First Person Christianity

In the notes to the fourth song-poem compilation album, "I'm Just the Other Woman", there was a section in which was pointed out an uncommon aspect of the song "The Will of God", that being that it was sung from the perspective of the singer being Jesus Christ. And I agree that such a conceit is a fairly unusual one. 

Here we have another one, from the waning days of the once-great Sterling label. Sterling's greatness came from one man - Norm Burns, a singularly great singer - with a large assist from one other man - Lew Tobin, the arranger and frequent composer who set the song-poems to music. Well, Norm died in 1974, and was followed by a series of much-lesser lights, and Lew's name - which showed up as a bandleader and/or co-composer on the vast majority of Sterling records releases into the mid-1970's, disappeared from the credits, never to return, right around the time this record was made. 

The singer on this side is Mel Moore, heard here with "The Starlets", who was the dominant performer for Sterling from around 1977 until their demise around 1984. I have a few Mel Moore 45's, but had never featured him before, largely because Sterling records after the departure of Norm and Lew are often deadly dull. 

But I do get a kick out of this one. Jesus is singing the song, you see, exhorting his listener to "Walk On" and "Stand Tall", those being the two parts of the title of the song. Jesus doesn't actually get around to identifying himself until nearly half way through, by which point he's clearly irritated at not being asked "Dude, who are you anyway", and gives away his secret. I can commiserate with him there - it seems like that might be a conversation you'd have with some random stranger who was telling you how to live, somewhat earlier in your interaction. 

For all I said about the suckiness of late era Sterling records, this one is actually bouncy and even sort of swings, with a Johnny Cash, "I Walk the Line" beat on the drums, a really nice interplay between the piano and the guitar, and an equally nice give and take between the lead singer and the backing gals. It's a sweet sounding track. 

Download: Mel Moore and the Starlets - Walk On - Stand Tall

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Shelley Stuart (whose name I now see I have misspelled on more than one occasion here) is the singer on the flip side, another religious number from the same song-poet. Shelley shows up on a few of the earliest tracks on Sterling, and then made well over a dozen records for the label during the period just before Norm Burns' death, but this is a later release for her on the label that I can find reference to online, exactly one hundred label numbers later than her previously known last release. For a label that seems to have released only 40 or 50 records a year, that's a significant gap of time between recordings. 

Anyway, Shelley's song, "Live For Jesus" is awful. It goes on for about 17 days, or at least it seems to. The folks at Sterling did do an effective job of creating the sort of dashed-off gospel/inspirational sound that could have been heard on a dozen religious fund-raising TV shows or cheapo Christian albums of the time. It's not a good sound, but they did a good job capturing it. 

Download: Shelley Stuart and the Starlets - Live For Jesus

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