Elizabeth King
Superb debut from the Memphis-based gospel singing septuagenarian.
Bruce Watson set up Bible & Tire in 2019 to reissue Elizabeth King’s early-’70s gospel sides. He also persuaded King, now 79, to come out of retirement to record this long overdue debut – she’d spent the past five decades raising her 15 children. Working out of Delta-Sonic Sound in Memphis with Watson producing and the four-piece Sacred Soul Sound Section behind her, King’s vocal is deeper than it was in her youth, but still powerful and commanding, kept in shape, one suspects, by Sunday morning singing in church. Much of the album sounds as if it could be a lost ’70s Stax recording – an excellent thing – in particular Reach Out And Touch, Testify and A Long Journey, all driven by King’s mighty energetic life force, and not unlike something The Staple Singers might have sung.