::ALBUM REVIEW::

While honoring the legacy of gospel industry pioneer and television icon Dr. Bobby Jones at Ocean Way Studios in Nashville, some of his colleagues and supporters including members of his New Life/Nashville Super Choir assembled together to record a special “family affair” project done in the style of popular Southern gospel moguls Bill & Gloria Gaither. The end result of this meeting is Faith Unscripted - a special CD and DVD project uniting powerful forces in today’s gospel community including Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Tye Tribbett, Karen Clark-Sheard, Judith Christie-McAllister, Joe Ligon, Micah Stampley and many others.

Produced by Robert Swope and the chief operators of Donald Lawrence’s best-selling, award-winning Finale’ CD and DVD, the project contains a special glow of excellence with its high definition video and Dolby 5.1 surround sound. Of course most of the attention focuses toward the video and is loaded with lesser edits, more footage and gives you a feel of what happened in that recording session - even with the bloopers, but the compact disc loads all of the musical enjoyment into one enjoyable listening party. Using smart judgement, the producers find smart ways to get around the bloopers of the scriptless event with quick edits, fade-outs and overdubs.

Things start off on the right note with a moving rendition of Albertina Walker’s classic “I Can Go To God In Prayer”, spruced up with Derrick Lee’s fireball piano work and synth strings. Darrel Petties starts the cut and later allows longtime Nashville Super Choir members Everett Drake and Rev. Lawrence Thomison to put their spin on the joyful track. But it is the excitement of the audience, captured with hearty handclaps and shouts of abundant passion, that brings extra radiance to the remake. Actually, the entire album is a showcase of renditions of old skool memorabilia and loaded with different expressions of gospel’s history including hymns, congregational choruses and modern contemporary gospel. That helps explain Vanessa Bell Armstrong’s involvement in the collection as she journeys back to her signature hit, “Peace Be Still” - modified by the late Thomas Whitfield. The song showcases her amazing ability to add a different dimensions to the song’s solo parts and to bend the rules a bit with her raspy, theatric melismas. Karen Clark-Sheard, without her fellow legendary siblings, wonders back to “You Brought The Sunshine.” Musically, the song excels with its funky synths and thick bass bump. The background work from the assembled singers stumble over a few of the passages and sometimes are at lost of words. It feels like a workshop rehearsal as Clark-Sheard often times help give out the lyrics before they are supposed to be performed from the group. But there is a likeable characteristic that comes with these kind of moments - it’s impromptu and feels more genuine. The same applies to Tye Tribbett’s “Victory.” While the professional glow from the original is pretty much doomed here, the Nashville singers do their best to attempt the crunk-funk of Tye Tribbett’s big hit. Towards the end of the song, there are a few added impromptu segments attached as the group jumps into their repetitive phrase “Victory, I’ve got it.” It gets irritating up to some point and maybe should have been edited a bit earlier, but you get what you get.

Done without any traceable fallacies is the moving serene “Holy Holy Holy” featuring renowned praise-and-worship leader Judith Christie-McAllister. Jones leads off the song with punctuated exhortations while McAllister sounds off the second verse and delightfully closes out the song with warm, sensitive ad-libs. “I’m A Soldier In The Army Of The Lord”, another flawless performance, gets a minor facelift with Lee’s original tag and vamp and features Micah Stampley, Karen Clark-Sheard and Armstrong. One of the album’s surprising sensations, “Something’s Got A Hold Of Me”, features longtime CeCe Winans background singer Jerard Woods delighting ears with his warm, youthful vocals on top of impressive ad-libs. Recovering from triple bypass surgery, Joe Ligon makes a brief, but fiery appearance on the Al Green version of “The Lord Will Make A Way.” You only wish he had longer time to really work this song into his trademark firecrackers.

The intent of the disc is to appropriately honor gospel music’s rich legacy while crowning Ambassador Bobby Jones with his achievement of keeping that legacy alive through his 30 year run on BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel show. Since there’s no new music featured here and mostly feature special guest appearances that overshadow the honorary, it’s hard to actually critique such a project. And then there’s the unscripted flow and the unprofessional inclusion of the session’s vocal stumbles that hurts the album’s credibility. But all is well, you have much more to enjoy with the enclosed DVD. In all respects, Faith Unscripted is an enjoyable trip down memory lane that features today’s gospel known and unknown heroes. And even though there’s too much of Bobby Jones-styled traditional gospel to filter through, it’s a fitting tribute that sum up what Jones would have expected.