Check out this amazing performance of Just a Closer Walk with Thee – especially the second half. (No, I have not converted.) But then hear Jackson’s voice float on What a Friend We Have in Jesus.
And there are many other amazing performances by Mahalia Jackson. I like I Know It Was the Blood, I Couldn’t Keep It to Myself, and Leaning on the Everlasting Arm. There is also Elijah Rock.
Still my very favorite is I Made It Over.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Grand.
O good – I am glad someone listened to that concert!!!
Oh yes…what a friend, what a friend we have in Jesus. You know this takes me back home to North Carolina. This is my grandmother’s gospel. Thanks.
The last good service like this was in Lafayette, Louisiana. We went out there to go to Barry Ancelet’s Cajun boucherie. I had an Argentine Baptist in tow who absolutely had to go to church the next day. I had no idea where, and asked at the party. They recommended the Progressive Baptist Church on Simcoe, so we went. All these people were white so I hadn’t expected it would be a Black church but it was – and on MLK weekend. They had this amazing service, I really recommend them. I decided I could be a Christian if it didn’t mean whiteness to me.
P.S. How the preacheress began her sermon: We thank you God for this day which has its own unique beauty and will never come again.
And the audience: Oh yeah. Just a closer walk with Thee.
I always like these audience response sermons. As on Christmas Eve in Spain:
Priest: Lumen Christi!
Audience: Deo gratias!
And as my friend RIP Walter said: there is no need to worry about dogma; one feels the spirit in the ceremony.