Just a couple weeks after returning to Los Angeles from a brief sojourn to New Orleans, I received in the mail a Big Easy memento far more timeless than any Mardi Gras beads or plastic alligator could ever be. It was Let's Make A Record, the lone album recorded by Sister Gertrude Morgan during her forty-odd years as a street evangelist, missionary and folk artist in New Orleans' French Quarter.
Though recorded in the early 1970s, when Morgan was near the end of her life, Let's Make A Record has the feel of a turn-of-the-century field recording. It's just Sister Gertrude's powerful, untrained voice and a tambourine, and that's way more than enough to carry across the full impact of her religious fervor. And fervent she was - it takes a special kind of devotion to quit your life at the age of 38 and move to one of the more notoriously vice-ridden cities in the country to start an orphanage and preach God's word.
All of the songs on Let's Make A Record were composed by Sister Gertrude, and they engage typical gospel music subjects - the Book of Revelations, the power of the Lord, love of Jesus, etc. I share none of her beliefs, and yet I can't help being moved by the passion and guilelessness of her music. Sister Gertrude Morgan is regarded as a quintessential "outsider artist," and certainly Let's Make A Record falls far outside the standard schema we've got for why and how creative types should create art. It would be a shame if the album were treated as a mere novelty though. This is riveting stuff. It's the kind of music that might inspire you to praise dance in the streets of New Orleans.
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