Search - Pilgrim Travelers :: Best of

One of the classic Gospel Quartets

Hank n Tennessee | Virginia, USA | 03/02/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Bill Worthington was a coal miner from eastern Kentucky who also sang with a gospel quartet. He tells the story of the time his group got to play on a program headlined by the great Pilgrim Travelers. Bill's group were local favorites and got to go on next to last, just before the Travelers. They were rehearsed, ready and looking good and played a strong set, confident that they could show the famous Pilgrim Travelers something. They closed with an original, their signature song, to thunderous applause from the local audience. Then the Pilgrim Travelers took the stage. They came out singing Bill's original song, doing it Bill's way - word for word, note for note, harmony for harmony. Then at the turn-around after the first verse, they shifted gears and sang the same verse again, this time rocking it Pilgrim Traveler's style. The audience went wild and the mighty Pilgrim Traveler's soared on from there.



Studio CD's can't capture the magic of nights like that, but there is some fine music here. Take "Something Within Me", which the Travelers make into an exercise in gradually building intensity over repetition, sort of the way Ravel did with his "Bolero". The bass is a constantly repeated lower register chant at a walking tempo "Oh my, lordy lord. Oh my, lordy lord." Switching leads pick up the intensity from a mellow beginning until the turn-around before the last verse reaches a crescendo of chord voicings climbing the scale, each louder and higher then before, climaxing when that bass chant sweeps up a full octave for the last verse and a scorching new lead (Kylo Turner? Keith Barber?) sails in at full roar. It's a moment that will bring you out of your chair with the hair on the back of your neck standing up. Awesome stuff.

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