Pastor TL Barrett

Six CD (or five LP) complete recordings of the civil rights activist/preacher/conman.

In 1968, former hospital mortician and bible school graduate Thomas Lee Barrett started a youth-focused ministry at Chicago’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Working with Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket, he set up the Youth For Christ Choir who in 1971 recorded a debut LP, Like A

Ship. Self-released, the album disappeared until, in 2010, it was reissued by Light In The Attic. Its unique blend of the teenage choir, Barrett’s melancholy imploring, and Richard Evans and Charles Pittman’s bass-drums soul groove struck a chord. Today, Barrett’s sound has been Kanye-sampled and is ubiquitous across TV and adverts. This lavishly assembled box proves Like A Ship was no fluke. Barrett – charged in 1989 for running a pyramid scheme within his church – has an authentic desperation to his preaching, veering into wild, abstract sermonising. It’s a blend of sweet and rough, innocent and guilty that has a redemptive euphoric potency.