Birthday Goddess: Sing It, Sister

Last year we observed the natal day of the great Mahalia Jackson with perhaps the most transcendently camp moment in the history of the cinema; this year, here's the real deal.

The first three-and-a-half minutes of this clip, from very late in her long career and apparently filmed in Sweden, represent perhaps the most total fusion of singer and song I've ever seen, the melding of a titanic voice and a song that utterly represents the moment in which she is singing it. Listen and be stunned. If you haven't had enough, go here for more, in a clip tantalizingly/annoyingly unavailable for embedding but perhaps even more jaw-dropping.

Birthday Goddess: The Queen

She popped by the Café quite by accident a couple of days ago, but just now it's come to my attention that today marks what would have been Mahalia Jackson's 97th birthday.

"The Queen of Gospel" had a truly uncanny voice, one that could boom like thunder one second and be as intimate as a whisper the next. Here we see her in perhaps her most unlikely moment, serenading funeral-goers in that greatest of all soap operas, Imitation of Life.

It's a testament to her art that she transcends, and effortlessly, the best work of Douglas Sirk and Miss Lana Turner combined to reduce her singing to background music for their very particular brand of High Glossy Suffering.

Holy Trinity

Mahalia, Elvis, Miss Babara McNair, and Mahalia's hat. Don't ask why.

Do you suppose Sister Mahalia always dressed as if going to or coming from church? Perhaps she was.