Gospel music that's unaccompanied seems to take a more direct route from singers' mouths to listeners' souls. That's the way Durham's Gospel Jubilators have been testifying for close to 40 years—in the Jubilee tradition, using, as they like to say, "only the instruments God gave them." Group founder and former Swan Silvertones bass vocalist William P. Conner has passed on, leaving Rudolph "Mack" Floyd as the only original Jubilator still in the ensemble. But the method and the message carry on. —Rick Cornell