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Camille Yarbrough
The Iron Pot Cooker (Vanguard)
Yarbrough occupies the intersection between Curtis Mayfield, Gil-Scott Heron and Lauryn Hill. But it took a British DJ, Fatboy Slim, to rescue the Chicago-born actress, dancer and singer’s gospel classic “Take Yo’ Praise” from bargain-bin oblivion. The 1975 song opens with Yarbrough crooning shyly, then builds to the funkiest church in heaven. The rest of “The Iron Pot Cooker,” a CD reissue of Yarbrough’s long-out-of-print spoken-word poetry about “comforting the precious living dead” in American ghettos, isn’t quite so magical. But stylistically, as Cornell Dupree’s wah-wah guitar hovers underneath her words, it’s like hip-hop’s Dead Sea Scrolls.