Soundtrack of My Life

revised, expanded, and recorded as the rundown of my radio show
Thanksgiving 2020

Hello everybody on this Thanksgiving Day 2020, Welcome to The Meetinghouse where we have conversation on religion and American life. I am your host Dwight A. Moody.

Today is a Thanksgiving Day like no other: normally we are traveling here and there to be with friends and family. But today, most of us are staying home and keeping to the familiar faces that we live with week after week.

Too many of us are catching the COVID—just in the last week two friends of mine have announced that the virus has crept into their home and stricken either themselves or a person in their home.

But even in this terrible, no good, very bad year, we have things for which to be thankful: people, surprises, gifts, experiences, survival even; perhaps redemption in some way or renewal or a fresh turning of your life in a new direction.

I suspect we all have found new ways to give thank unto the Lord and to confess that the Lord is good and God’s mercy abides forever.

Thank you for tuning into day to The Meetinghouse. Today’s show is a little different than normal: no news or conversation or commentary, but a testimony, my testimony—the soundtrack of my life–, plus more music than normal.

Some weeks ago, I read my weekly commentary entitled “Soundtrack of my Life”. You can read that earlier version here.

The idea came from attending so many wakes or visitations or viewings of people that I knew and, because I have been a minister, some I did not know. Funeral homes these days use both old fashioned bulletin boards and modern projection screens to display pictures of the life of the recently departed.

I remember especially such an occasion of my friend Dr. William Gillespie. To help us remember him properly, there was the screen, a series of stories, plenty of food, and a band. Not an organ, least of all generic recorded music. A live band. I really liked the entire set up and have spoken of it with my family. I’m not sure I’m ready to ditch the whole religious thing with preachers and pastors, but I rly liked that fresh approach to music and remembering.

Which got me to thinking about the kind of band that might celebrate my life on planet earth. Or the kind of bands—plural—because I like so many kinds of music and actually know so few bands. One that I have just learned to love, late in life, is that of John Prine.

“Please don’t bury me down in the cold, cold ground,” he sang and recorded way back in 1973. He was, of course, speaking humorously about his death, which did not occur until April of this year, 2020. COVID was the culprit.

I’m not planning to die any time soon, but I do think about more than I did. People my age are dying every day; some of them are my friends. So I wrote and read that commentary some months ago, entitled “Soundtrack of my Life.” It generated more than the usual response from listeners and readers—which still doesn’t amount to much, to tell the truth.

My checkered history with music began at church and Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. “This Little Light of Mine” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children” and “I’m in the King’s Army”. They were good times and I remember them fondly. So, I want to start this trip down memory lane—my memory and perhaps yours as well—with this version of “This Little Light of Mine”.

#1  THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE  (2:30)

Most of what we sang in Big Church in those days I now know as Gospel Songs: “Amazing Grace”, “O Happy Day”, and “Almost Persuaded”—plus all those blood songs, like “There is Power in the Blood” (whatever that means!).

That changed when we moved. I was ten years old. Our new church had what was called a “graded choir program”. The youth choir sang “Be Thou My Vision” and the congregation sang “Holy, Holy, Holy” and “God of Grace and God of Glory.” I give our minister of music Rudolph Howard credit for blessing my soul with this music. It lingers still, so I want to play a piece for you.

Is there any better prayer set to music than this one, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”?  Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing this wonderful prayer.

#2  COME THOU FOUNT OF EVERY BLESSING (6:13)

While I was singing all that in church, I was marching in the high school band. We played concerts also but what I remember most is the marching—at ball games and in parades around the town square and down small town streets. We played John Philip Souza: “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Semple Fidelis” and “El Capitan”

But when I went home, I pulled out the album that came from who knows where and listened to “The Battle of New Orleans” and “Sink the Bismarck”. The vocalist was Johnny Horton, and it was sort of my introduction to world history!

My mother had higher musical aspirations for me, and I am sure it was she who introduced me to Van Cliburn. For decades I owned and played his album that included Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto and Rachmaninoff’s second. More than any other music before or since, these two pieces shaped my musical sensibilities.  I regret not getting in my car at some point and driving to Ft. Worth and knocking on Van Cliburn’s door.

Let’s listen to a bit of the piece that propelled him to fame in April of 1958 when he won the first international Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow. Here is Van Cliburn on the piano in New York City with the symphony on the Air which won the Grammy for Best Classical Performance in 1958

#3 TCHAIKOVSKY CONCERTO (3:03)

College came and so did the Christian musical. We sang them all, including “Tell It Like It Is” and “Celebrate Life”. The church songs that called me to discipleship were “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” and “Pass It On”.

That same era was the highwater mark of the American folk song: “If I Had a Hammer”, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “This Land is Your Land”. Peter, Paul, and Mary were big stars then, and Bob Dylan.

Then came the Broadway musical and Julie Andrews, with whom I was in love for most of my life. “The Sound of Music” dominated my imagination, along with Dr. Zhivago (“Laura’s Theme”).  Later, I memorized “You Got Trouble” from “The Music Man” and performed with my daughter in “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Annie, Get Your Gun”. In more recent days, all the songs of “Les Miserables” were added to the soundtrack of my life.

This latter is a prayer, and I used it for an essay I wrote, really a devotional, for a book entitled, Encountering God in the Prayers of Others. I was one of seven writers who took prayers that have special meaning to us.  I chose a poem by C S Lewis, prayers by D. L. Moody and Peter Marshall, and the poem that begins with the words “Slow Me Down Lord”.

I also chose this prayer from “Les Mis” sung by Jean Valjean. His young protégé was in danger and this is a plea for his safe return. At the time I was writing, my own son was serving time in a federal penitentiary, and I prayed every day for him to come home safely. Prisons are dangerous places, even before COVID. Here is that prayer sung by Colm Wilkinson.

#4  BRING HIM HOME  (3:53)

Woven in and around all the religious music were the wonderful vocals of Simon and Garfunkel, like “The Sounds of Silence” and “Scarborough Fair”. Many a night in college I fell asleep to the sounds of that rock orchestra of Chicago sing “Color My World” or “25 or 6 to 4”.

Many sounds I missed along the way: the Beatles, Michael Jackson and Prince, for instance; and most jazz, pop, and rock music, including such great female artists Madonna and Aretha Franklin.

One of the latter I did not miss, that night at the Kennedy Center Honors for Carole King. Aretha strolled on stage and sang like the diva she was, “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman”. You remember, do you not, how she dropped her handbag on the grand piano, sat down, and started to play and sing. Then she got up, strode to center stage and shed her ankle length fur coat as if to say to the gathered luminaries, “You want to see how it is done?”

Some other things from popular culture I didn’t miss: like the three classics of friendship: “He Ain’t Heavy”, “You’ve Got a Friend”, and “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”.  Others were “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Piano Man” by Billy Joel, “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” by Neil Diamond. I really like that piece so let’s take a listen.

#5  BROTHER LOVE’S TRAVELING SALVATION SHOW  (3:30)

About halfway through my life, while I was a pastor serving a small church in Pittsburgh, Doug and Teri Vancil came to Pittsburgh as visiting musicians. It may have been 1989 or thereabouts. They taught us the then-new anthem, “Majesty and Glory of Your Name” by Tom Fetke.

It may still occupy first place in my musical catalogue. I have listened to it a million times it seems and have sung it with choirs many times. In my opinion, there is never a service of worship or praise in which it is not appropriate. And I think it is very appropriate now to stop and listen to this fabulous anthem.

#6 MAJESTY AND GLORY  (5:20)

I remember as a graduate student at the Baptist seminary in Louisville, something the late Frank Tupper said. He was a professor of theology and I was one of several doctoral students walking with him across campus. Somebody made a disparaging remark about country music and Dr. Tupper kindly rebuked him. “Be careful boys. I am a convert.”  Late in life, I also became a convert to country music.  Not all of it, by any means, by that strain of it exemplified by the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson.

Then, just this year, I learned about John Prine when a friend (Todd Heifner) posted on Facebook about the memorial concert slash program. That was June 12.  I had never heard of John Prine, but I took a listen and was hooked immediately.

“I Remember Everything” was his last recording, not released until after his April 7th death.  Not a day has gone by since my friend introduced me to Mr. Prine that I have not listened to his music. I can only wonder why his mixture of country sense, social satire, and outright silliness has so ministered to my soul.

There is a lot of religion in John Prine’s songs: “Jesus, the Missing Years”, “Grandpa was a Carpenter”, “When I get to Heaven” and especially “Spanish Pipedream.” But the piece I want to play for you (and I want you to play for me when I am dead and gone) is entitled “Boundless Love”. You can hear it as a ballad one person sings to a lover; or you can receive it as a prayer that any of us might sing to the Lord. Maybe you will love it like I do.

#7  BOUNDLESS LOVE  (3:36)

Another selection of songs that has taken up residence in my spirit is the American Negro Spiritual. Yes, I had sung and played for years such songs as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”.

But when I met Everett McCorvey and was drawn into his artistic universe, my musical sensibilities exploded, taking me to the edge of opera and the epicenter of the spiritual. “Walk Together Children, Don’t You Get Weary, There’s a Great Camp Meeting in the Promised Land” has become my favorite and will be one of the songs sung when I come to the end of my way. I have played it several times on this radio show so I won’t repeat it again now.

But I do want to play not a song rooted in slavery but one that sprang from a tragedy that struck the family of a Chicago-based minister, the father of gospel music they say, Tommy Dorsey.  Here is the incomparable Mahalia Jackson singing “Precious Lord”.

#8 PRECIOUS LORD ( 4:13)

Thank you for tuning in to The Meetinghouse today on this Thanksgiving 2020.  I hope, in this midst of this wild and crazy year, you have found many things for which to give thanks. Some of you have had to lay to rest people who are dear to you. Perhaps at that time you were treated to bits and pieces from the soundtrack of their life. I hope so.  I also hope when my family and friends gather to lay me in the cold, cold ground, somebody will play a few of the songs I’ve listed here. More than people, places, and publications, these sounds explain who I’ve been and why.

I want to conclude with notice of two songs. Being from Kentucky, I am moved every time I hear the strains of that Stephen Foster song, “My Old Kentucky Home.” Some of the words are problematic and I know there is talk of putting that song down. I prefer a competition to write new words. The melody is powerful.

As is that old Shaker song, “Simple Gifts.” One of the more famous Shaker villages is now restored just south of Lexington. I have been there many times. They are famous for their creativity, their dancing, the celibacy, and their music.  The most famous of their music is this song, now embedded in the equally famous symphony called “Appalachian Spring” by Aaron Copeland. You recognize this version of “Simple Gifts” because we play short pieces of it every week.  Here now, from The Meetinghouse, is that arrangement.

God bless you. And join us again next week in The Meetinghouse for another conversation on religion and American life, plus a little bit of music.

#9 SIMPLE GIFTS.

November 2020  Thanksgiving