Gospel Jazz
Located in 2 routes
Jazz written for and performed as worship, running from through-composed sacred concert works for big band, choir, and soloists to the smooth-jazz-adjacent contemporary gospel-jazz scene: spirituals and hymn tunes ("Come Sunday", "Wade in the Water", "Blessed Assurance") reharmonized with extended jazz voicings, gospel choirs and melismatic church-trained lead vocals set against improvising saxophone, piano, or Hammond organ, swing and shuffle grooves alongside gospel backbeats, and instrumental solos that function as testimony, typically recorded live in churches and cathedrals rather than clubs.
History
The tradition opens with Duke Ellington, whose spiritual "Come Sunday" from Black, Brown and Beige was re-recorded with gospel queen Mahalia Jackson in 1958, and who then devoted his final decade to three Sacred Concerts (premiered 1965 at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; 1968; 1973), calling them the most important thing he had ever done. Pianist Mary Lou Williams, after her Catholic conversion, composed the first jazz written for the Roman Catholic liturgy — the hymn "Black Christ of the Andes (St. Martin de Porres)" and later Mary Lou's Mass — establishing sacred jazz as a composer's discipline. The contemporary wing was launched by keyboardist Ben Tankard, widely billed as the godfather of gospel jazz, with All Keyed Up (1989), and reached its commercial peak with saxophonist Kirk Whalum's multi-volume live series The Gospel According to Jazz (Chapter 1, 1998, with George Duke; Chapter II, 2002, at West Angeles Cathedral with Jonathan Butler and Kim Burrell), which put church-recorded jazz on the gospel and smooth-jazz charts simultaneously; Burrell's jazz-rooted phrasing on Everlasting Life (1998) carried the vocabulary back into mainstream gospel singing, and Tankard's chart-topping Full Tank series (2012 onward) keeps the style active on jazz radio today.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Come Sunday(1958) — Duke EllingtonSpotifyYouTube
- In the Beginning God(1966) — Duke EllingtonSpotifyYouTube
- Black Christ of the Andes (St. Martin de Porres)(1964) — Mary Lou WilliamsSpotifyYouTube
- Wade in the Water(1998) — Kirk WhalumSpotifyYouTube
- Falling in Love with Jesus(2002) — Kirk WhalumSpotifyYouTube
- Holy Ghost(1998) — Kim BurrellSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- "Sacred Concert (Ellington)", Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Concert_(Ellington)
- "Mary Lou Williams (album)", Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Williams_(album)
- "A Concert of Sacred Music 50 Years Later", SFJAZZ, https://www.sfjazz.org/onthecorner/concert-sacred-music-50-years-later
- "The Gospel According to Jazz" review, AllMusic, https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-gospel-according-to-jazz-mw0000601004