Anybody that knows me, knows that I love gospel music. Not the kind of gospel that will make you snore on Sunday morning, the stuff that touches your heart or sets your soul on fire. Give me a black Baptist choir singing call and response gospel with a Hammond draw bar organ and a slap bass and I will rejoice. Let me hear Ralph Stanley warbling out some heartfelt piece of Appalachian glory, and I stand with tears in my eyes and my hands uplifted and if I’m sitting in a jam circle it, it don’t take long before I’m belting out a hot driving heaven song that makes my feet move and my heart overflow. Those songs may seem like foolishness to some, but I make no apologies for them. It’s my reality.
Last weekend, Jim and Carol Johnston, and Jeanie and Terry Ramos, along with my wife Trudy and myself attended Southern gospel music equivalent of grass valleys father’s day festival. It took place at the convention center in Visalia and ran from Thursday through Sunday and was filled with the same kind of rabid fans that we get in our bluegrass circles. Those of you who are not familiar with southern gospel music are missing some wonderful stuff. It shares many characteristics with bluegrass including many of the same songs. Like bluegrass gospel, it embraces the high lonesome sound with tenors that sing up into the stratosphere. Only real difference is that unlike our founding father, they sing up there in tune. The vocal form is very similar to standard bluegrass gospel quartet form, though the bass vocal is generally featured in a recurring fashion. And them bass singers sing right off of the bottom of the keyboard. The walls rumble.
The accompaniment is generally ripping and rollicking piano, electric bass and drums, and the quartet (or family group) sing on all sides of a square centrally located stage, generally moving around to different sides to better reach all parts of the audience.
This style of music comes from the same region as bluegrass out of the Baptist and Pentecostal churches of the rural south the hills of Tennessee and Kentucky and there is a lot of cross over in the traditions. Many of you remember the Issac’s family that played at one of our Bakersfield festivals, they traveled with The Gaithers homecoming tours for a number of years. Their music is an outgrowth of southern gospel presented in the bluegrass form. The chord patterns of the songs are so similar it’s hard to tell them apart sometimes.
I love bluegrass, most everything about it. Bluegrass gospel, and southern gospel are the double helix of my DNA. Bluegrass makes me dance. Gospel speaks to my heart.
I’m glad the California bluegrass association lists gospel as one of the three legs (along with bluegrass, and old time music) of the stool upon which our membership sits. It keeps me coming back.
