The Mexia State School Sunshine Group

The Mexia State School was a school for “special” (in the liner notes the now un-PC term “retarded” is used) children in Texas. The school’s choir created this record as part of a fund drive to raise money to build a new Chapel for the school, and it consists mainly of poorly sung and poorly recorded choir music—yet there are small moments of brilliance.

Those moments are brought to us by the handful of children brave enough to sing solo with only piano accompaniment. In a way, on these sparse tracks, the voice of a single child becomes more powerful than the combined voices of the entire choir.

Of the four solo vocal tracks, the most extraordinary has to be “I Believe In Miracles”*, featuring the innocent and quirky voice of little Mary Ann Fino. For me, it doesn’t get any more “real” and pure than a little special girl singing hymns—this song is innocence distilled. And even though I’m not a particularly religious—or even “spiritual”—person, I find something basic in records like this that appeals to a “higher self” that I sometimes want to exist.

*Listen

_________________________________