A Landmark Record ... and a Riddle

You certainly won't mind if I conclude the Easter posts by two further songs of Edna Gallmon Cooke. She was outstanding in many respects, and her artistry is quite unique. Since Edna was featured on this blog recently (viz. her 45 Nashboro # 705 from late autumn 1961), we might just as well have a look at her 1962 LP Stop Gambler! (Nashboro LP # 7009) which includes this and a number of other single releases (several of them, Nashboro # 745 & 760, were only released after the album!). In fact, only four of the twelve songs didn't appear on 45.

Edna's 1962 Nashboro LP is a landmark album that has not, as far as I can see, received the praise it deserves. Many moods pervade this album, and it is not the »typical« Edna-ser- monette style of »Stop Gambler« which dominates (there are just two more tunes of this kind on the LP, »Jesus Will Never Say No« and »The Lost Sheep«). Especially, we find several very lyrical performances, »Life's Lonesome Road« (recorded in May 1961) and »Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Had«. The latter is a breath-taking performance, never released outside this LP. I've nowhere heard of a category »lyrical gospel« (seriously used and aimed at general acceptance) but I propose to create it on purpose for this gem of a song which is sui generis:

Edna Gallmon Cooke: »Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Had« from the Nashboro LP # 7009 (1962):

But then we have also the very opposite on this LP: Edna taking her chances at an uptempo shouter, backed by the Singing Sons and actually playing somewhat the second fiddle alongside ... yes, whom? This is the riddle.

From Billboard, August 21, 1961, p. 34

First, the song in question is »The Lord Still Answers Prayer«. It was also released on Nashboro # 697 in or little before August 1961. I do not know the 45 version but assume that it is the same as the LP version. The 45 label states, beneath the artists's name, »New Singing Sons« (who, in Billboard's messy review, became »The Friendly Sons«!). Now, this song is not only, as Billboard's careless critic would have it, a »meaningful performance« (hmm, could you say anything more disparaging about a song?), it is a masterful blend of a rough-cut male voice (of the Ermant Franklin-type) paired with the honeyed voice of Edna, hesitantly joining in into this unlikely and eventually nothing but thrilling battle between a vocal sledgehammer and finely-tuned vocal chords accustomed to subtle modulation. But before you listen to this exceptional recording, help me solve the riddle men- tioned above.

Actually, the riddle comes in two parts. First, the Singing Sons (credited on the 45 but not on the back cover of the LP). I found no information about them as such. As male backing group of Edna G. Cooke they are mentioned frequently, but without further details as to their members. A more-than-usual (I hope) profound search on the net (and in the limited number of discographies) turned out the following names: Dave Edrington, Providence Thomas, a certain James Brown (maybe not the famous), Carl Davis, Tommy Ellison, Julius Cheeks, Willie Banks and Johnnie Jones, all members at one time or the other.
  Carl Davis (of Richmond, Va.) was part of Edna's Singing Sons for a number of years, before leading the Miami-based Florida Robbins Singers (see more here). He later joined the Swan Silvertones and the Dixie Hummingbirds. He is heard on the Singing Sons' only '60s Nashboro release, # 676 (Oct. 1960). Willie Banks also joined the Florida Robbins Singers after leaving the Singing Sons. Tommy Ellison (from South Carolina) was part of the Singing Sons, together with Julius Cheeks, but both left before 1960. Ellison left for the Sensational Nightingales and later organized his own group, The Five Singing Stars; Cheeks likewise was part of the Nightingales, later of the Soul Stirrers and others. Dave and Providence were members of the group in the mid-'50s but, it seems, no longer in or after 1960. Regarding James Brown (!) and Johnnie Jones I have no further information. In addition, several other names are mentioned in connection with Edna's Singing Sons, viz. Roscoe Robinson (!) and Horace Thompson. I found no conclusive evidence about how and when they were part of Edna's backing group. Finally, there is guitarist Bobby McDougle (of Valdosta, Ga.) who is said to have been recruited as a musician for the Singing Sons at age sixteen, i.e. in or around 1960. Conclusion: The story of the group is utterly confusing, due to many changes over the years and lacking credits, and remains yet to be written.
   Second part of the riddle: Whose is the prominent male voice doing the group's lead and, as it were, duetting with Edna in »The Lord Still Answers Prayer«? I have no idea. Any suggestions?
   Well, it is no matter of life and death. We'll find out one day. Until then, get carried away here (the musicians got carried away as well ... listen after 00:30, they are about to stumble right out of the song!):

Edna G. Cooke & unidentified singer: »The Lord Still Answers Prayer« from the Nashboro LP # 7009 (rel. 1962):

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Nashboro LP # 7009 (1962)
(this label is post-1968, unfortunately ... alas, I do not possess the LP with the original green label)

A Passion Song by Edna Gallmon Cooke

Edna Gallmon Cooke: »The Hammer Rings« on Nashboro # 705 (1961):

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Read more about Edna G. Cooke.

A Billie Holiday Type of Singer

mid-week gospel

She was very classy and wanted to become a Billie Holiday type of pop singer. But she met Willie Mae Ford Smith and that changed everything

(J. Lowe)

I must say Madame Edna Gallmon Cooke was one of the most devoted, religious artists I ever encountered. Very few that I ever found were really true, and as the gospel song says, "I'm Gonna Live the Life I Sing About." Edna would go into the studio, and while the musicians were rehearsing or there was time out, she would be reading the Bible and praying. She was the only one I ever knew that did that

(Nashboro's Shannon Williams)

I think she and Mom liked the same preacher

(Clara Ward)

Bessie Griffin, for example, was very underrated; ... Edna Gallmon Cooke was unique. These were ladies who sang with every fiber in their being. These were the exponents of what I now call traditional gospel. Stick-to-your-ribs gospel

(Aretha Franklin)

One of the smoothest, jazziest of church singers

(Bil Carpenter)*

She has many fans, and many singers considered her an example to follow. Yet her name does not ring out like those of, say, Clara Ward or Mahalia Jackson. (Bil Carpenter quotes the dry remark by J. Lowe that »just as Mahalia was the biggest soloist for the white audience, Madame was the biggest star for the black world« - Uncloudy Days, p. 102). I am speaking of Edna Gallmon Cooke, known in her early days as »Sweetheart of the Potomac« and reportedly given the honorific epithet »Madame« by the Holiness Church. You'll find some info about her life and career scattered over the literature and the net but she hasn't received substantial treatment yet (see also below); the best, and most sympathetic, account of Edna Gallmon (»Cooke« was actually the name of her first husband) offers Bil Carpenter's Uncloudy Days (p. 101 f.).

Madame Edna was, together with Martha Bass and Joe May, one of the protégés of known singer Willie Mae Ford Smith (1904-94). (You can hear them all on the LP Mother Smith and Her Children.) She started recording in 1949 and from 1952 onwards  (and until her untimely death in 1967) was under contract to Nashboro, quickly becoming one of the biggest stars of the label. Legend has it, and it is most probably true, that she switched to »talk-chanting« when she felt that her fragile soprano voice couldn't match the forceful style of deep-voiced Sister Smith. The sermonette-style, adapted from her father Eddie J. Gallmon's preaching, then became her trademark; it was described as »semi-recitative style« (in a BB review from Nov. '58) and some saw her as a progenitor of modern rap, others called her
»a transcendent moaner«. Apart from that, her penchant for »note-bending« or melisma was most often noted, and justly so.

You'll hear all of this clearly on Nashboro # 705, released in late autumn 1961 (the 45 is reported as new release in a mid-November Billboard issue). This single contains one of Edna's most famous songs, »Stop Gambler« (which also provided the title for her 1961 Nashboro LP # 7009). This curious song has often been remarked upon: It roughly falls in two parts (separated by the dramatic sound of lightning!), the first introducing the scene (the soldiers sitting at the foot of the cross and gambling for Jesus's coat) and the second counting down the cards and linking them to Christian motifs. (On the Stepfather of Soul's blogspot I read that Edna in this song »took T. Texas Tyler's "Deck of Cards," stripped it of its original story and went straight to the cross of Calvary to discuss Christ's crucifixion«.) The song ends with the message Stop right now, gambler! I wouldn't use those cards anymore! and has shook many into abandoning gambling. Accompanied by an organ, Edna talks herself through that remarkable sermonette. Horace Boyer felt that Edna in this song »dis- cusses the gamble in the contemporary parlance of a radio sports announcer and begins the countdown from the deuce to the ace like someone familiar with casinos«
(The Golden Age of Gospel, p. 238).

Edna Gallmon Cooke: »Stop Gambler« on Nashboro # 705 (1961):

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Note: Apart from the sources mentioned in the text above, you'll find information about Edna Cooke in the Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music edited by W. K. McNeil (New York 2005, p. 88 f.); in Antony Heilbut's classic study The Gospel Sound her name appears throughout. The gist of Hayes-Laughton's Gospel Discography entry on Edna Cooke is accessible over at the Record Connexion; there also is kind of a honorary post on the Nashboro Gospel blogspot.

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*Sources for the introductory quotations: (1) J. Lowe's (who was one of the male background singers on many of Edna's recordings) quote from Bil Carpenter's Uncloudy Days, p.  101. (2) Shannon Williams's quote from John Broven: Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock 'n' Roll Pioneers, Urbana 2009, p. 110. (3) Clara Ward's quote from Willa Ward-Royster's How I Got Over, p. 192. (4) Aretha's quote from Aretha Franklin and David Ritz: From These Roots, New York 1999, p. 77. (5) Bil Carpenter's quote from his Uncloudy Days, p. 101.