Gospel Collection
James Morrison

James Morrison returns to his roots with his latest release Gospel Collection.

Morrison's introduction to music was gospel music - he grew up in the church, his father preached and his mother played the organ - and he picked up his love for jazz c listening to Neil Gough, the trombone-playing minister at the Mona Vale church (now Pittwater Uniting) when he was just seven years old.

Over 30 years later, his first album of gospel classics includes renditions of "Down by the Riverside", "Joyful Joyful", "Amazing Grace", "Blessed Assurance", "The Old Rugged Cross", "My Tribute" and new songs.

Joining the multi-instrumentalist on this inspirational collection are choirs, Emma Pask (in Mahalia Jackson rather than Sarah Vaughan mode), award-winning a cappella group The Idea of North, Neilson Gough and outstanding guitarist James Muller.

With gospel music, Morrison told Insights, it was the songs that mattered - more so than on a mainstream album.

Music was the medium, he said. "Amazing Grace", played as gospel blues, had the message that grace was amazing. Similarly, other songs on the new collection, concerning all different aspects of the Christian faith, made them more important than, say, "Don't Get Around Much Anymore".

Morrison, who grew up a Methodist, travels widely (he was about to head off on his 15th overseas trip this year) and has an opportunity see all sorts of churches: "I have the onerous and exciting task of finding out what's going on."

He thinks it's great to visit gospel services in the US. He once took a guitarist from his band and as a consequence introduced him to the Christian faith.

He could think of few churches in Australia playing that style of gospel music now, apart from Metro Church in Perth. Most contemporary music in churches was folk, pop or rock, he said.

Yet Morrison thinks the music on his new album will have wide appeal. It moved around stylistically, he said, but, as with soul and blues, almost anyone could enjoy it: "It feels good!"

Asked about the motivation to write his own gospel songs for the collection, he said he got the idea for one song, "Jesus is the Way", in an airport lounge flicking through a newspaper and reading about terror threats, deaths in Iraq and Kashmir. He asked himself, "What do people think when they read this? Problems seem to never go away. People must get very down."

He thought people must be asking themselves, "How do we fix this?"

"Then it came into my head: 'Jesus is the way'." It was obvious, but he wrote it down and wanted to say it - to sing it.

Stephen Webb