Jimmy & Carol Owens: Hallelujah! (Light, 1973)
I am no great collector of the religious LP genre. I mean, I love this stuff as much as the next man, but I'm not about to start giving up my Sunday mornings to perform dawn raids on obscure West Country record fairs in order to secure more of it so, compared to the true believers, I'm not even a beginner.
But, like the sceptical man confronted with Tracey Emin's unmade bed, I may not know much about it, but I know what I like, and I love this Jimmy and Carol Owens LP.
A perfect slice of early 70s post-acid evangelism, Come Together came to light in an otherwise deeply uninteresting Scope store in Penge (no, really). I was, naturally, going somewhere else, but felt the urge to pop in quickly and have a root and turned this up. It was, perhaps, the best 50p I ever spent.
From the deeply groovy Light label logo to the Biblical cover to the song titles themselves (Freely, Freely is good, Greet Somebody In Jesus' Name is even better) this is one of those LPs that make trawling through all the South Pacific soundtracks and James Last abomnations worthwhile.
Think of it as Screamadelica-era Primals without the heroin but with the real ecstasy of Jesus Christ. It's the soundtrack to a thousand swinging Jesus Army parties where giggly girls from Godalming get tapped-up by bearded Lancastrian geography teachers filled with Double Diamond and a desire for the cleansing fire of the Lord.
Oh yes.
2 comments:
10.28pm? Post-acid evangelism? Penge? I worry sometimes.
Sounds like a distant relation to the Band's "The Weight," too (a song which had its own academic roots deep in American gospel soil). Great writing here, Rob - and thanks for the post-evangelism.
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