On February 29th, Malaco Records will release The Gospel According To Malaco: Celebrating 75 Years of Gospel Music, an 8 CD song collection of gospel that includes Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Rev. James Cleveland, along with other notable artists such as The Gospel Keynotes, Solomon Burke, The Caravans and The Mississippi Mass Choir. This set is also one of the first, if not the first, to explore in depth the mass choir phenomenon that not only dominated gospel radio from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s but also produced many of today’s top-selling songwriters, soloists and musicians.
Renowned author, researcher, and Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul contributor Robert Marovich tells the stories of the 100 recordings contained in the eight CD anthology. Marovich is the author of A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music, hosts a weekly gospel show on Chicago WLUW 88.7 and runs the ebsite, The Journal of Gospel Music.
You can listen to a 22 song sampler here, or listen to some individual songs below.
