Elizabeth King
Living In The Last Days

Elizabeth King - Living In The Last Days (Bible & Tire Recording Co 2021)

Genre: Soul Gospel

Album covers often express the meaning and atmosphere of the album they enclose, and in ninety cases out of a hundred, a beautiful cover houses an equally valid album. How can we not remember those made, in the '70s, by the artist Roger Dean. His graphics with twilight tones and shaded colors, his scenes populated by prehistoric and science fiction animals, and his apocalyptic landscapes magically accompanied several records of Yes, Uriah Heep, Osibisa, Paladin, and Nucleus.

The great photographer Marcus Keef, simply known as Keef, was the author of covers with shaded and pale colors, featuring sad and solitary characters, preferably female figures. He often worked for the Vertigo label and its artists: Black Sabbath, Beggar’s Opera, Colosseum.

The English designer Paul Whitehead was linked to the Charisma label and in particular to the early albums of Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator. The solitude of man, a miserable pawn of the universe, and the game of chess were the predominant themes of his graphics.

But perhaps the greatest was Abdul Mati Klarwein, who took care of, among others, the beautiful cover of "Abraxas" by Santana, and some for Buddy Miles, the Last Poets, and the great Miles Davis. Mati, in his works, depicted a passion for ancient deities and the strength of nature, representing the message of the black people towards liberation and redemption. The cover of "Bitches Brew" was, in this sense, his most important work.

The cover of the debut album of seventy-seven-year-old (you read that right) Elizabeth King is beautiful and very evocative. A close-up of a black woman’s hands (probably hers), with wrinkled hands that tell stories of suffering, of hard work, relieved only by prayers and spiritual songs that are magnificently expressed in the tracks of the album.

For those who look for novelties, avant-garde, new sounds, and new languages in music, let's say it right away, you can safely move on. This album is an act of love, love towards ancient music, which still manages to shake our souls and our consciences.

Elizabeth King was born in 1944 in Charleston, Mississippi. She didn’t have an easy life; as a child, she had to help the family pick cotton in the fields every day before going to school, she became seriously ill and devoted herself to spiritual songs as a form of survival. As she grew, she learned to interpret them in her style. In 1969, she was the victim of a serious car accident that seemed to confine her to a wheelchair, but once again, her willpower and profound faith helped her recover. "I was already serious about my singing, but I came closer during a walk with God... knowing that the only way out was God. And it changed my whole life."

After hearing them in a concert, she joined the Gospel Soul, a male vocal group with some success, and stayed with them for 33 years. She stopped recording music in the mid-seventies to dedicate herself to family life and sing only in church; after all, she had fifteen children, and today she counts fifty-seven grandchildren and thirty-three great-grandchildren.

After nearly a 50-year hiatus, she was convinced by her former producer, Reverend Juan D. Shipp, to return to the studio to record what is effectively her solo debut. Musicians of absolute value were involved, people who played with Albert King, Al Green, John Prine, Alex Chilton, just to name a few. The 11 songs on the album create a joyful mix of gospel with blues nuances and intense soul. Organ, bass, guitar, and drums compete with each other to create an exciting carousel of sounds on which King's voice soars with genuine emotion. Age has not diminished the pathos and power of her singing. She moves with considerable ease from low to high registers, and her interpretation is free of showmanship and artificiality.

It may well be nostalgia, but listening to this album made me travel and moved me, and if you have loved the soul music of the '60s, as well as the joyful vitality of Funkadelic and Sly Stone, please have a seat, I'll make room for you.