TRACK: “Sinner Man”
COMPOSER: Traditional spiritual
PERFORMERS: The L.A. Jubilee Singers dir. by Albert J. McNeil
ALBUM: Spirituals (CBS, date unknown)
Albert J. McNeil (1920-2022) was a member and the musical director for the Founders Church of Religious Science in Los Angeles. As a child legends like Duke Ellington performed in his home, while he went on to study with composer and African American expert on black spirituals and choral music, Jester Hairston (also an actor known for his appearance on The Jeffersons-fellow actor Sherman Hemsely was also metaphysically inclined, known for his appreciation of The Kybalion). McNeil also became professor emeritus of the Music Department and the original faculty member and chair of the Department of African American Studies at UC Davis.
McNeil is best known for his direction of the Los Angeles Jubilee Singers. Founded in 1968, the Jubilee Singers would come to be known as “America’s Greatest Negro Choir.” The Jubilee Singers would also perform original arrangements by notable composers like AMP figure William Grant Still. Like his teacher, Hairston, McNeil’s aim was to cultivate global recognition for the beauty and importance of Negro spirituals and the black experience in America. One could argue whether a white man leading this initiative is a pandora’s box of socio-political complications or a noble example of integrated efforts. To inquire into its both-ness may be advisable, rather than to decide a singular answer, in our current crisis of certainty. Regardless, I offer this here as yet another facet of the musical heritage of Christian mysticism via the Religious Science Church, which I’ve now traced to genres as disparate as outsider opera, pop balladry, experimental composition, and proto-new age music.
Among many others, I believe Nina Simone’s 1964 version of “Sinnerman” to be the pinnacle when it comes to the recorded history of this spiritual. But the version presented here, in McNeil’s ornately dramatic arrangement, offers a unique take and with some wonderful singing by Mezzo-soprano Barbara White and tenor Tom Young.
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