Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-18-23

There have been a few small denominations that discouraged music in worship, just as there were sects that outlawed sex. For similar reasons those groups seemed to perish, disappear… and are missed by few.

Music is a part of humans’ souls. Mysterious in its way because not everybody has the talent to create tunes… or perform well… yet we all respond to music. Those who “can’t carry a tune” (and some people cannot) still enjoy listening. The most hardened people find their hearts softened when they hear a familiar melody. Songs are composed to win lovers and to send boys to war; to bond and to bind; to remember… and, by diversion, to heal and forget.

I am not aware of a survey, but I figure that 95 per cent of songs are love songs. Tennessee Ernie Ford once was asked why he sang so many Gospel songs and not more love songs, and he answered, “Gospel songs are the greatest love songs of all.”

Instrumental music is, to me, the most mysterious, and profound, of all music… all of all the arts. Abstract, yet specific in intent. And musical notation is a language all its own – a universal language. Composers who begin their work with blank staves… and finish with “sounds” that can move us literally and also move us to tears and smiles… perform a kind of miracle.

Johann Sebastian Bach took those blank pages, and before beginning to compose any work, wrote “Jesus, help me” at the top of the first page. When the composition was finished, he wrote “Thanks be to God” on the last page, acknowledging his source and strength of inspiration.

Quirky denominations aside, all cultures, in their social and religious practices, have relied on musical expression. The Bible overflows with descriptions, and endorsements, of joyful music. In Genesis 4 Jubal is identified as the ancestor of “all those who play the lyre and pipe.” Elsewhere, Elisha commanded, “Get me a musician,” wherewith a blessing was delivered. David, the “Sweet Singer of Israel,” ministered to Saul by playing music at night, much as Bach’s Goldberg Variations were composed to soothe those who sought rest.

Martin Luther, the great reformer and preacher, was also a composer (for instance of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God) and he defended music in church: “The devil does not need all the good tunes to himself!”

Some of the most important American historians are those who have studied and recorded (including literally) the folklore and folk music of the American past. I was privileged to know (and play music with, even past his 100^th birthday!) the legendary Wade Mainer, whose banjo-picking style influenced Earl Scruggs years before the Bluegrass Sound was born. To hear his stories of rural North Carolina, and hear the songs he and his wife Julia (whose stage name back in the day was Hillbilly Lilly) sang together was like walking through history.

A friend recently reminded me of the excellent book and movie Songcatcher, about those who kept those musical traditions alive. One of the characters mused about the “thread” of a favorite song, perhaps “a touchstone with the past – a remembrance of all the singers who had ever kept a story alive on the strength of their music, and that singing the ballad was a chance to join that chain of voices stretching all the way back to across the ocean to the place where the families began.”

Yes, music hath charms. It is the case, of course, with mighty hymns as well as humble folk tunes. May I provide an example?

Here is a video of a performance of the hymn Nearer, My God, to Thee, which was composed in 1841. Its meaningful words were set to music by several people through the years, including Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). Its words were on the lips of President William McKinley as he died of an assassin’s bullet – imagine an American president today having this as his last thought? – and by legend, as The Titanic sank, Theodore Roosevelt’s former military aide Archie Butt directed the ship’s musicians to play it.

In this video, André Rieu conducts his Johann Strauss Orchestra, plus 400 brass players and a hundred singers in a performance of Nearer, My God, to Thee. The audience of thousands is a mixed, international group in an open square in Maastricht – and the hymn is performed without words, the singers chanting. Does the audience miss the significance? Not counted by the emotions, and tears, on listeners’ faces!

To hear this hymn, even once, impresses the powerful words on one’s mind, carried by the music. And the reverence of this elaborate performance… confirms the Power of Music.

In words written in 1697 in William Congreve’s play The Mourning Bride, “Musick hath Charms to soothe the savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.” And it can lift souls, and carry us somehow Heavenward too:

Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee! E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!

Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I’d be Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!

There let the way appear, steps unto heaven; All that thou sendest me, in mercy given;
Angels to beckon me Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!

As Bach, “the Fifth Evangelist,” said, “With devotional music, God is always present in His grace.”

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Click: Nearer My God To Thee

9-26-11

Wade Mainer died last week. He was 104 years old. Born when Theodore Roosevelt was president and only four years after the Wright Brothers first flew, he was just about old enough to vote when sound came to movies, Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, and Babe Ruth hit 60 homers. He was only 22 when the first Great Depression fell… but things actually didn’t change much for the worse in those hard-scrapple hills of Buncombe County, North Carolina, where he was reared. Music was one of the few “releases” folks had, a type of salvation.

But Wade was not notable because he lived longer than is allotted to most of us. Among his plaudits is the fact that he followed his brother J E Mainer into playing music. J E was a fiddle player; Wade got interested in the banjo, which then, in black and white rural Southern music, was strummed (or played “claw hammer” style). Wade experimented, following his own curiosity and taste, and started plucking the strings. He used only two fingers – his own style.

It was a distinctive style of playing, and a sound that fit well with the guitar and fiddle of mountain music. Other local banjo players were influenced; one of them was Smith Hammett, who influenced a few more, one of them being a cousin named Earl Scruggs. Earl “added” a finger to the right-hand picking, learned to slide and bend the strings a little bit on the neck, and the famous “sound” of the Bluegrass banjo was born.

Wade Mainer began that musical thread, but was modest about his role, and in fact never played in the Scruggs style, and firmly declined the Bluegrass label. When I would call his music “mountain” music, he liked that best. Yes, I had the privilege to know Wade.

I had written several books on country music, and written about the Mainers, without knowing he was still alive; or dreaming that I would meet him; or guessing that we would become friends. I had moved from San Diego to mid-Michigan to be close to my daughter who took a job as a youth pastor. A local radio station announced a 97th birthday party concert for Wade Mainer – could it be? – and I met him, wound up joining his church, and becoming friends with him and his wife Julia, whose own stage name in the 1930s was “Hillbilly Lillie.”

Back to the 1930s. The ensemble “Mainer’s Mountaineers” became a major act, and recorded for RCA Victor Records. In the early 1940s Wade played in a Broadway revue, The Old Chisolm Trail, with Woodie Guthrie and Burl Ives. He performed at the White House for President Franklin D Roosevelt. Then came World War II, a postwar recession, and a public’s taste that veered away from traditional mountain songs. Wade could no longer support his family with the banjo. The auto industry was booming, and he took a factory job with General Motors in Flint, Michigan.

At that period of his life, a renewed commitment to God coincided with laying the banjo down. He considered that playing country music – anything that didn’t serve God – should be avoided. He stopped recording, touring, even playing locally. It was only later, when the legendary Molly O’Day, also born again, persuaded him that he should serve God through his music, that he began to sing, play, and record again.(Molly O’Day was one who discovered a young Hank Williams.) Latter-day albums were released by John Morris’s Old Homestead Records.

Until near the end, Wade played a lively banjo, had a great sense of humor on the stage and in his living room… and loved to testify. He would punctuate his monologues with everyday talk about Heaven and Jesus. And Julia, 94, who still plays a great flattop guitar in the style of Riley Puckett and Mother Maybelle Carter, can break out in spontaneous, anointed prayer that can sweep the hearts of everyone in a room.

I wanted to tip my hat to a legend I was blessed to know (a painting I did of Wade and Julia performing is attached to this message) – but also to share the story of a man who was responsible for starting a major trend in American music, but was uncomfortable discussing it; who scaled the heights of show business for a time, but was totally modest about his acclaim; and – most of all – who followed his Christian conscience in forsaking the music business, or returning strictly to gospel music, despite many pleas to hit the road and club venues again. Those are rare traits these days, but Wade Mainer was a rare type of man.

Painting of Wade Mainer

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The video accompanying this message is a portion of an interview with Wade conducted by David Holt – this generation’s John or Alan Lomax, seeking out pioneers of American music. Wade and Julia perform his gospel classics Sit Down (“I just got to Heaven and I got to walk around”) and Take Me in Your Lifeboat.

Click: Wade Mainer Gospel