How much is enough?

It seems that I do a lot of responding to Daniel Mount.

Well, I will again here. I posted recently that I was open to any suggestions any of you had for topics I could post on.

Well, since Daniel is a frequent reader here(I'm proud to say), I might as well act on a suggestion of his(before I move on to other topics).

This got started when Daniel posted a link to a newspaper article about Jerry Trammell(erstwhile tenor for the Florida Boys, the Blackwood Brothers, and JD Sumner and the Stamps, among others). As a comment to it, he posted that in his opinion Jerry was the greatest tenor the Florida Boys ever had.

Well, you all know me...I'm not inclined to let something like that go unchallenged. But since I have a rule about not getting into public disagreements about anyone's favorites(what's the point? People are entitled to like anyone they choose...no justification is necessary for that), I decided to respond to Daniel's comment in private e-mail to him.

In the course of our exchange, I opined that anyone who opted to make such a visible contention ought to have heard enough of a sample of a given group before making any sweeping judgments such as the above.

Unbeknownst to me, Daniel has done a lot of listening to the Florida Boys and their recordings over a long period of time. I am proud that Daniel has learned so much about gospel music so soon...too many of his generation tend to make statements like that without such background. Common examples of this are all the 20-somethings who post on blogs or message boards that the Haase/Payne/Fowler/Younce/Bennett lineup of Cathedrals was their best ever, or others in the same age group proclaiming that Tim Riley is the best bass ever.

I know the YouTube phenomenon has helped make the work of a lot of these artists more visible(and audible)to people who have computers. And this is a good thing...I've said right here that the postings there of Dean Adkins of classic quartet performances from the 1960s and 1970s has been a public service to gospel music fans of ALL ages, and introduce surfers to gospel singers they otherwise would never have gotten the chance to hear.

And yes, CDs of all these artists are becoming more readily available...and for the particularly intrepid(like Daniel), even LPs are available of almost any gospel artist one cares to name.

But my initial response stung Daniel a bit...and given what background he's developed, I can understand why. So he felt led to ask me here how much of a percentage of an artist's work must one be familiar with before one can make educated judgments on who their best iterations and/or singers are.

Well, not to cop out by any means...but even a lot of allegedly objective evaluations of such things are based on personal tastes(how can they NOT be?). We all have our standards of what good and bad are, or what kind of music each of us prefers.

And even if we could get past that into truly objective evaluations of singing technique, crowd appeal, and the like...what would the point of all that be anyway?

There are those that pretend we can do that...but what point are they(and we)trying to make in those kinds of discussions?

As I wrote here not too long ago, the issue of who the best is at this or that means less and less to me as I grow older...particularly when it comes to gospel singers. For if the singers in question communicate their message effectively through their music, what use is it to be picky about all that other stuff?

All any of us can do is the best we can with what we are given....whether it comes to sports, singing, blogging, or life itself.

And for those of us who are believers in Jesus, whatever we lack, He will compensate with enough for us to do the calling we're chosen to fulfill.

So to answer Daniel's question as precisely as I can, I would say: As much as you're able to get as complete a picture as possible of whatever artist you happen to be discussing.

But to all of you, I add...what does it all matter? Just thank God for whoever you're hearing, and treat their work the way you would want yours to be treated.

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