Al-Dos Band: The epitome of gospel-disco
When looking back at the prevailing musical styles of the mid-20th century, it is easy to omit the influence of gospel music. After all, the style is far too often overlooked or written off as being outdated and overly secular. When answering the age-old question, ‘What kind of music do you listen to?’ few people in the modern-day would even think of mentioning gospel, but the style is much more timeless and influential than you might give it credit for. During the 1970s, groundbreaking outfits like Al-Dos Band sought to bring gospel music up-to-date, with utterly astonishing effects.
Gospel music has roots going all the way back to the 17th century when Presbyterians living in remote areas of Scotland would compose songs and chants in Scottish Gaelic. The vast likelihood is, however, that you are more familiar with the gospel sounds of the American south. In the years following the emancipation of slaves in the United States, Black Americans began to embrace the Pentecostal movement – a subsection of the Protestant Church – which helped to establish gospel in the southern states.
From the early days of simplistic call-and-response hymns and songs, gospel developed rapidly in the first half of the 20th century. Soon, gospel singers like Sister Rosetta Tharpe proved to be hugely influential on the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll, in addition to inspiring the rise of soul music. Soul music has irrefutable roots in the gospel tradition, with many prominent artists, like the ‘Queen of Soul’ herself, Aretha Franklin, having started out as a church singer. Inevitably, though, these genres began to eclipse the popularity of gospel, leaving it at risk of becoming archaic and forgotten.
So, when disco arrived on the scene in the 1970s, rising from the nightclub subculture of the United States, it provided fresh opportunities to build upon the gospel genre. If you think of genres as families, then gospel is like the mother who birthed both soul and disco. Hence, all of those sounds work together pretty flawlessly. This was a fact that was painfully obvious to the South Carolina-based gospel outfit Al-Dos Band.
Spearheaded by the partnership of Mary and William Robinson, Al-Dos were a fairly obscure outfit that were only really known by aficionados of 1970s gospel and soul. Nevertheless, the group succeeded in creating some truly innovative tunes, blending old-school influences of gospel and early soul with the modern groove of disco. As was the case with far too many soul outfits of the time, Al-Dos Band only managed to release one single during their existence, 1977’s ‘Some Things Don’t Mean A Thing / Doing Our Thing With Pride’.
Given that the seven-inch single now fetch upwards of £2,000, it is lucky that Al-Dos Band’s material has since been reappraised and, crucially, repressed. In 2021, the London-based Kalita Records uncovered the band’s previously unreleased 1976 album Doing Our Thing With Pride, which expands upon the trailblazing gospel disco established on their sought-after single.
Even with the recent resurgence of Al-Dos Band’s material, the gospel-disco subgenre remains criminally underrated within the context of the 1970s gospel scene. For those who are willing to listen, though, the South Carolina band offer a distinctive sound unlike any other.
