Reverend John Wilkins - You Can't Hurry God (2010)

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From gospel to blues and back : the Hill Country Gospel of the Reverend

This seducing album reminds me the great Charles Laughton's 1955 movie “The Night of the Hunter” where a dangerous preacher played by Robert Mitchum has the word 'Love” tattooed on the top of his right hand fingers and “Hate” on the left ones, an allegory of the constant fight between good and evil. And as far as we are concerned here, between Gospel and the music of the Devil, Blues.

Mitchum in “The Night of the Hunter”

Like his renowned father, Rev. Robert Wilkins, John Wilkins had Gospel tattooed on one hand, and Blues on the other one. And rather than opposing them, he fused Memphis soul-flavored gospel music and Delta and Hill Country blues into an appealing mix : not Love versus Hate, but Love and Hate together. “I haven't read nowhere in the Bible where the music will take you to hell”, he rightly used to say.