gospel | music clip of the day

Category: gospel

Sunday, June 16th

father and son

Brian Blade (drums) & The Fellowship Band, with Brady L. Blade Sr. (vocals), “Amazing Grace,” live, Savannah, Ga. (2012)

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lagniappe

reading table

Some things endure. When my sons, Alex and Luke, were in grade school, I started a two-person “reading group” with each of them. We would read novels together, maybe one a month, alternating choices, and go out and talk about them over a meal. Alex is now twenty-five. This morning we’re going out for breakfast, where we’ll be talking about a short story by Richard Yates, “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired.” Of stories there is no end.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was President-elect there must have been sculptors all over America who wanted a chance to model his head from life, but my mother had connections.

—Richard Yates (1926-1992), “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” (first sentence)

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2013

Sunday, June 9th

If God exists, he wants us—this I am sure of—to dance.

Caffey Brothers, “Make Me Over” (Aura Records, Youngstown, Ohio)

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lagniappe

reading table

I know that He exists.
Somewhere – in silence –
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), 365 (excerpt)

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2013

Sunday, June 2nd

sounds of Chicago

“Chicago gospel—a musical snapshot,” Chicago Tribune, 2007

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Happy Birthday to my oldest musical companion, my brother Don, with whom I’ve shared more musical experiences, live and on record, than I could possibly remember—the Beatles (Comiskey Park, 1965), the Velvet Underground (Kinetic Playground, 1968 [followed by our arrests, while walking back to the car, for, uh, curfew]), the MC5 (Lincoln Park, 1968 [Democratic Convention]) . . .

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2013

Sunday, May 19th

Dixie Hummingbirds (feat. Ira Tucker, lead vocals), “Maybe It’s You,” TV show (TV Gospel Time), early 1960s

Talk about longevity. Ira Tucker joined the Dixie Hummingbirds in 1938, when he was 13. He was still with them in 2008, when he died.

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2013

Sunday, May 12th

back to church

Speech and song are sometimes indistinguishable.

Pastor Ezell Smith, live, Chicago (Prince of Peace Baptist Church)

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lagniappe

random thoughts on Mother’s Day

Professional jargon, whether legal, medical, psychological, whatever, is largely a desert. But once in a while you come upon a flowering tree. The great British psychoanalyst and pediatrician D. W. Winnicott (1896-1971) planted one such tree—the good enough mother.

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2013

Sunday, May 5th

back to church

Rev. C. L. Franklin (1915-1984), “I’ll Go”

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2013

Sunday, April 28th

more

George Jones (1931-2013), “Amazing Grace,” TV show, 2008

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lagniappe

radio

Today, beginning at 10 a.m. (EST), there’ll be a four-hour memorial broadcast on WKCR-FM (Columbia University).

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2013

Sunday, April 21st

Once I start listening to this I don’t want to stop, ever.

The Original Gospel Harmonettes (featuring MCOTD Hall of Famer Dorothy Love Coates), “He’s Calling Me,” 1955

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lagniappe

art beat: Tuesday at the Chicago Cultural Center

Hale Woodruff (1900-1980), Old Farmhouse in Beauce Valley, 1928 (featured, through June 16th, in Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talladega College)

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random thoughts

It seems to be difficult, if not impossible, for me to grasp the apparent fact that the distance between, say, 2010 and 1960, when I was eight years old, is just as great as that between 1960 and 1910.