The Ultimate Collection – Milton Brunson

This album is a celebration and captures the best songs over the many years of singing and performing. The late Reverend Milton Brunson organized a mass gospel choir in 1948 at Chicagos McKinley High School. This choir was called the Thompson Community Singers or The Tommies after the late Rev. Eugene Thompson of St. Stephens Church. The choir grew from an ensemble of 48 to more than 200 voices and became the United States longest running mass gospel choir. They had success in 1963 with the single Witness / Rise Up And Walk and in 1964 Here Is One / Soldier In Gods Army on the VeeJay Gospel label. They have been latterly based in Austin in Chicagos West Side. The Tommies have had five number one albums in the gospel charts and in 1995 won a Grammy award. They have backed Shirley Caesar on several projects. Milton Brunson also founded the Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, organised other choirs, played as a bass soloist, directed a 1,000 voices chorus, worked with Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. and assisted schools in crisis. Jessy Dixon has also lead the choir until he founded The Chicago Community Choir, and in 1997 Miltons wife , Joanne Brunson took over the choir after Milton passed into glory. She invited a young assistant pastor Smokie Norful to sing on the 2000 album Real.