I Just Want To Be A Good Man (Luaka Bop)
Pastor Champion
Released April 1, 2022
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kq74Z4DOI8iGiWFYIruKDGavjDsS8wjJo
Spotify:
About:
This album is a tribute to Pastor Wylie Champion, who died while Luaka Bop were in the process of releasing this, his first record, and his wife, Mother Champion, who died a few months earlier.
The Label met Pastor Champion a few years ago while they were putting together another release, The Time for Peace Is Now: Gospel Music About Us. They found him in a collection of YouTube videos from the 37th Street Baptist Church in Oakland, California, put together by the pastor there, Bishop Dr. W.C. McClinton. There was quite a lot of talent in those videos, and among them was Pastor Champion whom they liked so much that they decided to make a record with him.
Pastor Champion (Nov 23, 1946 – Dec 28, 2021) was a badass.
A preacher, a pastor, an outsider gospel singer who was raised in the Jim Crow South. He fled to California and joined a gang before becoming born again, spending the rest of his days traveling with his electric guitar to congregations and people’s homes from San Jose to Shreveport.
There isn’t much known about Champion, except that the beloved soul singer Bettye Swann happened to be his sister and confidant— a secret that the pastor only shared later on.
We started working with Pastor Champion a few years ago while we were researching another release, The Time for Peace Is Now: Gospel Music About Us. We found him on the YouTube channel of the 37th Street Baptist Church in Oakland, California, put together by their pastor Bishop Dr. W.C. McClinton. We liked Champion so much that in 2018 we decided to make an album together, and to record it analog like the gospel recordings we love, on a two-track Nagra reel-to-reel. Over the course of just two evenings (when the workday was done), Champion taught his band—musicians who had never played together before—a handful of songs that he regularly performed.
What followed was several years of trying to figure out how to move forward – Champion refused to be interviewed for the liner notes or to come to New York to keep recording. But there was something special that happened with everyone in that room those days, never to be repeated. It wasn’t perfect, but it was honest.
As time went on, Champion kept refusing to be interviewed, saying that he’d had a hard life and he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to talk about growing up in Louisiana, his mother being accosted by the Klan, or about his father’s gambling. He didn’t want to talk about being jailed for 90 days for using a “whites-only” bathroom, being in gangs or having a street name. We said that was fine—he could talk about what he wanted to talk about. And he said that he didn’t really want to talk about anything.
Unfortunately those conversations ended as Pastor Champion died in the last month of 2021. So we have this album as a remembrance of him. It’s quite a different record for us, almost Alan Lomaxian in feel, if Alan Lomax recorded outsider, soul gospel artists who played electric guitar.
Champion knew that this record wasn’t going to be for everyone. He didn’t really care. The important part for him was just getting the message out there in the same way that he always had: traveling alone with his electric guitar. “I want to say what I mean,” he said, “be practical, precise, to the point, and, at the same time, diplomatic.” In other words, he just wanted to be a good man.
God bless Pastor Champion and Mother Champion, peace be with them and their family. Love to all.
Eliza Grace Martin (from an interview conducted by Marc Weidenbaum)
Track Listing:
1. Intro (Pastor Champion) 00:21
2. I Know That You’ve Been Wounded (Church Hurt) (Pastor Champion) 03:14
3. He’ll Make a Way (Trust in the Lord) (Pastor Champion) 02:40
4. Talk to God (Pastor Champion) 06:57
5. In the Name of Jesus (Everytime) (Pastor Champion) 05:25
6. To Be Used, by You (I Want to Be a Good Man) (Pastor Champion) 02:25
7. Who Do Men Say I Am? (Pastor Champion) 05:05
8. Storm of Life (Stand by Me) (Pastor Champion) 05:12
9. In the Service of the Lord (Pastor Champion) 04:30
10. I Just Want to Be a Good Man (To Be Used, by You) (Pastor Champion) 03:48
Personnel:
Wiley Champion: vocals, guitar
Harvey Lester: keyboard
Bill Bronson: saxophone
Leonard Franklin: bass
Samuel Nicholas Champion: drums
Geronimo: drums
Recorded October 25-26, 2018, in Oakland, California, by Beau Sorenson, assisted by Maryam Qudus
Premastering, Editing, Mixing: Scotty Hard
Soundscape: George Langford
Editing: Wyatt Owens
Mastering: Heba Kadry, Darren Golda
Design: Paul Diddy
Photography: Adam Wissing & Eric Welles-Nyström
Cover Photo: Mother Sheren Champion, First Lady Elma Butler & Pastor Tex Butler of Olive Branch Missionary Baptist Church Produced by Eric Welles-Nyström & Yale Evelev
Review:
I Just Want To Be A Good Man is a sparse yet beautiful collection of tunes, recorded live to a two-track Nagra reel-to-reel in 2018, and led by vocalist/guitarist Pastor Champion, who passed away in December 2021. Songs like “He’ll Make A Way (Trust In The Lord)” are testament to the fact that Champion was both a dynamic performer and a rock-solid gospel songwriter. The recording maintains an honest airiness, benefitting from the acoustics of a storefront sanctuary. A flip of Latimore’s 1974 blues-soul classic “Let’s Straighten It Out,” “Talk To God” captures the energy of the space, but also demonstrates the connective tissue between sanctuary and juke joint.
Ayana Contreras (DownBeat)
