October 8, 2003

Praise God and Raise the Roof

ospel and the blues grew up as neighbors and faced the same hardships, so it's no wonder that they share a musical language. While their perspectives seem different - the positive thinking and hope for eternal reward in gospel versus the hard-headed realism and subversive ironies of the blues - in practice both call for survival through sheer determination. Many musicians worked both sides of the boundary, and one of the most extraordinary was Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the guitar-wielding gospel belter, who died in 1973 and whose old performances have provided some peaks in the PBS series ``The Blues.''

A Tharpe tribute album, ``Shout, Sister, Shout'' (M.C.), has just been released, and on Oct. 1 at the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village some of the album's performers - Odetta, Maria Muldaur, the Holmes Brothers and a singer who toured with Ms. Tharpe for 24 years, Marie Knight - gathered to praise God and raise the roof. Sharing the bill were the Dixie Hummingbirds, the gospel vocal group that was founded 75 years ago.

It was a concert of very bluesy gospel, with Seth Farber playing barrelhouse piano and the Holmes Brothers - Popsy on drums, Wendell on guitar and Sherman on bass - working like a blues trio.

The performers chose Tharpe songs about the sustaining power of faith. The Holmes Brothers turned ``Can't No Grave Hold My Body Down'' into an adamant minor-key blues, with Wendell playing quick chords and corkscrew guitar lines reminiscent of Albert King. Odetta sang ``Two Little Fishes and Five Loaves of Bread'' with a knowing cackle, as if creating bounty from almost nothing were a daily task. Her mini-set juxtaposed blues and gospel songs in a voice full of age-old travail and sultry persistence. Ms. Muldaur sang ``My Journey to the Sky'' with a saloon swagger.

But the concert's firebrand was Ms. Knight, who revived Ms. Tharpe's sudden contrasts and dramatic trumpeting attack. In ``Didn't It Rain'' and ``Up Above My Head'' she radiated the kind of conviction that treats a club audience like a congregation.

The Dixie Hummingbirds, led by 74-year-old Ira Tucker Sr., are an institution that keeps on earning its renown. Mr. Tucker's lead vocals are strong and hortatory, sustaining a soulful growl or leaping up to a throbbing falsetto; the group answered him with low, velvety harmonies, and eventually William Bright stepped forward to declaim a song with preacherly growls. As they sang about their long career, about depending on Jesus and about wishing for peace, Lyndon Jones's twangy guitar riffs were straight out of the blues. Larry Campbell, the guitarist in Bob Dylan's band, sat in on ``Someday'' with some ragtime picking; Mr. Campbell produced the Hummingbirds' new album, ``Diamond Jubilation'' (Treasure/Rounder).

The Hummingbirds are showmen as well as harmonizers. Mr. Bright and Carlton Lewis went down on their knees to pray; they huddled shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Tucker as he sang, ``Together we'll stand'' in ``Our Prayer for Peace,'' a song about Sept. 11. They were old ploys, but surefire ones.