Tracks: 1) Sing Hallelujah; 2) We Shall Walk Through The Valley; 3) No Hiding Place; 4) Good News! Chariots A’Comin’; 5) Steal Away; 6) Noah Found Grace In The Eyes Of The Lord; 7) Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho; 8) His Eye Is On The Sparrow; 9) Born In Bethlehem; 10) This Train; 11) New Burying Ground; 12) Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen.
REVIEW
Throughout 1960–62, Lonnie kept a steady and respectable profile, releasing about 4–5 singles per year, most of which never failed to land in the UK Top 20, though his American success with ‘Chewing Gum’ would never be repeated. The very last of these to make an impression on the public was ‘Pick A Bale Of Cotton’ in August 1962 — and after that, not a single Donegan record would ever register on the charts at all: ‘The Market Song’ followed in December, but it did not have enough time to register, since in early January the Beatles released ‘Please Please Me’, and the next day Britain forgot that Lonnie Donegan ever existed. After all, who cares about a guy who is only concerned with the past when you have just been introduced to a most spectacular future?
However, before vanishing into obscurity, Lonnie managed to leave behind what was arguably his most ambitious project: a full-fledged gospel album. Prior to that, he’d taken on the gospel spirit every once in a while (‘Light From The Lighthouse’, etc.), but this time his selection of cherished folk standards is strictly conceptual. Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Donegan had suddenly found the Lord (he might have, I have no idea, actually), but rather with the fact that he wanted to make good use of the LP medium: with the idea that LPs should not be collections of singles but rather artistic entities in their own right seemingly more popular in the UK than in the US at the time, it is no wonder that Sing Hallelujah does not reproduce any of Lonnie’s 45" records, but instead paints a wholesome picture of the artist as a God-fearin’ and a God-lovin’ man. It is much more of a wonder, though, that it does so quite convincingly and, in places, even admirably well.
Of course, there is no huge difference between this album and Lonnie’s typical skiffle output. This is not «gospel» in the solemn Mahalia Jackson sense of the word: this is largely folk-gospel, with the main difference being the religious rather than secular nature of the lyrics. On some of the tracks, Lonnie and his backing band are fortified by some extra choir singers, but that’s about it — otherwise, we have just the same folk-blues and country-blues melodies, and the same vocal style which hasn’t evolved all that much since 1956. But neither has it deteriorated or lost its charisma; Lonnie’s thin, frail, but highly flexible and, at times, surprisingly determined tenor voice, when it enters religious mode, can often bring forth the same kind of vibe that you get from, for instance, George Harrison’s solo records — a sense of «conviction through weakness», the faint intuitive understanding that you are witnessing a frail and insecure human being attempting something overtly courageous, taking a crazy risk which can pay off only if you manage to put all of your heart in it.
It all begins already on the title song, where Donegan sets himself the mission of impersonating a zealous preacher, capable of lighting the Lord’s fire in his listeners’ hearts — a pompous track, punctuated by deep bass, almost jungle-level drums, and swampy electric guitar licks, while Lonnie himself skilfully relies on the quiet-to-loud vocal dynamics to mark that exact «jump of courage» I’m talking about. It might not be true fire-and-brimstone level, but I find the effect believable and inspiring, and definitely going beyond the level of «cute little Scotsman impersonating a deep Southern preacher man for the local sailors’ amusement»; in fact, I might have felt even more respect for the track had I never known the artist behind it in the first place.
A lot of the other tracks are less overtly spiritual in atmosphere, closer to the slight-and-joyful merry-go-rounds for which Lonnie was already well known — ‘No Hiding Place’, ‘Chariots A’-Comin’, ‘This Train’, etc. — but Lonnie is at his best here on the more quiet, intimate tracks, such as ‘His Eye Is On The Sparrow’, which he performs in the tender, sentimental style of the Everly Brothers, and ‘Steal Away’, which gets an arrangement not unlike a romantic Elvis ballad from one of his soundtracks, and features one of Donegan’s most exquisite vocal performances.
But the best is saved for last, because Lonnie’s rendition of ‘Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen’ may easily be the best of all the versions of this tune that exist — and I have heard quite a few, but most of them were either too happy (Louis Armstrong), too overdramatized (Mahalia Jackson), too poppified (Sam Cooke), or too restrained by instrumental and vocal conventions of the respective age (Marian Anderson’s performance from 1924 is outstanding, but much too academic-operatic, if you get my drift). Lonnie takes it as a torch ballad of sorts and uses each square inch of his vocal powers to do precisely what the song requires to do — convey a full spectrum of emotions from utter depression and desperation to undefeatable optimism and hope for a light in the darkness. The man clearly gets it, and is able to make you get it. This is not imitation; it is a deeply personal interpretation of a hymn which may be relevant for us all, Christian or not, beautifully performed in the quintessential humanistic spirit. It is much too sad that, even in the hearts of those few aging fans who still remember Lonnie with nostalgia, he will probably be forever present with that ‘Chewing Gum’ song rather than this absolutely phenomenal performance.
Ultimately, if you ever find yourself doing an inquisitive sweep-up of neglected pre-Beatles music, do not forget about this record. It gets a pitifully low rating on RateYourMusic, probably from people who did not even listen to it in the first place but simply dismissed it because, come on, skiffle clown Lonnie Donegan singing gospel? what a joke, right? Wrong: as Shakespeare already would have us know, clowns are often more intelligent, sensitive, and humane than Serious Artists, and I personally would take Lonnie’s idea of a gospel album over ninety percent of gospel artists I have heard. Because it is one thing to inspire respect and reverence, and quite another thing to actually endear yourself to the listener by performing century-old museum pieces like these.
Only Solitaire: Lonnie Donegan record reviews
Spotify has an expanded version that doubles the track list. Pretty fun set, I'm totally on board Lonnie's gospel train. This is almost as unexpectedly touching as Nina Hagen's bizarro gospel album: https://open.spotify.com/album/0bWGdFdcSEYo97RoofsZbg?si=onsGeL9PQNqjjL-cSL-eOQ&utm_source=copy-link