donbosco
Distinguished Member
- Messages
- 449
My church growing up, #Bonlee Baptist, wasn’t a ‘Singing Church’ like some I knew but that doesn’t mean those 4 or 5 songs laid out in the bulletin every preaching weren’t the highlight of the meeting for me. We had a church pianist when I was young named Gussie White. She gave piano lessons at the elementary school during the week. On Sunday she played those old songs and we sang along there in #BonleeBaptist. Gussie White, by the way, pounded that keyboard with such force as to have made Jerry Lee Lewis jealous. Volume and pace were her trademarks. I loved it. Years later I realized that Miss Gussie was hard of hearing and her conversion of the piano into a percussion instrument was evidently her own effort to simply hear what she was playing.
The vigor with which she played did lend on air of Gospel into Sunday Services and while the staid among the congregation complained about such unorthodoxy I was plenty fine with it. Gussie White’s rendition of ‘The Doxology’ every week was the high water mark of the overall Hymnal Highlights. In high school I sang in a wonderful choir and learned from the amazing Polly Yow. Miss Yow was a large, loud woman from whom love poured forth in abundance. We sang hymns because every spring we toured local churches. Miss Yow’s own touch at the piano could close in on Jerry Lee Lewis as well and while she taught us classic techniques she also knew that our roots and those of our audiences were sunk into the gritty earth of Gospel. So sometimes we Let It Rip. Like Elvis. And sometimes like his contemporary Aretha Franklin.
And right there is where Elvis and Aretha came to figure into things. With Gospel backgrounds those two bridged a lot of gaps if only for the length of a hymn but for some, even longer. Whether it was because of the good fortune to be present for the near deaf percussive piano playing of the Gussie White’s of #DeepChatham or because you were even luckier still and attended a ‘Singing Church’ either way you got some accidental Soul and Rock ‘n Roll at least once a week.
There’s some goodness to Gospel roots no matter how you come by them. Singing is good for you - it’s good to do and to just be present for. Lucky I am beyond measure for the music that has filled my life. There are roots to that good fortune. It ain’t just a coincidence.
#OTD (August 16) Elvis Presley (1977) and Aretha Franklin (2018) died. Respectively they were the King of Rock ‘n Roll and the Queen of Soul. Gospel connected their music.