Jazz Articles

Isaiah Owens: You Without Sin Cast The First Stone

by AAJ Staff
June 16, 2004

Honey-sweet contemporary gospel has saturated the market with a brand of testimony that's so smooth and over-produced that it loses track of its roots in the church. However, nobody will accuse Isaiah Owens of Montgomery, Alabama of sanding down the rough edges. Owens sang for four decades with Montgomery's Flying Clouds--but he only picked up the guitar around age fifty, and he now concentrates on solo performance. And between the singing and the picking, he's put together a sound that ...

Reverend Charlie Jackson: God's Got It

by AAJ Staff
August 25, 2003

Listen and believe.

Sometimes it's better to learn from the music than learn about it. I got God's Got It in the mail with a fairly dense press sheet and proceeded to skim that information on my walk to work. But when I got home and popped the disc in the player, I realized I had better forget all I read. Leave the mind behind; listen to the soul.

And now I face the onerous task ...