PILGRIM TRAVELERS Gospel Boogie (CD)

(2015/Gospel Friend) 27 tracks. The Pilgrim Travelers - along with the Soul Stirrers and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi - were the hardest-working, best-dressed, farthest-traveling and most recorded male quartet on the gospel highway. During an intense period of eight years (ca 1947-1954), they kept the same personnel and built a national career. With their magnificent voices, artful arrangements and outstanding showmanship, the group won acclaim and fame by singing with a fervor and power hardly heard before in gospel history. They were the first quartet to perform at New York's Apollo Theater in 1953. Singer , taent scout and A&R man at Specialty Records, J.W. Alexander, who later became Same Cooke's mentor, described the Pilgrim Travelers' lead singer Kylo Turner: He had the looks, he had the voice, he had it all.