Usually when I finish a long day at the hair salon, I’m tired and ready to go home and get off my feet. This night (last Thurs.), I had forewarning of a major local concert and though my tail was dragging, my sense of music justice was stronger and somehow I knew I had to summon the energy and drive to Franklin by myself.

The Mighty Clouds of Joy are a New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest staple. The Gospel Tent, at the annual festival, is usually a huge and joyous surprise to people who have never heard, or had access to Black Gospel Music. The tent is a huge, circus-like tent and has sides that seem to pulse outward, as the powerful music swells and ebbs. Unsuspecting people, who happen upon the Gospel tent for the first time, get to experience fifty, and sixty-member vocal groups, singing with an unbound spiritual energy that is strong enough to draw everyone within earshot over to get a look. Once inside the tent, the hand-clapping foot-patting audience adds their part to create a musical ambience that—though there are eleven other stages of music going at the same time— is almost impossible to leave.

In my Jazz Fest experience, the three Gospel groups that stood out the most were The New Orleans Gospel Soul Children, Sherman Washington and the Zion Harmonizers, and the Mighty Clouds of Joy. This smaller choir of children and these two Quartet-style groups has to compete with some of the most dramatic music on the planet to stand out. The New Orleans Gospel Soul Children do an other-worldly version of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, it has full-volume stops and starts that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. The Zion Harmonizers, and the Mighty Clouds of Joy, are older men who have been singing together for forty years or more. The purity of their harmony and their vocal acrobatics really move the crowds.

The Gospel Tent taught me how the Neville Brothers, and other New Awlins groups who tour extensively, get their creative juices back, they come home and go to church!

Joe Ligon, the elder spokesman for the Mighty Clouds of Joy, talked, sang, preached, and basically held the audience in his hand, Thursday night.. He told of his father, a minister, and talked about his grandmother who lived down the road from their house in Alabama. His grandmother moaned her favorite hymns, she said it made her work easier, and she felt it also confused the devil. Joe soul/spoke this story as his band and fellow Clouds quietly did “Nearer My God to Thee” in the background. Joe finished the song by attempting to moan in his grandmother’s style, and then joined the quartet for the strong, soulful finish……..What happened to all my tiredness?

Joe’s talking voice seemed reedy and tired like a troubadour’s of his vintage might. It seemed as if that voice couldn’t afford much. Then he lifted the mike heavenward, and the most beautiful, clean, baritone voice filled the room. When he added the gravel, it could have been Wilson Pickett or Solomon Burke on the stage. The other guys in the group could have been the Chi-lites or the Spinners. Four out of five sang lead, the songs ranged from raucous, “old school” Gospel to more contemporary, Andrae Crouch type arrangements. One guy sang lead for a whole song in falsetto; as he would hold the high notes; younger women in the audience would clap and shout out words of encouragement and joy

Forty four years, thirty five albums and three Grammys later, the Mighty Clouds of Joy have played Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, the Apollo Theater, and now the Goodnight Auditorium in Franklin Ky. The musical message that these men delivered that night created a warm feeling of spiritual openness— the white people, after awhile, were clapping along with the black people (some of them were even keeping time). I found myself being pulled out of my seat, clapping, when they started into “Will the Circle be Unbroken.” I remember, at one point in the concert, feeling spiritual enough to bow my head and close my eyes to pray for my country: that the war will soon end and we can close the ranks and be one people again.

John Redick was and is a boomer audio-phile of extreme proportions. He is a hairdresser who works at the Cache’ Salon in B.G. His one fantasy in life has always been to be a black disc jockey.