Pastor T. L. Barrett & The Youth For Christ Choir

Pastor T. L. Barrett & The Youth For Christ Choir: “I Shall Wear A Crown” (5xcd The Numero Group, 2021)

The kids are singing so loud that your stereo is going to explode and the groove being laid down by Barrett, Richard Evans, and drummer Charles Pittman is arguably one of the greatest the good Lord ever beamed down to earth for us to hear

The Numero Group is one of the finest record labels currently active. Founded in Chicago in 2003, it has set itself the goal of selecting and collecting the most significant - and often already released - work of a wide range of little-known musicians across the most disparate styles and genres, with the aim of preserving and spreading their artistic legacy. Every release stands out for the great care put into its packaging, and the physical format is often accompanied by a booklet packed with insights into the history of the subject at hand.

Its latest release is no exception, dedicated to T.L. Barrett, Pentecostal preacher and gospel musician active mainly in the 1970s on Chicago's South Side, and until a few years ago practically unknown to the rest of the world.

His congregation included well-known Chicago names such as jazz trumpeter Kelan Phil Cohran and Maurice White and Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire. In the early Seventies Barrett put together a forty-strong choir of youngsters aged between twelve and nineteen, renamed The Youth Christ Choir, with whom he met every Tuesday evening to rehearse the material that would go on to make up his debut album, "Like A Ship (Without A Sail)" (1971), reissued here in full within this box set alongside the other gospel albums he released throughout the Seventies and a collection of sermons. His work features prestigious players such as Phil Upchurch, Gene Barge, Charles Pittman and Richard Evans of Rotary Connection, the psychedelic soul outfit formed in 1966 in the Windy City on the initiative of Marshall Chess, son of Leo, founder of Chess Records. Besides releasing music under its own name, the band recorded and toured backing well-known artists such as Muddy Waters and Minnie Riperton.

In 2010 the invaluable US label Light In The Attic reissued Barrett's debut album, bringing the Pastor back into the spotlight and earning him praise from a sizeable roster of celebrities, including Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Colin Greenwood of Radiohead. In 2016 Kanye West sampled "Father Stretch My Hands", taken from the album "Do Not Pass Me By Vol. 1" (1976), definitively bringing Barrett's name to the world's attention. From that moment on, his music has turned up in TV commercials, Hollywood film soundtracks, Netflix documentaries and HBO series. Even Richard Ashcroft, former frontman of The Verve, has taken to performing his own live rendition of "Like A Ship (Without A Sail)", helping to spread the Pastor's gospel.

"I Shall Wear A Crown" is a box set released in September 2021 by Numero Group in a triple format: 5 LPs, 5 CDs and digital download (the latter option missing the fourth disc, titled "I Found The Answer"), containing Barrett's first four, marvellous Seventies releases along with a collection of singles and sermons spanning 1968 to 1985. We'll be looking at the CD edition, which at the time of writing this review is on sale on Amazon at the reasonable price of €52.92.

The music contained in this box set is unique and thrilling, and it's able to reach straight into the listener's heart. What stands out even before the superb performances, however, is the quality of the songwriting. These are solid tracks, marked by writing that, while operating within a very specific and well-defined genre such as gospel, displays imagination, melodic flair and refined arrangements that betray the deeply avant-soul background of the skilled musicians involved. "I Shall Wear A Crown" is genuinely one of the most significant releases of the year for the extremely high artistic level of what it offers, transcending the fleeting hype that rediscoveries in the record industry are so often subject to nowadays. The box set is enriched by a lavish thirty-page booklet that traces Barrett's artistic trajectory and describes, with great attention to detail and gripping historical narrative, the backstory behind the making of his albums.

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04/05/2026