The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 572

Bessie Griffin Following in Mahalia's Footsteps BY LEONARD FEATHER mt is doing that pop song, 'Grandma's and on the end of it she gets into this preaching thing about how her time was spent, how she used to put on her robe and march into the church, and from there she goes into 'Amazing This kind of thing really bugs me. If you gonna sing about the Lord, sing about the Lord. The two just don't belong together." The appeal of gospel, originally widespread among black communities all over the country, shifted somewhat in recent years as younger and more militant blacks turned away from religion while young whites were attracted to it as an ethnomusicological phenomenon. But Miss Griffin has faith that black and white, young and old, will find salvation in the music to which her life has been addressed. "At one time when we were on tour with 'Portraits in Bronze' we had nothing but whites, in Vegas and other places.

But a lot more black people are getting back into it." "Do you believe young blacks can relate to the gospel message?" "Yes, yes, there's a whole lot of youth choirs now. James Cleveland has a youth choir, there's the Los Angeles Community Youth Choir, and on my concert we'll have the Bethel A. M. E. choir.

These kids are sincere and they know this music can purify them and heal them! Dope addicts and alcoholics have heard that with God you can be delivered; they pray for salvation and this is what they have turned to. I've sung at these rehabilitation clinics, me and the Mighty Clouds of Harmony, and those people sat like they were nailed to their seats! "Yes, I've helped these kids to straighten themselves out. It really gives you a good feeling when you can reach out anil sot them on a better path. We've been taught in the church, he that believeth shall be saved, and they learn, too, that all it takes is a made-up mind." Cleansing Strength Regardless of the listener's age or race, and whether his need is a physical cure, spiritual redemption or simply a desire to be bathed in the cleansing strength of her music, Miss Griffin and her entourage constitute a unique and breathtaking experience. Comparisons to a blues-shouting Bessie of an earlier era are no less valid than the continual likening to Mahalia.

She is one of the relatively few artists to bring together all the prerequisites of a great gospel singer: a broad and genuine range without falsettos, excellent enunciation, and a deep spirituality that can hardly fail to excite with its honesty and power. Underlying it all is her unshakable religious conviction. "People are talking a lot about the so-called Jesus freaks. Well, I don't like to use that expression. You could say that I'm one too, I guess, because I've been in this right along.

Just recently these young folks have become acquainted with the movement back to Jesus, and if they stay with it, it can mean as much to their lives as it has to mine." It is an unhappy twist of fate that the passing of the woman who helped bring Bessie Griffin out of the South and into the limelight may have paved the way at last for a recognition that has long escaped her. But surely that is the way Mahalia would want it to see her protegee move on up a little higher. When Eessie Griffin raises her mighty contralto in the name of the Lord, there is no telling what may happen. Her vast, visceral moans can lead to screaming ecstasy, convulsions, fainting and even, according to legend, fatal seizures. in New Orleans," wrote Tony Heilbut in "The Gospel Sound," "Bessie wailed Want to Rest' and laid one lady to When she leads her big gospel revival troupe of Black Music, Song Dance: Company of at the Ah-manson Theatre of the Music Center next Sunday afternoon, she will incorporate a tribute to Mahalia Jackson.

This will be a strange departure for Bessie, who for 20 years suffered from an underdog image. "Everywhere we go," she says, "it's always that same thing, 'You sound so much like So the songs that she would sing, I would never try to feature, because I wanted to be strictly Bessie." The similarities are self-evident. Both women were born in New Orleans; both grew up pleasingly plump; though Bessie was lo years younger, both flourished in the great days of gospel in Chicago in the early 1050s. Overweight would afflict them both with heart trouble. used to be much larger than I am now.

Last year I was in the hospital 32 days and lost 33 Yet there was a difference. Mahalia made big moneyT, invested it in real estate and grew wealthy. Bessie has had her ups and downs; until now, down has been dominant. A decade on the road with a female quartet; later six years with a gospel group, the Caravans. In between and since, solo tours and TV shots (usually misrepresenting her with pop-gospel material rather than the slow moaners that are her forte).

The hit record that could have changed her life was always tantali-zingly beyond her grasp. Auspicious Break One of the more auspicious breaks brought her together with producer-promoter Bumps Black well, who gave her the lead in "Portraits in Bronze." Produced in Los Angeles in 1937, adapted from Langston Hughes' "Sweet Flypaper of Life," this was the first gospel musical, bringing the genre out of church into coffee houses, clubs and casinos. Blackwell, now her musical director and manager, believes Bessie's time has come at last. Perhaps the first augury was her wildly acclaimed appearance at Miss Jackson's funeral. "When I went back to Xew Orleans for the services," she recalls, "I was going to do a song I like, 'Too Close to But the program was printed and it said, 'Move On Up a Little and of course everyone associated this with Mahalia.

So I went to my minister and I talked with my family and asked them what should I do. My minister said, 'Let the spirit lead so I borrowed a book to get the words of 'Move On I prayed on it during the night, and next morning I broke out in goose bumps, and I said to myself, this is my sign, I'm gonna sing it whether I know it or not. And I did and it broke up the place." Her feelings toward the gospel queen inevitably are a mixture of admiration and half-concealed resentment. "I first heard one of Mahalia's records, 'God Shall Wipe All Tears when I Gospel singer Bessie Griffin deep soiriluality ihat can hardly fail fo excfe." was in high school, and I sang it in school. I met her later when she did a concert at our church.

She told me, 'You're too good to be singing down In an exact parallel to the King Oliver-Louis Armstrong hegira, Mahalia sent for Bessie to come to Chicago from Xew Orleans. Eefore a roaring crowd of 40,000 at Chicago's Coliseum Bessie sang "Come Ye Disconsolate" and "How I Got Over." Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Dixie Hummingbirds, even Mahalia herself, had trouble following her. "Mahalia was my sponsor for a period of time, but she didn't like my singing with groups. She kept saying, 'You don't see me singing wUh a whole bunch of people; you can make it as a But I always felt comfortable as part of a group." Bessie disagreed with Miss Jackson on the hotly debated topic of performing outside the church. "I feel the gospel should be spread like the Bible says go into the highways and the byways and compel men to come to Christ.

Now how you gonna compel people that's supposed to be saved, they in church already, you sing and pray to them but their mind's already made up. Why, Mahalia herself, even though she said she would never be associated with jazz, was at the Newport Jazz Festival with Duke Ellington. She sang The Lord's but she was still at a jazz festival. You got to go to people in their own environment. "I've had people come up to me in a club with tears in their eyes.

'Is this the way you sing in your church? Can we come to your church?" And so my church could be filled with white folk who'd never heard that kind of singing in their own church." She agrees with Mahalia, though, on the separation of sacred and profane music. "I've never had an urge to sing the blues. I've been told I remind people of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey and Mamie Smith. That was a lucrative field and there would have been much more in it for me materially, but I couldn't bring myself to do it." Bumps Blackwell added an ironic aside: "Bessie wrote and sang a number called 'That's Whay My God Is Bonnie and Delaney took it, changed it to 'That's What My Man Is and Bessie made more money on the royalties from their recording than from her own." Though the incident in question was profitable to her.this sort of thing irritates Bessie. "Nancy Wilson had the Staple Singers on her TV special; they've gone pop gospel, or whatever you call it, to make money; and Nancy Wilson did 'Since I Met the number that I made famous with the Caravans; she sung it and didn't even know the words.

And now this young girl from New Orleans, Merry Clayton, SIXTEEN i.