Commentators often place the Olympian gospel singer Marion Williams, a thriving veteran who got her start singing with the Ward Sisters during the late Forties, among the finest vocalists anywhere in American music. Surely God Is Able, Williams's third album since she resumed recording in 1986 under the guidance of historian and producer Anthony Heilbut, demonstrates why. Done in Philadelphia and New York with subtly varied bands and accompanists (on piano, organ, bass, guitar, drums) cast for different songs and sessions, the album offers a phenomenal concert of such rhythmic black church classics as "Didn't It Rain" and the title song, plus statelier hymns, like the stark, sublime "The Day Is Past and Gone."

Heilbut is not a producer of "contemporary gospel." When he undertakes a project such as Surely God Is Able, he makes few concessions to pop taste beyond modern engineering. His documentary albums, like Mother Smith and Her Children, enable people to read about and hear gospel's rich legacy, but musical evolutions since 1969 are not his concern, and that may limit the audience for his often top-notch work. As with any proficient traditionalist, though, Heilbut has staunch convictions that yield real focus and authority. Surely God Is Able, like Yesterday and Today, the tremendous album the Reverend Claude Jeter recorded with Heilbut in 1988, maximizes the virtues of his approach.

And Heilbut's methods certainly seem to suit Williams, who, though sixty-four, couldn't possibly have ever sung much better. At times loose and hopeful, at others concentrated and grim, she bears down on some phrases as fully as she sends others to the heavens and beyond. After Williams has traveled farther, longer and more imaginatively through her music than many excellent pop and rock singers ever will, she still seems to be just warming up. Surely God Is Able will be remembered as a masterpiece, pure and simple, virtuosic and intense. (RS 587)

JAMES HUNTER