Ann, Regina and Deborah McCrary and Alfreda McCrary Lee have been sisters and singers since they were born. Serious singers. It's no coincidence at all that they're the daughters of another serious singer, the Rev. Sam McCrary, whose legendary a cappella gospel group The Fairfield Four regularly rehearsed in the family's Nashville home.
The sisters' childhood singing was no cutesy kid stuff — do a YouTube search for "Regina McCrary" and you'll see. The first video that pops up shows Regina — no more than 9 years old — singing lead in front of the BC&M Mass Choir and projecting powerfully, with the vocal control of someone three times her age.
Even with the foundation of familial harmony laid way back then by endless opportunities to sing together, the act officially billed as The McCrary Sisters is a pretty recent development. They recorded their debut album, Our Journey, just last year and started thinking of themselves as the Sisters (with a capital S) only in the past decade. And that was after Ann and Regina — the two who've made a full-time career of singing — took a gig with Buddy Miller. Says Ann, "I think Buddy started introducing us as The McCrary Sisters."
Miller had heard them on an album that The Fairfield Four's bass singer recorded for Lost Highway in 2001. "When they wanted us to sing on Isaac Freeman's CD," Ann says, "that was the beginning, I think, of what you'd call the domino effect."
Since then, she, Regina and, occasionally, Alfreda have turned up on all sorts of notable Americana albums: Miller's, those Miller produced for Solomon Burke and Patty Griffin, Charlie Louvin's final gospel album and virtually everything Mike Farris has done in recent memory.
Regina, Ann and Alfreda have each made solo albums, but, far more often, they've put their vocal gifts to use in supporting roles — in choirs, theater troupes, backup groups. They've done a bunch of work in contemporary gospel — Ann with BeBe and CeCe Winans, and she and Regina both with BET regular Bobby Jones' Nashville Super Choir, to name a couple examples — but they've also sung their share of pop, country, R&B and rock. Most famously, a teenage Regina went from the mass choir to singing with a chart-topping Stevie Wonder, then a born-again Bob Dylan (she's on all three albums from that rather notorious period: Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love). Deborah, though, had all but left singing behind to focus on her nursing career. For all those reasons, it's a landmark event for the four Sisters to come together under their family name — the name Americana fans have come to recognize — and put their voices out front.
"We just decided that we were gonna have to do something about that and make sure that we had something of our own," says Ann. "Because we were building up a fan base, and they loved that we sang with Buddy and that we sang with Mike and Patty, but they wanted to hear something just us. ... And we did what we should've done — we say 'should've done,' but everything has its perfect timing. We did what I think was ordained for us to do many, many years ago."
"I mean, don't get me wrong," adds Regina, "I love everybody that I have shared a stage or a studio with. But I guarantee you there is something so absolutely awesome about singin' with my sisters."
The McCrarys share the lead vocal duties on Our Journey, and in the process, they showcase their four distinctive instruments: Deborah's deep and humid, Alfreda's feathery and supple and Ann and Regina's each its own fiery hue. They also spread the love between producers, players and special guests from the contemporary gospel and Americana worlds, which makes a difference not only to the liner notes, but the sonic sensibilities. Alfreda's "He Cares" — one of several Tommy Sims productions — is sublimely smooth, jazz-tickled soul; Ann's "Know My Name" — a track she co-produced with Sims on which Farris and Griffin appear — is as down-home as it gets.
The McCrary Sisters are one of the few groups who move with ease between these genres, between an audience that listens especially for a gospel message and one that's drawn to rootsy sounds. The Sisters don't take for granted how well they're going over with the latter.
"I appreciate that they have really embraced our music," Ann says. "Because, you know, some [call it] inspirational, gospel or whatever the category. The lyrics ... we hope would make people feel good and bring light to somebody's darkness and joy to somebody's sadness, and just hope that they would be lifted up by the music that we sing."
Some songs they sing extend spiritual invitations, though not particularly heavy-handed ones. But there's also a great, big open-armed embrace of people of all sorts of perspectives to be found in the lighthearted, Gary Nicholson-penned number "Bless 'Em All Y'all."
You can't help but get the sense that the Sisters fully invest themselves in the spirit of what they're singing no matter who they're in front of, and that matters a lot. Back when Regina auditioned for Dylan, for instance, she got him to his feet by singing "Amazing Grace" her way. "When I witnessed to who I am and where I come from and how I do it," she says, "that's when he jumped up and said, 'That's what I want!' "
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