VA - Christians Catch Hell: Gospel Roots 1976-79

"Producer and label owner Henry Stone, who passed away last August at the age of 93, was the kind of mythic record label executive who turns up midway through music biopics, or as the 'other guy' in countless photos of famous artists, singlehandedly putting Miami on the map with his early '70s label TK Records. Though TK was Stone's primary concern, he also oversaw a fleet of smaller independent labels, each of which had a different stylistic focus, but were all loosely linked to R&B. One of those labels was Gospel Roots, which Stone founded in 1976 with Timmy Thomas. 

Like all of Stone's ventures, Gospel Roots quickly amassed a sprawling discography, releasing 50 LPs in just three years. Part of this was owed to the label's canny structure—rather than shelling out for recording and production, Stone snapped up pre-existing gospel masters from regional artists and simply pressed and distributed them through Gospel Roots.

According to the extensive notes included with Christians Catch Hell, Thomas rarely met—or even spoke to—the artists whose work he was commissioned to promote. The label expired just three years after it was founded, without scoring a single notable hit. That backstory makes Christians Catch Hell—a collection of 18 tracks from the Gospel Roots label—seem like yet another in a long line of barrel-scraping reissues of 'lost classics,' but the music it contains transcends record collector arcana, providing instead a snapshot of the underexplored intersection between disco, funk, and gospel." - Pitchfork