New Orleans Gospel-Blues
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New Orleans Gospel-Blues carries sacred song through the city’s blues, piano, brass-band, second-line, and soul traditions. It can sound like a church service, a funeral procession, a piano-bar prayer, or a street parade, with call-and-response vocals, sanctified piano, tambourine pulse, brass harmonies, and bluesy testimony.
History
The style developed from Black church music, jazz funerals, brass-band processions, spirituals, gospel quartets, and the same local R&B musicians who moved between sacred and secular work. Mahalia Jackson’s New Orleans origins, The Zion Harmonizers, Sister Gertrude Morgan, The Olympia Brass Band, Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s spiritual repertory, Irma Thomas’s gospel-blues readings, and Dr. John’s devotional New Orleans material show its breadth. New Orleans Gospel-Blues influenced jazz funeral performance, brass gospel, soul-blues, civil-rights-era sacred music, and modern festival presentations of New Orleans spirituality.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Move On Up a Little Higher — Mahalia JacksonSpotifyYouTube
- Jesus on the Mainline — The Zion HarmonizersSpotifyYouTube
- Let's Make a Record — Sister Gertrude MorganSpotifyYouTube
- Just a Closer Walk with Thee — Olympia Brass BandSpotifyYouTube
- His Eye Is on the Sparrow — Preservation Hall Jazz BandSpotifyYouTube
- Walk Around Heaven — Irma ThomasSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound
- Ned Sublette, The World That Made New Orleans
- Jeff Hannusch, I Hear You Knockin'
- AllMusic