“Pass Me Not”
Desmond Roberson & the Roberson Bunch
OpenHeart Music Group (release date: May 9, 2025)
By Robert M. Marovich
Gospel music is flush with family groups. One of the newer of them, Desmond Roberson & the Roberson Bunch, sing the Fanny Crosby standard “Pass Me Not” with blissful delight.
Though the gospel hymn is typically given a slower reading, the Roberson Bunch turn it into a medium-tempo quartet workout. They even chant a classic quartet line, “Come on, see about me,” during the vamp as Desmond delivers a breathless lead.
Desmond Roberson & the Roberson Bunch last appeared on JGM in 2020 with their even more ebullient “A Charge,” another jet-fueled rendition of a church chestnut, this time the Wesleyan hymn “A Charge to Keep I Have.” Now grown five years older but singing with the same youthful spunk, the Roberson Bunch sounds like foreverJONES if they were a quartet.