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Christian rock 'n' roll didn't originate in the '60s with earnest youth groups and hippies who found their way from decadence to the Deity. Toward the end of the previous decade, Fern Jones was laying bricks for the music's foundation.

With her husband, Jones coursed throughout the South as an Assemblies of God tent evangelist--and a musical minister sounding like Patsy Cline with Janice Martin rockabilly sass. The Glory Road collects Jones' lone album, Sing a Happy Song, with four sides from custom pressing 78s she recorded with her spouse that predate her LP debut.

For sacred Caucasian music, Jones' style was positively avant-garde for its time. With some of Elvis Presley's studio regulars (guitarist Hank Garland and pianist Floyd Cramer among them) inhabiting the grooves, Sing was also as happening and professional as anything on a makeshift church's merch' table.

Public domain titles and chestnuts by Thomas A. Dorsey and her closest African-American counterpart, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, carry much of the album. Jones soared at songwriting, too. Johnny Cash went on to record her "I Was There When It Happened," and "Let Tomorrow Be"--catchily cribs advice from her mom and Jesus.

_Road_ goes from strength to strength, but it sounds as if she waited for the closing cut on _Sing_ to let it all hang out. Her take on "Didn't It Rain" kicks with the energy of some hot, obscure 'billy b-side. The cuts with her hubby that close out the disc stay further to Southern gospel and country boogie tradition, but not by much.

At the time of her album's release, the gospel division of Fern's label was in the midst of going belly up. Aggravating the situation, no singles were released from her groundbreaking platter. Without an official retirement statement, she simply stopped performing and recording after a solo tour south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

All the above circumstances should seemingly culminate in Jones' solitary album having the kind of collectors' price that would make Goldmine headlines. Such has never quite been the case. Once again, it took a general market label to bring back into circulation a lost gem of saintly sounds. Christian rock archivists--and anyone appreciative of all that's raw and rootsy--should be grateful.

Jamie Rake  September 29, 2005