Shirley Caesar

Since leaving the Caravans, the hottest gospel-singing group in the land, and striking out on her own 40 years ago, Shirley Caesar has been sweeping across America and around the world, delivering her Christian messages in electrifying song and sermon, picking up 11 Grammy Awards, 18 Dove Awards, 14 Stellar Awards, and numerous other honors along her path. She has been a standard-bearer for traditional African-American gospel music, yet at the same time has been unafraid to challenge convention and take the genre in daring new directions.

After 40 Years…Still Sweeping though the City, the third live album of Caesar’s prolific recording career, is a glorious celebration of her four decades as a solo artist. Recorded on July 14, 2007, at Raleigh, North Carolina’s Mount Calvary Word of Faith Church, which she co-pastors with her husband, the CD features the First Lady of Gospel Music reprising some of her greatest hits, “Old Apple Tree,” “Faded Rose,” “God’s Got It All in Control,” “Jesus, I Love Calling Your Name,” “Peace in the Midst of a Storm,” and “Hold My Mule,” among them.  Also included is one new number, “Praise Your Way Though,” written by her longtime organist, Michael Mathis, who co-produced the disc with Caesar and Bubba Smith. And, on two other selections, “Choose Ye This Day” and “Sweeping through the City” (originally titled “I Won’t Be Back”), she widens the retrospective to include her days as the Caravans’ spark plug. Joe Ligon, the leather-lunged lead singer of the Mighty Clouds of Joy, joins Caesar on three selections. A large choir, made up of Caesar’s Mount Calvary church family plus members of the surrounding community, is heard throughout and is especially powerful on “Peter, Don’t Be Afraid”/”Nobody but You, Lord”/”Teach Me, Master,” a medley of old-time hymns, rendered nearly a cappella, with minimal instrumental support.    

Born October 13, 1938, in Durham, North Carolina, Caesar was greatly inspired by her father, Big Jim Caesar, a tobacco farmer who sang with an a cappella quartet called the Just Come Four. He died of a brain seizure when she was 10, and to help support her semi-invalid mother, Hallie Caesar, and a dozen brothers and sisters, she hit the road as a gospel soloist with a one-legged evangelist named Leroy Johnson. Billed as “Baby Shirley,” she cut her first single, “I’d Rather Have Jesus” backed with “I Know Jesus Will Save,” for Federal Records in November 1951. The label on the 78 RPM disc described her as a “12 year old lass,” although she was actually 13 at the time of the recording.