testify!
This old world is not my home. I’m just passing through. But while I’m down here, I’ve got a job to do. . . . I’m just working—singing—for my train fare back home.
—Willie Rogers
Willie Rogers (Soul Stirrers), “When the Gates Swing Open,” live
testify!
Lee Williams & the Spirtual QC’s, “I Can’t Give Up,” live, Brownsville, Tenn.
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lagniappe
reading table
Please Give This Seat to an Elderly or Disabled Person
by Nina Cassian (1924-2014; translated from Romanian by Naomi Lazard)
I stood during the entire journey:
nobody offered me a seat
although I was at least a hundred years older than anyone else on board,
although the signs of at least three major afflictions
were visible on me:
Pride, Loneliness, and Art.
alone
Charley Patton (1891-1934), “Prayer of Death,” 1929
two takes
“This May Be The Last Time”
Pastor Brady Blade Sr., Zion Baptist Church, Shreveport, La., April 13, 2014
*****
The Staple Singers, 1961
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lagniappe
art beat
William Eggleston (1939-)
Friday he was at a nightclub in Vancouver. Today he’s playing a different venue—his father’s Shreveport church.
Choir (with Brian Blade, drums), Zion Baptist Church (Brady Blade Sr., pastor), Shreveport, La., December 23, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
celestial geese—
none of them come down
to my pine—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
sounds of Chicago
Mixon Singers, live, Chicago, 2013
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lagniappe
art beat
Walter Unbehaun (a 74-year-old client sentenced this week, in Chicago, to 42 months for bank robbery), African Preacher (Kankakee County Jail, 2014)
*****
reading table
God’s Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)The world is charged with the grandeur of God.It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oilCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;And though the last lights off the black West wentOh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —Because the Holy Ghost over the bentWorld broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
sounds of Chicago
Before “A Change Is Gonna Come,” before “Chain Gang,” before “You Send Me,” before . . .
Soul Stirrers (feat. Sam Cooke [1931-1964])
“Touch the Hem of His Garment,” 1956
***
“Nearer My God To Thee,” live, Los Angeles, 1955
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lagniappe
reading table
Gray hairs being plucked,
and from below my pillow
a cricket singing—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694; translated from Japanese by Sam Hamill)
old school
Golden Gate Quartet, “Golden Gate Gospel Train” (1937), “Rock My Soul” (1938), “Noah” (1939), “Ride Up in the Chariot” (1941)
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lagniappe
reading table
his peach sapling
has blossomed . . .
though he never prays—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
two takes
Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945), “I’m Gonna Run to the City of Refuge,” 1928
*****
Dr. C. J. Johnson (1913-1991), “You Better Run to the City of Refuge”
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lagniappe
art beat
Danny Lyon (1942-), New York, 1967
*****
the beat goes on
Sixteen hundred posts—and counting.
back to church
Bishop G. E. Patterson (1939-2007) Live, Temple of Deliverance (COGIC), Memphis
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lagniappe
reading table
The Soul should always stand ajar
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886; Franklin #1017, fragment)
music clip of the day 