Baptizing cover

Baptizing

The Seldom Scene

Album · 1978 · Rebel REB 1573

Baptizing is an album of gospel songs by the Seldom Scene, released by Rebel in 1978 (SLP-1573). It was recorded at Bias Studios with Bill McElroy engineering. The album spans a change of lead singer. John Starling left the band in 1977 to concentrate on his medical career, and his replacement was Phil Rosenthal, whose song “Muddy Water” the Scene had already recorded on two albums. Starling and Rosenthal share the lead vocals and are both credited on guitar. John Duffey plays mandolin and guitar, Ben Eldridge banjo, Mike Auldridge dobro and guitar, and Tom Gray bass. Ricky Skaggs joins on fiddle and rhythm mandolin.

Rosenthal wrote three of the eleven songs: “Brother John,” “Take Him In” and “Walk With Him Again.” The rest are older gospel and country songs: two by Albert E. Brumley, “By the Side of the Road” and “Dreaming of a Little Cabin”; Louis M. Jones’s “Fallen Leaves”; Flatt and Scruggs’s “He Took Your Place”; Sam Weedman’s “Hobo on a Freight Train to Heaven”; and Hank Williams’s “Will You Be Ready to Go Home?” Duffey arranged the traditional “Were You There?” and the closing gospel medley.

It was also the Scene’s last album for Rebel. Around the same time the group moved to Sugar Hill, which released Act IV with Rosenthal in 1979. Starling did not record with the band again until 1993, when he returned for a year and made Like We Used to Be.

Tracklist

  1. 1 By The Side Of The Road 4:02
  2. 2 Brother John 3:00
  3. 3 Dreaming Of A Little Cabin 3:50
  4. 4 Falling Leaves 3:18
  5. 5 He Took Your Place 2:43
  6. 6 Take Him In 2:09
  7. 7 Hobo On A Freight Train To Heaven 2:33
  8. 8 Will You Be Ready To Go Home? 2:29
  9. 9 Were You There alt version 3:20
  10. 10 Walk With Him Again 2:43
  11. 11 Gospel Medley 4:09

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