionally
sounds too Daptone, as though these
backing tracks could have been created
for Jones or anyone else on the roster.
That shouldn't reflect on Shelton, but
should suggest either the label's
somewhat limited sound or Roth's too-
familiar production style.
But the band cover a lot of ground on
Cold World, toggling between the
reggae-tinged rhythms of "Sinner" and
the breezy groove of "Everybody Knows
(River Song)", a cover of the 1965 O.V.
Wright tune. Still, it's Shelton who
confidently ties everything together
and insinuates a larger story arc in
the sequencing: a journey that begins
in doubt ("Sinner") and ends with
salvation and gratitude ("Thank You
Lord"). If her label defines itself by
the past tense, Shelton understands
that gospel is rooted in the present
(the tribulations we face today) and
the future (the promise of eternity in
heaven). It may seem like a minor
distinction, but on Cold World, it's
the difference between revival and
revivalist.
psst, more info at daptonerecords.com
01 Sinner 02:52
02 Movin' 02:48
03 Heaven Is Mine 02:51
04 Bound For The Promised Land 02:51
05 It's A Cold, Cold World 03:20
06 I Don't Know 03:48
07 Get Up, Child 03:28
08 One Day 04:04
09 I Earned Mine 03:00
10 Humble Me 04:06
11 Thank You Lord 02:25
12 Everybody Knows (River Song) 03:01