Sunday Music: D'Angelo's Church Roots + Hawkins Family "What Is This?"

Ray Charles may have been the first to take gospel music and put it into the secular world.

If you never heard The Southern Tones doing “It Must Be Jesus,” let’s start here.

Ray Charles heard that one. It moved him. And he flipped it - you know his version, it’s called “I Got A Woman”:

But after Ray made the gospel to secular flip as popular as he did, despite some expected complaining by purists, it didn’t just stop happening.

Both musical tracks continued evolving, and borrowing from each other, and a new tradition emerged from the 1960s on.

In the 1980s, if you were a kid growing up around modern gospel, you would have heard The Hawkins family.

They were a killer band. Or, on fire. Or - OK they were Christians but they were burning with something.

I didn’t grow up hearing church music like The Hawkins Family. I can only imagine what experiencing or seeing this live would have been like. I had the greatest Methodists hymnal hits on my Sundays. There was no swinging, shouting, or - let’s just say, the soul was limited. Either way, it wasn’t on my northeastern PA church music setlists.

But D’Angelo did. This is the church music he was raised on. Next to the secular music too, but listen to this and tell me the influence isn’t immediate.

The lead vocal range, harmonically and dynamically. The same on the backup vocals. How they move and stack and align. And this was the 1980s!

Switched on Pop flagged this in their (excellent) D’Angelo discussion, “How D'Angelo changed music, in three songs.” I don’t explicitly recall ever hearing them before. My mind is kind of blown. After you play “What Is This?” sit with D’Angelo’s “The Root” for a second and think about it.

The dynamically restrained but rhythmically rich drums, bass and guitar. The way the lead vocal leads, but the backups both lend backup and lead in various directions at surprising times. The way the whole track, from all the voices to the cymbals, slow dances together.

When you’re a kid, you don’t pick a lot of the music that you’re exposed to. You’re around stuff. It’s happening. And you’re gauging and noticing what feels good. What feels positive.

Kind of like learning swear words - you learn what is OK in one place and not OK in another. But then you grow up and wonder if the dividing lines serve you. Sometimes, they don’t, and that’s when artists start collapsing previously disparate ideas.

Gospel came a long way from The Southern Tones to The Hawkins Family, just like rhythm and blues came a long way from Ray Charles to D’Angelo.

However, in that same equation, we can’t forget that all the cross patterns exist there too. All the musical styles, for all their barriers and their rules, can be bled over if the right artist shows up.

D’Angelo was the right artist to do this one. I’m so excited to be able to add this influence to my list. What a band.

ps. if you missed last week’s “Sunday Music: RIP D'Angelo - An Attempt At Context For New Listeners (Three albums. Three distinct sounds. Three ways he mattered)” it’s a great companion to this piece.