Sanctity with a Beat

Most gospel singers tend to hitch their style to one type of gospel belting. There's hard gospel," a heavily syncopated uptempo mode that pounds along like a steam locomotive. There's "sweet gospel " the gentler, lilting expression that finds its balm in folk dirges such as Steal Away to Jesus or Go Down Moses. Then there's "hallelujah shout," which can set ginmill customers or Southern Baptist congregations to clapping and chanting at the first blaring note.

The Grandison Singers--three guileless-looking Negro girls in their 20s and a tenor-pianist--combine all three styles. They prefer to "take it apart and lay it on the table." When they put it together again it comes out something that might be called "distilled" gospel--a style that forgoes the screaming, stamping frenzies common to many a small church choir but that retains the slogging, sanctified beat of jazz and rhythm 'n' blues. As a close-harmony quartet, the Grandisons exude a curiously mingled air of sex and sanctity.

At San Francisco's hungry i last week Sisters Mary and Helen Grandison and Cousin Dottie Webster, hips swaying under plain blue dresses, had every bottle on the bar rattling as they belted out old gospel favorites with poise and trombone clarity. The Grandisons have had little musical training. They left the sawdust trail only this year, after singing in churches all over the South, to try the nightclub circuit. The four write their own arrangements, frequently substitute new words in standard spirituals--e.g. Swing down, sweet chariot/ Stop and let me ride/ Rock me, Lord/ Rock me, Lord/ Rock me, Lord/ Calm and easy."

Their own catching, lilting, hand-clap rhythm has helped establish the Grandisons as the freshest gospel-singing group in the land. And despite their switch from churches to liquor-serving clubs, the girls have no regrets. Says Mary Grandison: People in the nightclubs accept the music more than people in the churches. It's more quiet here. It's almost reverent."

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