The Loop’s spirits are lifted all summer long by the Sounds of Joy
By Tony Piff
Photograph by Mike DeFilippo
An electrified crowd fills the side-walk and overflows into Friday-night traffic at Ackert Park, the brick-paved plaza between Brandt’s Café and Fitz’s American Grill on Delmar. The onlookers press in, craning their necks and standing on tiptoe to glimpse an adorable 3-foot-tall boy, dancing to a steady beat from the brass band grooving in the background. Five-year-old J.D. “Mini-Me” Randall strings together moves invented out of thin air. He bends, gestures and claps with effortless, unselfconscious creativity, and the helpless audience melts. Long arms holding cellphone cameras extend up from the back rows like a forest of periscopes. Cameras flash, strobe-lighting the performance.
The band raises its volume, signaling the conclusion of J.D.’s interlude, and Kenny Randall, frontman for the Sounds of Joy, joins his son at center stage, trombone in hand. He raises it, firing up missiles of sound, and then sweeps an arc across the spellbound crowd, popping a note at the sternum of each rapt listener. The rhythm section—three trombones, a baritone, a minimal drum kit and a sousaphone—stands behind Randall like a choir of brass, joining in a call-and-response trombone sermon. Above the crowd, the huge silver sousaphone bell dips and bobs in time.
The massive sound fills the air from Blueberry Hill to Vintage Vinyl. “It’s a really exhilarating show, for sure,” says audience member David Wolk, taking a break from his own sideline dancing. This is his second time hearing the Sounds of Joy.
Keith Wiggly, 35, and Marcie Williams, 38, are experiencing the Sounds for the first time. “We were driving by; we heard them; we stopped,” Wiggly says. Two hours later, the pair is standing in exactly the same spot. Happen upon the Sounds of Joy’s sidewalk show, and it’ll likely blow your mind, as well as the rest of your evening plans.
The Sounds are a trombone “shout band” from the intensely musical United House of Prayer for All People, on North Kingshighway. Outdoor performances in the Loop begin in late spring and run until fall arrives, most Friday and Saturday nights.
Stirring gospel jams and tasteful Motown standards like “My Girl” and “Shout” are whipped into ecstatic, 15-minute improvisational jams. Kenny Randall plays around with the rhythm, experiments, pulls further and further away from the theme and then snaps back to it. The feverish listeners exhale and tap their toes, smiles glowing. After a solo, Randall wipes his brow, and the rhythm section takes over. For most listeners, the sound of four harmonizing trombones is a beauty more intense than our senses are accustomed to dealing with.
“Incredible. Absolutely incredible,” says Travis Lane after the night’s grand finale. His voice trembles. “That moved me. I’m sitting over here drenched in tears.” Lane removes a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses and wipes his eyes. As Randall puts away his trombone, Lane says softly, “It’s like he’s anointed or something.”
