I enjoyed the large variety on the second gospel playlist. Their was some folk/country music, such as the second song, "I'll Have A New Body." There was some blues and jazz sounding tracks, one choral song, some ragtime sounding tracks and then some more traditional sounding gospel songs. The "Black Diamond Express to Hell" was very interesting. It is really cool how it starts out as a regular speech and then the preacher begins to sort of sing it. I especially like his extreme emphasis on some phrases such as, "next station." It was also really interesting to compare the early version of "There Ain't no Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down," to a modern cover of it. I like the energy in the first one, but I prefer the clean precise woman's voice over the scratchy voice of Brother Claude Ely. This brings us to one of the main topics of the preface of the country book; original country music is unique because you can feel the sincerity and the hardships of the singer. What we call country today is far less genuine is often just made to please fans (i.e. make money).
I remember reading in the blues book about how many blues artists host house parties that don't exactly glorify the Lord. Then the next morning (on Sunday) everybody would go to church. Listening to the Charlie Patton reminded me of this. This contradictory lifestyle is kind of resembled by this type of song, and how it's topic is quite different from the topic in many other blues songs. I couldn't really understand a single word he was saying in "Prayer of Death," but I was able to infer that he was singing about the Lord. Thinking about this got me curious: I wonder if any of the Blues artists would preform at a house party, and then preform the next morning at church? Haha that would be interesting!