The Swanee Quintet was one of the Nashboro label's most popular gospel vocal groups, delivering energetic, guitar-driven harmonies similar to early-'60s
Staple Singers or, occasionally, the early
Isley Brothers.
Take the Lord With You is a ten-song budget-line anthology of recordings that vary in fidelity and chronology. Some of the more roughly recorded and stripped-down performances sound primitive next to the other more commercial recordings with strings. Being a budget collection, no annotation and no liner notes explain the origins of the recordings, but they are selections from the group's Nashboro years. The identical recordings of "How I Got Over" and "Step by Step" also appear on
The Best of Nashboro Gospel, and eight of the ten recordings overlap with the 1995 CD
The Best of the Swanee Quintet. Nashboro was the gospel sister label to the secular Excello label; Universal Music acquired both labels, hence the release of this material by MCA Special Products. ~ Greg Adams