By Don Jacobson
Band: Lady Tramaine Hawkins
Song: “Changed”
YouTube added date: July 6, 2008
Shooter: Ladyglen50
Locale: Gospel Fest, Millennium Park
Video quality: Good
Sound quality: Excellent. Very nice acoustics.
Creativity: Not bad. Ladyglen50 has to do some quick panning at one point to keep up with Lady Tramaine as she scoots stage right.
Difficulty: Medium. Outdoors park shots at crowded venues can present some challenges. The shakiness quotient is very good, probably only three of a possible 10 shakes. Also, nice framing.
Overall Beachwood Shaky-Cam Rating: 8 (of 10)
Comments: Lady Tramaine Hawkins was the June 1 closing night headliner at this year’s Gospel Fest at Millennium Park, and she was a corker, judging by this YouTube video from Ladyglen50.
Lady Tramaine really gets into a performance of one of her all-time power-gospel ballads, “Changed,” on this amateur video, which is remarkable for its great sound quality. It’s a pretty good document of what by all accounts seems like a magical wrap-up to three days of praise and powerful voices in the park.
Just some trivia first about Tramaine Hawkins. The song “Changed” was from her early Light Records era, when she recorded two albums, Tramaine (1979) and Determined (1982), now considered to be all-time classics.
She was one of the first black gospel artists to cross over in a big way to mainstream dance pop. She had a monster club hit in 1986 with “Fall Down (Spirit of Love),” a song that earned her a lot of money but also drew howls of protest from the gospel purists. Listening to it now, it does sound pretty darn secular, I have to say. But it was the ’80s. I think everyone then was at least a little inappropriate in some way.
But she soon got back into her great gospel groove with 1988’s The Joy That Floods My Soul, and has been squarely in the heavenly light pretty much ever since then. One very interesting fact: She is so beloved as a pure embodiment of heavenly power that that she was asked to sing gospel at the funeral for Sammy Davis Jr., himself, babe.
This also our first look at Millennium Park as a Chicago amateur band video venue, and I’m thinking it’s going to rule the world of YouTube in that small way, if Ladyglen50 is any indication. There was only one lone upraised hand of praise that blocked the view during the whole song. Maybe the video sightlines there are good. Ladyglen also has posted a tasty I Shot the Band of Chaka Khan from last year’s Taste of Chicago.
Enjoy Lady Tramaine singing about the Lord’s saving ways:
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Previously in I Shot the Band:
* Company of Thieves: At Welles Park covering OutKast.
* Funhouse: At Kankakee County’s famed fish fry.
Posted on July 7, 2008