If we break down Clara Ward’s monumental, influential career strictly to the music, then this welcome trove of rare and previously unissued (some thought lost) recordings spanning Ward’s entire career offers an invaluable overview chronicling the magnitude of Clara’s artistry and of her singers’ deeply commanding support (one of those singers was none other than Marion Williams)—a blend so fervent and fiery as to leave a listener both shaken and uplifted. Amazingly, the final recordings, from 1967 to 1971 (for Nashboro Records, produced by Shannon Williams, with songs selected by gospel authority Anthony Heilbut), find the Ward voice every bit as pliable and expressive as the young volcanic artist who wrung every ounce of truth from her pleas for salvation, mercy, and redemption in 1949 gems such as “Tired” and Roberta Martin’s “I’ve Got a Home”; indeed, the older, and sickly, Clara soars, soul free, in triumphant expectations of eternal life in her autobiographical reflection “From Youth to Old Age” and the early 20th-century church hymn “Last Mile of the Way,” with only a ruminative organ, spare piano, and subtle drums unobtrusively serving moments of heightened emotional outpouring. Living and breathing every word she sings on these 27 tracks, Clara Ward abides.