If the blues ain’t nothing but a good man feeling bad, gospel sometimes isn’t anything more than a bad man feeling real good. Hellfire and brimstone didn’t necessarily await Mississippi native Charlie Jackson, but a blues-all-week, gospel-on-Sunday schedule raised his mama’s ire: She told him to change his ways or face losing his guitar. Jackson changed: By the time he recorded his first sides for New Orleans indie Booker Records a couple of decades later, he had already earned a reputation as a fiery performer throughout the black churches of the Delta. God’s Got It: The Legendary Booker and Jackson Singles gathers the three 45s and one four-song EP Booker put out in the early ’70s, adds a couple of sides Jackson released on his own label a few years later, and augments the package with a number of tracks by other artists on which Jackson’s rock-solid guitar plays a prominent supporting role. The early songs are awe-inspiring tours de force: On the title track, hollering, laying into his guitar, and stomping four-to-the-bar as hand clappers bring up the backbeat, Jackson comes on like a one-man crosscutting crew. “Morning Train” pumps with the lean, manic energy of vintage rockabilly, Jackson blaring his salvation to the rafters. And “What a Time” proves he didn’t need much to make his joyful noise: Aside from a small choir of clappers, it’s just some clean-channel rhythm guitar and Jackson’s hair-raising gospel shout. As the decade progressed, it found Jackson becoming a smoother, more melodious singer—which isn’t all to the good. By 1978, when he cut “Lord You’re So Good” and “All Aboard,” the throaty rasp and hard plucking that had driven his Booker singles had become mere coloristic devices. But when the intensity of his testimony makes both his backing vocalists and his microphone scream for mercy on the sanctified boogie of 1970’s “Fix It Jesus,” it’s a little bit of heaven to file next to—and make amends for—all those devilish Fat Possum discs. —Glenn Dixon