Description
"Going through your trials, I guarantee you, trouble gonna come and you need something. Music soothe your mind. You still be in pain but you can sleep," says Elizabeth King of the power of gospel music, during a conversation upstairs at producer Bruce Watson's Delta-Sonic Studio in her hometown of Memphis, TN. This first reissue from the D-Vine Spirituals Recordings showcases King, who has an incredible ability to simmer and then raise the heat. The gospel hit from King's pen, "I Heard the Voice" is only the tip of the iceberg. Witness her intensity on "Jesus Is My Captain," with a wah-wah guitar grooving, which also drives the funky "Wait on the Lord." "Down Here Waiting" is the very definition of a Memphis backbeat. "I Found Him" finds her singing, "I found him to be my hellhound chaser. I found him to be my midnight rider." The traditional "I'll Fly Away" is done here a la Chuck Berry's "Maybellene," fast and joyful. Born in Grenada, MS, King grew up in Charleston to a mother who taught her to sing. "I would sing hymn songs," she says. Often ill as a child, she turned to song as a way to get through. As she grew up, she learned to interpret them in her own style. She laughs as she says, "I like to move when I sing." Married and moving to Memphis in 1960, followed by a short stint in Chicago ("I couldn't get used to the weather or how they went to church"), then back to Memphis, King first joined the Gospel Souls in 1969 after seeing them in concert. (The male vocal band had previously been on Halo Records and Designer Records, the latter catalogue explored in several exemplary Big Legal Mess releases.) She had always envisioned being backed by male singers. She was told, "If they got jealous wives, I wouldn't." But it worked out. She says, "I stayed 33 years with them." Producer Juan D. Shipp, a gospel DJ-cum-label impresario, thought he would get a richer sound than the gospel music studios in common use in Memphis at the time when he stumbled on Tempo Studios downtown, which became his go-to. "It was
