Ft. Greene Park Gospel Blow Out
On Tuesday September 14 at 6:30 pm Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens will be performing in Fort Green Park, Brooklyn. Now I love Ms. Shelton, and I've blogged about her for American Legacy, but the reason I'm back to talk about her is that I love my friend John Stuart even more. Known to many as DJ Johnny Stuart , he will be knocking out some very deep, very rare gospel grooves in between the sets of Ms. Shelton and the brilliant, strange, and hilarious Reggie Watts. John won't be playing any ordinary stuff, either—we are talking pre-1970s Moving Star Hall Singers kind of spirituals and the like. Shelton has been singing gospel and soul in the deepest sense of the word since she was a young girl attending her parent’s church in Midway, Alabama, (which is pretty close to where my father grew up, we both realized) and at a radio studio (one of several) that her father built in Tuskegee. Inspired by Sam Cooke, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama (“the spiritual tone the...