Jazz and spirituality have, at times, gone together like peanut butter and jelly, but certain jazz sectors have sought to distance faith and piety from the secular swing of black America's national music. There have always been, of course, jazz musicians willing to flip detractors the bird and forge ahead in creating intensely personal spiritual statements; Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and Sun Ra all developed distinctive voices through their integration of "church" music. However, a statement on the level of Black Christ Of The Andes from an artist like Mary Lou Williams was almost guaranteed to stir controversy. Williams had been making her name as the top woman composer in jazz since the late 20's, but no one really expected her to come up with anything like this in 1963: an eerie combination of a capella hymns performed like The Swingle Singers on a serious death trip and snappy piano runs complimented by a bold rhythm section. "St. Martin De Porres" comes up first: a dirge-y spiritual with a series of vocal whoops and harmonies eventually giving way to the sly bop of "It Ain't Necessarily So". Williams caresses her ivories most satisfyingly on innovative numbers like "A Fungus A Mungus" and "Forty-Five Degree Angle" until the fractured gospel-soul-jazz of "Praise The Lord" comes along and steals the show at disc's end. Artists such as Sun Ra and Albert Ayler always attracted controversy for their avant-garde tendencies, but only Mary Lou Williams, 53 years old at the time of this album's recording, could have created an album so eerie and uncompromising that it simultaneously delights and perplexes forty-six years later.
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