Gideon & Power – I Gotta Be Me album art

I Gotta Be Me is the first and only album release by gospel group Gideon & Power. In a feature from August 9, 1971, Newsweek wrote:

Gideon (his full name is Gideon Daniels) is a lanky, black, 30-year-old son of a Georgia church deacon who praises the Lord in a piercing falsetto or a rasping bass, rattling a furious tambourine as he holy-dances across the stage and down through the audience, singing and sermonizing, jerking and jiving in a joyful-noise act that crackles with electricity and drive. Backed by three white and two Filipino singer-musicians who somehow manage to pack all the flailing fervor of a black revival meeting into their voices and gyrations, Gideon conducts his interracial gospel train around the tables and down the aisles, working up “the spirit” with glory-glories and exhortations to the Holy Ghost, bouncing with the vertical jumps made famous by soul-mother Clara Ward, whose songs the group often performs. […] The “power” of their title turns out to come not from the Bible but from New Left rhetoric (“the only reason we picked the name we did,” says Gideon, “is because we can bring power to the people”), and in fact the group’s pitch seems more political than religious.

Album design by Michael Mendel of Maurer Productions, with photography by David Keller and art direction from the Bell staff. Green Buzzard is used with a gradient fill. The heavy sans is Airport Black, used in all caps with so-called sign painters’ quotes.

[More info on Discogs]