The Swan Silvertones “Swan Silvertones & Singin’...

The Swan Silvertones “Swan Silvertones & Singin’ in My Soul”

Vee-Jay

Here’s a group that would have nothing to fear if the FDA decided to apply truth-in-labeling laws to the monikers of music groups. This veteran gospel ensemble makes sounds as gleamingly graceful as its name.

This CD brings together two of the Silvertones’ mid-’50s albums--24 songs in all--for the Vee-Jay label, when it was at its artistic peak. Where so much contemporary Christian music sounds as if the singers live in an anesthetically induced state of eternal bliss, the Silvertones always manage to evoke the very human struggle to hold tight to faith in the face of earthly obstacles and distractions. Musically, the Silvertones simply are one of the most important small ensembles in 20th-Century gospel. Having started in the late ‘30s, it began as a traditional a cappella quartet, led by the elastic vocals of Claude Jeter, who also was an accomplished gospel songwriter (he wrote a third of the songs here). When they added guitar and drums to make the infectious rhythms even more pronounced, they helped change the sound of modern gospel music.

At the same time, Jeter’s silky tenor, which can slide effortlessly to a sweet falsetto, inspired a generation of R & B and soul singers who came of age in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Listen close and you can hear licks later copped by Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Levi Stubbs and Eddie Kendricks. The way he repeats the phrase “I will never” in “Jesus Remembers” makes you think Van Morrison must have spent some time with Swans’ records in his formative years, too. The unadulterated a cappella spirit in “Sinner Man” shows there were no studio tricks required. Say amen, somebody.