It's a gospel tune. The version I have for you was sung by Mahalia Jackson with Nat King Cole lending a hand. Mahalia is widely regarded as the best gospel singer ever & when you hear her you'll understand why. The song is a very old spiritual & while I can't find a decent history of the tune it seems to come from the days of slavery, where some spirituals had a double meaning, one heavenly & one worldly. I grew up listening to old gospel music & honestly I never felt right in a church where the music wasn't as soulful as in my old neighborhood growing up. Some of the music would by comparison make the hottest bands today seem unenthused & unkowledgable about music in general. It all goes back to Mahalia though & some of her contemporaries. They added a depth to the old tunes that enabled others to take things a bit farther than they would have otherwise gone. Mahalia didn't cross over though to the secular charts. She stuck with gospel at a time when many of her peers were realizing the fame & fortune of the pop charts. Not that she was destitute - she did well with gospel. In fact she even lent her name to a fried chicken restaurant venture (who used the tag line "It's Glori-fried!"), but she was quite content in singing songs about God & her faith.
Here's the vid & here are the lyrics
But speaking of stealing away Say Uncle has an update on KT Ordnance's plight. More can be found at The War On Guns.
The gist is that the owner still hasn't been charged with any crimes, but his guns have! It's common in certain jurisdictions to file a case against the property of someone even though the owner is not being charged with a crime. The ATF alleges that his firearm frames were complete receivers by law whereas the owner of KT Ordnance claims the ATF had approved them as being only 80% complete & therefore not subject to the firearms laws.
As Uncle points out though, the big picture is that this is the beginning of the opening shots in the war against do-it-yourself gunsmiths.
Posted by Publicola at December 8, 2006 08:10 AM | TrackBack