Bulgarian choirs and Pygmy chanting have found hip followers lately, but gospel music remains ghettoized, ignored as fodder for provincials. That's a drag, because there's no surer American source for exactly the authenticity and naked feeling that sophisticates seek from more exotic sounds. Home-grown and out of this world, gospel is pure passion – which trembles from every measure of...

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...