The Rolling Stones were the “bad boys” of the British Invasion. They played around with Satanic themes and imagery, most famously with their hit “Sympathy for the Devil”, and also their under-rated psychedelic album that had the unfortunate title of Their Satanic Majesties’ Request. (From Wikipedia: “The album’s title is a play on the ‘Her Britannic Majesty requests and requires . . .’ text that appears inside a British passport.”)
But even the Stones came up with a religious themed song a while back, or at least Mick Jagger did: “God Gave Me Everything” was co-written by Mick and Christian rocker Lenny Kravitz (who also performed on the recording) and was included on his 2001 album, Very Best of Mick Jagger. I remember seeing the video many years ago back when you’d see those on MTV from time to time.
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Lenny Kravitz had a spiritual experience when he was thirteen and has been a non-denominational Christian ever since. His yearning to be a musician began when he was just five years old. Early in his career, he was told by recording executives that his music either wasn’t “white enough” or wasn’t “black enough”; he is of mixed-race ancestry as well. His debut album, Let Love Rule came out in 1989.
While his music is not overtly religious for the most part, one of his biggest hit songs, “Are You Gonna Go My Way” seems to me to be written as a message from Jesus to humanity; the first verse is:
I was born long ago
I am the chosen I’m the one
I have come to save the day
And I won’t leave until I’m done
The music has a definite Jimi Hendrix vibe; and on the video, the musicians backing Lenny Kravitz with his flowing dreadlocks (the drummer is a woman, Cindy Blackman) look very much like the Jimi Hendrix Experience in their prime. The ceiling above the band has swirling flashes of bright light that are perfect for the music.
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The lyrics in “God Gave Me Everything” make reference to Cliff Richard, a leading English rock star who has become well known for his Christianity. While he scored one major hit in America, the #6 song “Devil Woman” from 1976, he has a fairly low profile in this country.
The same is true of his backing band the Shadows, who have considerable renown in their own right as an instrumental rock band besides the recordings that they made with Cliff Richard. The Shadows were the first band to record the well-known “Apache” for instance. And this instrumental standard has had a major impact elsewhere as well; quoting from Wikipedia: “A 1973 version [of ‘Apache’] by the Incredible Bongo Band has been called ‘hip-hop’s national anthem’. Although this version was not a hit on release, the long percussion break in the middle has been sampled countless times on hip-hop, rap and dance tracks since the 1980’s.”
Before the Beatles came along, Cliff Richard was the leading rock musician in the UK. Under his real name Harry Webb, he had been the leader of a British rock and roll band called the Drifters (not related at all to the prominent American singing group also called the Drifters); essentially, they were the predecessor band to Cliff Richard and the Shadows. Before recording their first hit single “Move It”, Harry Greatorex – known as “Mr. Entertainment” in the UK during this period – prevailed upon Webb to change his name. The “Cliff” was meant to suggest “rock”, and “Richard” was taken from the 1950’s American rock sensation Little Richard.
“Move It” was an original song by bandmember Ian “Sammy” Samwell and was first released as the “B” side, with the “A” side being a cover of a song by American artist Bobby Helms called “Schoolboy Crush”. “Move It” went to #2 on the UK charts in 1958 and is widely regarded as the first authentic British rock and roll song. John Lennon has been quoted as saying (from Wikipedia): “Before Cliff [Richard] and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.” Cliff Richard is the third top-selling singles artist in British history, behind only the Beatles and Elvis Presley.
As Wikipedia notes: “Over a career spanning more than 50 years, [Cliff] Richard has become a fixture of the British entertainment world, amassing many gold and platinum discs and awards, including three Brit Awards and two Ivor Novello Awards. He has had more than 130 singles, albums and EPs make the UK Top 20, more than any other artist, and holds the record (with Elvis Presley) as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its first six decades (1950’s – 2000’s). He has achieved 14 UK No. 1 singles (or 18, depending on the counting methodology) and is the only singer to have had a No. 1 single in the UK in 5 consecutive decades: the 1950’s through to the 1990’s.”
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Cliff Richard became actively Christian in 1964 and managed to balance his faith and his career, singing both secular and religious music. He appeared at several Billy Graham Crusades and played a young man involved in selling drugs in a 1967 film called Two a Penny that was released by Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures. A soundtrack album called Two a Penny was also released.
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To my mind, one of the most startling Christian rock songs was “Personal Jesus” by the English electronic rock band Depeche Mode. With its somewhat flippant title, I originally thought that the song might be mocking as well; but the heartfelt lyrics leave no question: “Reach out and touch faith / Your own personal Jesus / Someone to hear your prayers / Someone who cares / Your own personal Jesus / Someone to hear your prayers / Someone who’s there”.
“Personal Jesus” was the first single from the band’s 1990 album Violator that propelled them to worldwide success, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 200 Albums chart. Other singles from the album were “Enjoy the Silence”, “Policy of Truth” and “World in My Eyes”. The album’s liner notes made clear that faith was important to the band, as did their next album, Songs of Faith and Devotion – which topped the album charts in the US and the UK – and the Devotional Tour that supported the album. Depeche Mode has sold 100 million albums, making them the most successful electronic band in history and one of the biggest selling rock bands of all time.
Rolling Stone magazine included “Personal Jesus” in their 2004 list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”; and the UK music magazine Q ranked the song as one of the “100 Greatest Songs Ever”.
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Rod Argent was the keyboard player for the Zombies; they were an English rock band but somehow stood apart from most of the other British Invasion bands. After the Zombies broke up, he formed the band Argent in 1969. They are best known for their million-selling song “Hold Your Head Up”, which was included on their third album All Together Now (1972).
During the sessions for that album, Argent recorded a song called “God Gave Rock ’n’ Roll to You”. It was included on their 1973 album In Deep and was also released as a successful single. The song has been covered by several bands, including the prominent Christian rock band Petra.
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In 1991, KISS remade “God Gave Rock ’n’ Roll to You” under the name “God Gave Rock ’n’ Roll to You II” for the soundtrack for the film, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. KISS has never done anything Satanic as far as I know, although there was a rumor that their initials stand for “Knights in Satan’s Service”. Also the S’s in the band’s logo are in the style of the Nazi SS; since they have been forbidden to be displayed in Germany since 1979, KISS’s promotional material and albums in that country have been adjusted appropriately.
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I have written about Judy Collins before; she is one of my favorite pure folk singers. President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton named their only daughter, Chelsea Clinton, after Collins’ recording of the Joni Mitchell song “Chelsea Morning”. (Interestingly, “Chelsea” and “Clinton” are adjoining sections on the West Side of Manhattan, just above Greenwich Village; Clinton is kind of a made-up name for the area that is also known as Hell’s Kitchen). Judy Collins had her first hit with another of Joni’s songs, “Both Sides Now”.
Judy Collins’ lovely rendition of “Amazing Grace” was an unexpected hit song, staying on the charts for 15 weeks and peaking at #15. The interesting history behind her recording is recounted below, as taken from Wikipedia.
“[Judy] Collins decided to record it in the late 1960’s amid an atmosphere of counterculture introspection; she was part of an encounter group that ended a contentious meeting by singing ‘Amazing Grace’ as it was the only song to which all the members knew the words. Her producer was present and suggested she include a version of it on her 1970 album Whales & Nightingales. Collins, who had a history of alcohol abuse, claimed that the song was able to ‘pull her through’ to recovery. It was recorded in St. Paul’s, the chapel at Columbia University, chosen for the acoustics. She chose an a cappella arrangement that was close to Edwin Othello Excell’s, accompanied by a chorus of amateur singers who were friends of hers.
“Collins connected it to the Vietnam War, to which she objected: ‘I didn’t know what else to do about the war in Vietnam. I had marched, I had voted, I had gone to jail on political actions and worked for the candidates I believed in. The war was still raging. There was nothing left to do, I thought . . . but sing “Amazing Grace”.’”
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“Amazing Grace” was already one of the best-known Christian hymns; Judy Collins brought the song to a new audience. I remember a slightly different arrangement of the song that I often heard in years past, but every time I hear the song now, it is the tune that Judy sang.
The songwriter is a man who truly needed grace to escape from his earlier life in the slave trade. I can hardly improve on the following two paragraphs that open the Wikipedia article on “Amazing Grace”. I remember a PBS special that ran many years ago that told the remarkable story behind this one song.
“‘Amazing Grace’ is a Christian hymn with words written by the English poet and clergyman John Newton (1725–1807), published in 1779. With the message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of sins committed, and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God, ‘Amazing Grace’ is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.
“Newton wrote the words from personal experience. He grew up without any particular religious conviction, but his life’s path was formed by a variety of twists and coincidences that were often put into motion by his recalcitrant insubordination. He was pressed (i.e., forced into service involuntarily) into the Royal Navy, and after leaving the service, he became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1748, a violent storm battered his vessel so severely that he called out to God for mercy, a moment that marked his spiritual conversion. However, he continued his slave trading career until 1754 or 1755, when he ended his seafaring altogether and began studying Christian theology.”
In 1994, Judy Collins released a Christmas album, called Come Rejoice.
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Nick Cave is described by Allmusic as “one of the finest songwriters of the post-punk era, whose hybrid of blues, gospel, and rock complemented his dark, literary style and baritone vocals”. After fronting a band called the Birthday Party in about 1980, Nick Cave assembled a band as a sort of post-punk super-group; and this band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds has released 15 albums in the 30 years since.
The album that I have, Tender Prey (1988) is their sixth album. I was introduced to Nick Cave through the video for the opening track on this album, “The Mercy Seat” that I saw several times on the MTV late show 120 Minutes. After a mostly mumbled introduction, the song is primarily the chorus repeated powerfully with savvy lyric changes; but I would have enjoyed the song if it extended to twice its 7-minute length. The other songs on the album build on this novel take on religion.
Ned Raggett in Allmusic has unending praise for this song: “The album boldly starts out with an undisputed [Nick] Cave masterpiece – ‘The Mercy Seat’, a chilling self-portrait of a prisoner about to be executed that compares the electric chair with the throne of God. Queasy strings from a Gini Ball-led trio and Mick Harvey’s spectral piano snake through a rising roar of electric sound – a common musical approach from many earlier [Bad] Seeds songs, but never so gut-wrenching as here. Cave’s own performance is the perfect icing on the cake, commanding and powerful, excellently capturing the blend of crazed fear and righteousness in the lyrics.”
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A film featuring Nick Cave recently premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Called 20,000 Days on Earth, it portrays a 24-hour period in Cave’s life (fictionalized). The film won two awards at the Festival and was praised by the Jury as “being arguably the most exciting film in competition. . . . This is documentary storytelling at its most visionary and mind-blowing”.
The title is taken from a calculation that Nick Cave made of the number of days in his life to that time. I have a financial calculator that I use in my work which counts the number of days between two given dates. I had hoped to mark my own 20,000th day, but I missed it.
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Bruce Cockburn is a popular folk/rock singer-songwriter from Canada who has an eclectic musical style that incorporates elements from many forms of music. He is often described as Canada’s biggest secret. Raised in Ottawa, Ontario, he was agnostic in his youth but became a Christian early in his musical career. Particularly in the 1970’s, his albums spoke of his Christianity alongside calls for human rights and environmentalism, a welcome blend of belief systems when it seems that the only Christians heard about these days are right-wingers. Indeed, Bruce Cockburn began toning down his religious beliefs by the 1980’s in order to distance himself from the Christian right in America. During this period, he scored his biggest American hit, “Wondering Where the Lions Are” in 1979.
After a time, he became more political in his beliefs and more polemic in his performances, culminating in his excellent album Stealing Fire (1984). The first single from the album, “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” was inspired by seeing children expressing romantic love in a school playground. His next release from the album was the first overtly political Bruce Cockburn single, “If I Had a Rocket Launcher”. Cockburn wrote this song after visiting Guatemalan refugee camps in Mexico following political unrest in that country. As Wikipedia describes it: “In the song, [Bruce] Cockburn despairs of waiting for a political solution to the crisis, and expresses the desire to take matters into his own hands. Each verse ends with a line stating what Cockburn would do if he had a rocket launcher: in the first verse, I’d make somebody pay. In the second, I would retaliate. In the third, I would not hesitate. The fourth and final verse ends with the song’s most famous and controversial lyric: ‘If I had a rocket launcher, some son-of-a-bitch would die.’”
In light of this next single, “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” was re-interpreted by many as referring to the same Guatemalan refugee crisis that inspired “If I Had a Rocket Launcher”, or to the AIDS epidemic that was beginning to sweep the world in those days. Bruce Cockburn has said that he was pleased by both of these later interpretations.
A tribute album to Bruce Cockburn was released on Intrepid Records in 1991, called Kick at the Darkness. The opening track is a cover of “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” by Barenaked Ladies and was their first major hit in their home country of Canada, helping to launch their career.
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Born in East Berlin, Nina Hagen was gaining a reputation for being a flamboyant rock singer before she emigrated to the West in 1976. With the Nina Hagen Band, she made two albums for CBS Germany Records and then released her first English-language album, NunSexMonkRock in 1982, where she displays the multi-octave range of her voice. Her music blends an eccentric punk-rock vibe with a true theatrical sensibility. I remember seeing her perform once, quite by surprise, as some sort of musical festival years ago; and I wish that I could remember the place.
Surprisingly, Nina Hagen’s Christianity simmers beneath the surface of her music. On “Anti World”, the opening track of NunSexMonkRock – where she poses as the Madonna on the album cover – Nina Hagen relates a Biblical account of an encounter by Jesus with a man who is possessed by a demon:
Once upon a time
When Jesus was walking down his way on earth
He met this man who was possessed by a demon
And Jesus asked the man :
Why do you speak so funny
Why do you behave like that
And the man said
Why Jesus ? because I am possessed by a demon
God ! Jesus said,
And the demon went down into the pig,
And the pig was running away screaming.
And the man was free
Do you see if you only could believe, Jesus said
Everything is possible for those who believe.
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In 2010, Nina Hagen released an album called Personal Jesus that is described by James Christopher Monger in Allmusic as: “German punk icon Nina Hagen’s first collection of new music in nearly four years features 13 faith-based tracks that dutifully blend rock, blues, soul, and gospel into a sound that’s distinctly hers.” The album includes covers of the Depeche Mode title song, “Personal Jesus”, several traditional gospel songs, a Larry Gatlin number called “Help Me”, and a Woody Guthrie song called “All You Fascists Bound to Lose”.
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Speaking of Woody, activist English rock singer Billy Bragg teamed up with the American alternative rock band Wilco in 1998 to create new music for several unperformed Woody Guthrie songs where only lyrics were available (there are more than 1,000 such songs that Guthrie wrote). Named Mermaid Avenue for the street in Coney Island, New York where Woody lived for many years, they looked upon the albums as a collaboration of modern rock musicians with the legendary troubadour of the Depression era.
Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II followed in 2000; “All You Fascists” was originally released on this album. A box set that collected the two earlier CD’s with a third disc of additional music was released in 2012 and called Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions.
“Christ for President” appears on Mermaid Avenue and has these neat lyrics:
Let’s have Christ our President
Let us have him for our king
Cast your vote for the Carpenter
That you call the Nazarene
. . .
Every year we waste enough
To feed the ones who starve
We build our civilization up
And we shoot it down with wars
But with the Carpenter on the seat
Way up in the Capital town
The USA would be on the way
Prosperity Bound!
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Violent Femmes could be viewed as the quintessential indie rock band, with its near-acoustic sound and alternative-rock sensibility. Gordon Gano (guitar and lead vocals) formed the band while he was still in high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the early 1980’s with Brian Ritchie (bass guitar) and Victor DeLorenzo (drums). Their debut album, Violent Femmes (1983) featured angst-ridden crowd-pleasers like “Blister in the Sun”, “Kiss Off”, “Add it Up”, and “Gone Daddy Gone” (including a verse from a Willie Dixon song).
While they never quite reached those heights again, their later albums explored Gordon Gano’s upbringing as the son of a Baptist minister. James Christopher Monger writes in Allmusic of their second album (released in 1984): “After the surprise success of their landmark debut, Violent Femmes could have just released another collection of teen-rage punk songs disguised as folk, and coasted into the modern rock spotlight alongside contemporaries like the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads. Instead they made Hallowed Ground, a hellfire-and-brimstone-beaten exorcism that both enraged and enthralled critics and fans alike. Like Roger Waters purging himself of the memories of his father’s death through [the Pink Floyd albums] The Wall and The Final Cut, bandleader Gordon Gano uses the record to expel his love/hate relationship with religion, and the results are alternately breathtaking and terrifying. . . .
“The album’s centerpiece, a searing indictment of loyalties broken and the snitches that break them, ‘Never Tell’ is the perfect balm for the bloody righteousness of youth; and when Gano screams, ‘I’ll stand right up in the heart of Hell / I never tell’, it’s hard not to stand right beside him. Christian imagery aside, Hallowed Ground is not as polarizing as some make it out to be. The band explores gothic Appalachian folk and child murder on the banjo-fueled ‘Country Death Song’, bawdy and bluesy Lou Reed-inflected infatuation on ‘Sweet Misery Blues’, and nuclear holocaust on the brooding title track [‘Hallowed Ground’], leaving little doubt that this is the same band that penned underground classics like ‘Gone Daddy Gone’ and ‘Add it Up’. Even the decidedly politically uncorrect ‘Black Girls’, with its free jazz mid-section that includes everything from jaw harp to the screaming alto sax of John Zorn and the Horns of Dilemma, is full of the same smirk and swagger that made ‘Blister in the Sun’ the soundtrack to so many people’s halcyon days.”
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Jewel (full name: Jewel Kilcher) is a contemporary folksinger who had a roughshod upbringing in Homer, Alaska. She was just 21 when her debut album Pieces of You was released, spawning three popular singles: “Who Will Save Your Soul”, “You Were Meant for Me”, and “Foolish Games”. While not an immediate success, Jewel toured constantly, and Atlantic Records pushed the album in all quarters; it eventually became one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, selling 12 million copies in the US alone.
Jewel has eased into country music in more recent years and has released several more acclaimed albums. In 2013, she released her Christmas album, Let it Snow: A Holiday Collection.
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Joan Osborne’s major-label debut album Relish was an instant favorite of mine when it was released in 1995, and the album has an amazing array of moods. Despite curve balls like “Let’s Get Naked” that celebrate a playful sexuality, most songs have a spiritual bent, from the haunting, infectious “St. Teresa”, to a fairly obscure Bob Dylan song, “Man in the Long Black Coat”.
Among other things, the hit song from the Joan Osborne album, “One of Us” turns the notion of man being created in God’s image on its head: “What if God was one of us? / Just a slob like one of us / Just a stranger on the bus / Tryin’ to make his way home?”. The singer then asks: “If God had a name, what would it be? / And would you call it to his face, / If you were faced with Him in all His glory? / What would you ask if you had just one question?”
Writing for Allmusic, Roch Parisien says of this Joan Osborne song: “Key track ‘One of Us’ sets the disc’s optimistic tone. It’s a simple, direct statement of faith, honest and unadorned, one framed in a near-perfect chorus and delectable Neil Young-ish guitar riff. This isn’t one of those sugary, superficial, goody-two-shoes Amy Grant kind of deals.”
The album name Relish sums up Joan Osborne’s views on life in general; here is Roch Parisien’s take on the album as a whole: “Grounded in blues, soul and gospel, the Kentucky native wields her gritty voice with personality and forceful presence, kind of Melissa Etheridge meets Sophie B. Hawkins with a splash of Jann Arden. Osborne’s passion for life oozes from the grooves. There’s an uplifting fervor to her material and delivery, as if every second, every note was being individually savored.”
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Back in college, I would sometimes hear incredible music being played in the adjoining apartment; since I always seemed to be taking a nap or otherwise nodding off, I wondered if I was dreaming: Could there really be music that wonderful? I could tell that the artist was Led Zeppelin, and I was a freshman when I first heard their debut album, Led Zeppelin – in fact, they played a concert in Raleigh, and one of my suitemates came back raving about how great they were.
I was often in the bar near our apartment called the Player’s Retreat – a Raleigh institution that has been around since the year of my birth (1951) – and had noticed that their jukebox had a few multiple-song disks. I played both sides of the one by Led Zeppelin; and sure enough, “Stairway to Heaven” was the entire second side, and the mystery was solved.
“Stairway to Heaven” is not a Christian song by any means; quite the contrary: Despite the references to Heaven, many seem to think that it could just as easily be referring to Hell. There are even websites that purport to list out verse after verse of the “backward masking” lyrics on the song.
In my judgment, the whole “backward masking” business is nonsense; what I have heard most of the time is the main vocal track played backwards, which seems to form other words. The best example that I know of is on “Revolution 9” by the Beatles, where the frequently repeated line “Number Nine” played backwards sounds like “Turn me on, dead man” (one of the many so-called “clues” that Paul McCartney was dead). It took me a while to hear that myself, since it actually sounds more like: “Tu-u-u-u-rn me ’n, d’d m’n”. It is obvious on its face though that there is no one on Earth who could hear “Number Nine” with one ear and “turn me on, dead man” with the other ear.
Anyway, for their part, the members of Led Zeppelin say that the song doesn’t have a special meaning at all. Jimmy Page was quoted in Wikipedia as saying of the song: “The wonderful thing about ‘Stairway [to Heaven]’ is the fact that just about everybody has got their own individual interpretation to it, and actually what it meant to them at their point of life. And that’s what’s so great about it. Over the passage of years people come to me with all manner of stories about what it meant to them at certain points of their lives. About how it’s got them through some really tragic circumstances. . . . Because it’s an extremely positive song, it’s such a positive energy, and, you know, people have got married to [the song].”
I found a couple of quotes from Robert Plant about “Stairway to Heaven” on a website called enotes.com: “It [the song] was done very quickly. It took a little working out, but it was a fluid, unnaturally easy track. It was almost as if — uh oh — it just had to be gotten out at the time. There was something pushing it saying, ‘You guys are okay, but if you want to do something timeless, here’s a wedding song for you.’ . . . Robert Plant once stated that the song was ‘. . . a woman’s quest for spiritual perfection’ and ‘. . . a simple wedding song’.”
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To this day, “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin is ranked among the greatest rock songs of all time. Wikipedia notes: “As of 2000, the song had been broadcast on radio over three million times. . . . It is also the biggest-selling single piece of sheet music in rock history, clocking up an average of 15,000 copies yearly. In total, over one million copies have been sold.”
In an interesting take on the legacy of this song, Wikipedia adds: “Erik Davis, a social historian and cultural critic, commented on the song’s massive success, subsequent backlash and enduring legendary status: ‘“Stairway to Heaven” isn’t the greatest rock song of the 1970’s; it is the greatest spell of the 1970’s. Think about it: We are all sick of the thing, but in some primordial way it is still number one. Everyone knows it. . . . Even our dislike and mockery is ritualistic. The dumb parodies; the Wayne’s World-inspired folklore about guitar shops demanding customers not play it; even Robert Plant’s public disavowal of the song — all of these just prove the rule. “Stairway to Heaven” is not just number one. It is The One, the quintessence, the closest AOR [album-oriented rock] will ever get you to the absolute.’”
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The 1960’s psychedelic/progressive rock band Spirit formed in Los Angeles in 1967, growing out of an earlier L.A. band called the Red Roosters. Bandmembers were Randy California (guitar and vocals), Mark Andes (bass guitar), John Locke (keyboards), and Jay Ferguson (percussion and vocals). The inclusion of Randy California’s stepfather Ed Cassidy (drums) brought the band an added dimension that was missing from most 1960’s rock bands: Besides being much older than the other bandmembers, Cassidy cut his teeth playing in numerous jazz bands including stints with Cannonball Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Roland Kirk, Thelonious Monk, and Lee Konitz. Ed Cassidy was also a founding member of the 1964 band Rising Sons that also included Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder.
A noted guitar prodigy, Randy Craig Wolfe was given his moniker at age 15 by none other than Jimi Hendrix (before Jimi started using that spelling); when they played together in 1966 in one of Hendrix’s early bands, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, Jimi called him “Randy California” in order to distinguish him from Randy Palmer who was also in the band.
Spirit’s biggest hit song was a rousing rocker called “I Got a Line on You”, which was released in November 1968. The accompanying album, The Family that Plays Together is one of my favorite American albums of the 1960’s.
The album includes an unusual track called “Jewish” that is sung in Hebrew. Like “Taurus”, “Jewish” was written by Randy California; he had been raised in a Jewish home. According to a post by Jewish Business News, the lyrics are taken from a traditional song called “Henei Ma Tov” (or “Hine Ma Tov”) that is based on Psalm 133 (one of the Psalms of David).
This post also says of Randy California: “In his book Stars of David: Rock ’n’ Roll’s Jewish Stories, author Scott R. Benarde quotes [his mother Bernice] Pearle saying, ‘I always felt Randy [California]’s solos sounded like what I remember from Temple. I told him that sometimes his guitar sounded like a cantor in Synagogue.’”
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Spirit was recently in the news when they won the first round in a long-simmering controversy with Led Zeppelin. The two bands had toured together during Led Zep’s first tour, and Randy California had long claimed that the opening chords for “Stairway to Heaven” were lifted from their 1968 instrumental song “Taurus”.
Reportedly for lack of funds, a copyright infringement lawsuit was not filed until May 2014 (by Randy Craig Wolfe’s heirs); and on October 21, 2014, the Judge in the case denied the request by Led Zeppelin’s attorneys to dismiss the case.
The Jewish Business News post mentioned above also notes that Led Zeppelin’s case is harmed by past copyright troubles: “[Led Zeppelin was] forced to emend credits for ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You’ as well as settling a suit over ‘Dazed and Confused’.” Not only that, I have written in the past about “How Many More Times” on Led Zeppelin, where the band had to show a writing credit for Howlin’ Wolf, who had written “How Many More Years” previously.
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Okay, I will freely admit that this month’s entry, WENDY BAGWELL AND THE SUNLITERS is hardly an “Under Appreciated Rock Band”; but at least they are actually a Christian group as opposed to last month’s UARB, Mötochrist, which was picked only because they had “Christ” in their name. Wendy Bagwell is a (male) gospel singer who is best known for his folksy tales, most famously their 1970 release called “Here Come the Rattlesnakes” that recounts the time that the group played in a church in eastern Kentucky that practiced snake-handling. it was the first million-selling single in gospel music history.
* * *
I became familiar with Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters when we used to go to sleep listening to WPTF radio in Raleigh. As the second radio station in North Carolina, and still the second most powerful in the state with its 50,000-watt broadcasting tower, WPTF was beloved throughout central North Carolina. I often listened to Bart Ritner, who was with the station for 39 years and is credited with having one of the first two-way radio talk shows in the country. Their FM affiliate was renamed WQDR-FM in 1972 – the call letters stand for “quadrophonic” (four-channel stereo), which station managers mistakenly thought was the wave of the future; but this was still one of the first album-oriented rock stations in the country.
My mother Flora Ann Winfree grew up in the town of Wendell, located 25 or 30 miles east of Raleigh; when my grandmother Alma T. Nowell moved to Winston-Salem, she loaded her house up with old-timey stuff. For instance, they had bought the first electric stove in Wendell; this porcelainized steel appliance even had one original burner (with exposed glowing coils) and would be worth a fortune today. There was an old-fashioned oval light that sat near her front door; for Christmas, she put a red bulb in it. There was even an old-style, worn out telephone in her home whose dial just barely turned. Southern Bell was supposed to have collected all of those telephone sets decades earlier (this was back in the days when Ma Bell owned all of the telephones in the country, believe it or not) but had somehow forgotten this one.
My grandmother had one of those vintage wooden radios on display, but the one that she used was one of the early plastic models; and she regularly listened to WPTF on that radio – 100 miles away in Raleigh. On my little transistor radio, I had trouble picking up stations in Greensboro just 30 miles away, so I was amazed at that.
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WPTF had a late-night country music show back then that was aimed at truckers, called Interstate 68 (the station is at 680 on the AM dial); it was hosted by Hap Hansen. They took requests, so most of the songs were charming oldies, but there were also other recordings that were unusual to say the least. Besides “Here Come the Rattlesnakes” by Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters, they played numerous routines by legendary country comedian Jerry Clower that often featured the crew of Ledbetters that he hung with back in the day; “Telephone Call from God” by Jerry Jordan about a man picking up the phone and finding God on the other end (you never actually hear God, but Johnny Carson can be heard briefly in the background – a newer hit version came out later that mentions Jay Leno instead); and a 1948 monologue by Tex Ritter called “Deck of Cards” about a soldier caught spreading out cards in church (sample dialogue: “The Marshal said to the sergeant, ‘Why have you brought this man here?’ ‘For playing cards in church, Sir.’ ‘And what do you have to say for yourself son?’ ‘Much, Sir’, replied the soldier. The Marshal said, ‘I hope so, for if not, I shall punish you more than any man was ever punished.’”) – I don’t have Tex Ritter’s version, but I do have the one by Rusty Draper.
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There were also some of the genuinely odd recordings by Lester “Roadhog” Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys. That last was a group that had been invented by the Statler Brothers, and what they tried to do was create a truly bad country music show of the sort that would often play on stations or on stage in rural areas. Hap Hansen hated having to play those routines, since he was afraid that listeners would think that it was he who was playing those terrible songs! (My father Wallace M. Winfree was a big country music fan, but he told me on several occasions that there is nothing worse than bad country music).
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And then there is “Here Come the Rattlesnakes”. The story is a bit rambling like all of Wendy Bagwell’s are, but listening closely makes you realize that they are carefully crafted as well. Bagwell made clear that he was not judging them and did not know if they were right or wrong, but he didn’t have the kind of faith necessary to pick up a poisonous snake: “I mean, a frog I can see!” At one point during their performance, the tail of a snake nearly hit Wendy Bagwell in the foot: “I did a little shouting myself. And SHE thought I was in the spirit . . . and brought me one of them!”
At one point, Wendy Bagwell asked someone where the back door was. When told that there wasn’t one, he said, “Reckon where do they want one!” At the end, he tells his listeners to go to a church that handles snakes if you got the chance: “Sit on the back row, but go!” It is quite a story, and it is not hard to see why it became such a hit.
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Some years later, I saw a piece on a national news show about snake-handling churches. I was able to find the video for this story on the Internet not long ago; but now that the National Geographic Channel had a reality-TV show in a snake-handling church where someone died, and with Gary Tuchman broadcasting a story about them on CNN in 2012, I can no longer find it. Anyway, the news reporter had grown up within or at least near that religion; and he knew that, at some point, he would have to revisit his past. The story was mesmerizing to me – when the reporter took up a snake himself, he was taken by an overpowering ecstasy. At some point, the feeling left him, and he realized what he was doing and gave the snake back.
What I remember most was the music – the reporter called it a cross between gospel music and acid rock, and it is unlike anything else that I have ever heard. I spent many years without success trying to hunt up an album of snake-handling music, and I actually have a picture in my mind of an album that I came across a long time ago.
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Wendall Lee “Wendy” Bagwell was born in 1925 in Chamblee, Georgia on the outskirts of Atlanta. Bagwell was a U. S. Marine and was twice decorated for bravery. After returning to Georgia, Bagwell adopted a nephew of his who had been abused.
In 1953, he joined up with two women at his church, Geraldine Terry (later known professionally as Jerri Morrison) and Georgia Jones to form a gospel singing group called Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters; on the record that I have, Wendy says that the group is from Smyrna, Georgia. (The band name is sometimes spelled Sunlighters and sometimes Sonliters; Bagwell is also sometimes listed erroneously as Windy Bagwell). Sandy Garvin replaced Georgia Jones for a few years; and then Little Jan Buckner, the wife of the nephew that he had adopted earlier, joined in 1961 when she was 16 years old and stayed with the group until the end. These three stayed together for 33 years – Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters are said to have gone the longest time of any musical group in history without a personnel change.
Wendy Bagwell and his wife Melba were married 50 years and had three children.
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Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters enjoyed strong popularity with their combination of gospel music and humor and traveled internationally, leading to interesting stories that they were able to relate during their concerts. They were the first American gospel group to have an appearance at Carnegie Hall (in 1968) and the first to tour in Europe.
The group’s first popular recording was a sentimental song called “Pearl Buttons”, but they became better known for their humor. Almost all of their albums have at least one comedy routine, and some don’t have any gospel music. In fact, they are so well known as comedians that Wendy Bagwell’s singing voice has been forgotten to some extent. Their top-selling album, Here Come the Rattlesnakes includes their hit along with many gospel songs; it has sold 2,000,000 copies.
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A blog called “Southern Gospel Views from the Back Row” at www.sogospelbackrow.wordpress.com. says that they recorded just under 40 albums, with many being reissued on CD. This man’s pick for the best recording is Absolutely Live (1989). Wendy Bagwell also released some solo albums; Discogs lists a half dozen.
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The group’s comedy routines include “Ralph Bennett’s Volkswagen”, “Me, Old Ronnie, and the Monkey”, and “Pickin’ Up Paw Paws”. “Wendy’s Interview” tells the story of a young female reporter who shows up in a short miniskirt at his motel room, carrying what looked like an overnight bag. The interview takes place in view of many people around the swimming pool, and he takes pains to convince them that this is just an interview and not something else. The comedy had held up well over the years, and none of it can really be described as corny.
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The comedy album that I have by Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters, This, That and the Other includes “Here Come the Rattlesnakes”, “Pickin’ Up Paw Paws” (which tells of his performance in a school play while a boy), a tale about following a fancy opera singer when they performed at Carnegie Hall, and many other funny stories, but no gospel music.
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One of the routines by Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters, “Three German Police Seeing-Eye Dogs and One Yellow Cat” was a Top 20 hit in 1984. Ray Stevens supposedly adapted this monologue for his novelty song, “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival”; the lyrics mention a city just down the road from where I live: “The day the squirrel went berserk, in the First Self-Righteous Church, in the sleepy little town of Pascagoula. It was a fight for survival that broke out in revival. They were jumpin’ pews and shoutin’ ‘Hallelujah!’”
Wendy Bagwell also became known for his frequent catch phrase, “It’s a fact with my hand up”.
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Wendy Bagwell once did TV commercials for a brand of powdered aspirin called Stanback – many such products were popular in the South, with BC Powders being the best known; and I seem to remember that Goody’s Headache Powders had a plant in Winston-Salem when I was growing up. Their slogan was “Snap Back with Stanback”. The commercial won an Addy Award.
Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters won a slew of other awards over the years. From the Southern Gospel Music Association, they won the Pioneer Award and also the Album of the Year award; in 1997, they were inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame. Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters was also inducted into the Gospel Music Association’s Gospel Hall of Fame. Record World magazine named Wendy Bagwell the Comedian of the Year.
The portion of U. S. Highway 278 that is in Paulding County, Georgia was named Wendy Bagwell Parkway by the Georgia State Legislature in 1997.
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Kevin Williams played guitar for Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters for a time until 1995, and he produced their last venture, I Feel Like Singing. He has become a prominent session guitarist in gospel music and has performed in more than 600 recordings.
After Wendy Bagwell’s death, he joined the Gaither Homecoming Tour and has become their band director. Gospel music impresario Bill Gaither had completed an album in 1991 called Homecoming that featured a host of other prominent gospel musicians, and that has led to a series of albums, videos, television performances, and other events under this umbrella that continue to the present day. Wikipedia lists nearly 100 items in their Videography alone.
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Little Jan Buckner-Goff was inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame herself in 2010. After Wendy Bagwell’s death in 1996, Jerri Morrison no longer wanted to travel, but Little Jan still yearned to perform. Several of her songs have been nominated for Grammys, and she was named the Female Vocalist of the Year by the Southern Gospel Music Association on two occasions. Her song “Walk Around Me, Jesus” was the #1 song on the Cash Box Music Charts.
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FLASHBACK: The Under-Appreciated Rock Artist of the Month for November 2012 – THOMAS ANDERSON
Thomas Anderson is one of those guys where I only have one album and wish I had more; I guess I am going to have to break down and order one. Moon Going Down is the only one of their albums that I have ever seen on the Bomp! Mailorder website, where I do most of my mailordering.
Unfortunately I cannot find anything by this particular Thomas Anderson on YouTube. I guess it is true what Village Voice has said of him: “Thomas Anderson is clearly the greatest unknown songwriter on the planet.”
Maybe some lyrics instead? (from Anderson’s website, www.angryyounggradstudent.com/ ). This will let you know how thoughtful his songs are.
Up With People came to town one night
Singin’ a song about the late Ed White,
Against a backdrop of him walking in space,
Floating in time with impossible grace.
Dazed by the stardust and dazzled by the moon,
They come with endorsements from John Wayne and Pat Boone--
It’s a road to tomorrow we can all agree upon,
Take a left down Carnaby Street straight into Saigon.
And Peter and Michael and Micky and Davy,
And a sign says Pray For Rosemary’s Baby;
We’ll pass it ’round the bar
And we’ll run it up the steeple,
And we’ll stare at the bus that says Up With People.
Well, the ghost of Audie Murphy
Stood upon the burning tank,
As if to show how Hollywood
Turns the bullets into blanks,
And to reassure all the orphans
With the clothes burned off their backs,
That the privileged love the destitute
As long as they know how to act.
Sing you sinners, sing,
Beat your broken wings;
Look up from the ashes
Of your dreams.
“Are You Sure John Donne it this Way”
Go and catch a falling star
Playing in some oldies bar,
The mirrored ball that lights the place
Will show the lines on every face.
Get with child a mandrake root
With her parents in pursuit,
And through the miles you’ll discern
The state police at every turn.
Tell me where the past years are,
I’ll go and meet them in my car;
The winds of time took in their gust
What Jesus drew in the dust.
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PICTURE GALLERY: The Under-Appreciated Rock Artist of the Month for November 2011 – THE UGLY
Here is the CD by the Ugly that I have:
This is their only single to my knowledge:
Here is a shot of the band in all their, um, glory (with some fuzzing out):
And a shot of the band playing live:
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STORY OF THE MONTH: The Trashmen (from May 2012)
One of my favorite bands that truly does not deserve the one-hit wonder label is the Minneapolis band the Trashmen. Their 1963 song “Surfin’ Bird” is one of my very favorite 1960’s songs to this day – and believe me when I tell you that that is saying something! The story is that they were at a gig when drummer Steve Wahrer stopped playing and improvised a growling, spitfire performance of a doo-wop song called “The Bird’s the Word” that he had previously heard being performed by a group called the Sorensen Brothers. He then coupled that with a similar performance of another doo-wop song “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” by the Rivingtons – not knowing that “The Bird’s the Word” was also originally by that band. A local DJ Bill Diehl who was in the audience encouraged them to record the song, and they later won a Battle of the Bands competition.
The Trashmen were signed by Garrett Records and reached #4 on the charts with this wyld recording. On one of the over-priced but essential Born Bad CD’s – also known as Songs the Cramps Taught Us – “Surfin’ Bird” is preceded by the original recordings by the Rivingtons of “Mama-Oom-Mow-Mow” and “The Bird’s the Word”; both songs were follow-up singles to their biggest hit “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow”. It is in that setting that “Surfin’ Bird” can best be appreciated: Their song could hardly be more different from these other much slower performances, yet in their own way, this surf rock band is also honoring the doo-wop tradition that formed much of the basis for the surf sound in the first place.
I have never gotten a copy of the hit 45 (or their first album either for that matter), but I did purchase a copy of the Trashmen’s second single “Bird Dance Beat” at the time (it reached #30 on the singles charts); the flip side was a car song, “A-Bone” (the only thing surf bands love as much as surfing is cars). It is amazing enough to think of there being a surf band from Minnesota – which is about as far as it is possible to be from an ocean and still be in the United States – never mind one that is so uniformly excellent.
The Trashmen are often lumped in with the garage rock bands since their sound is garagey in nature (they certainly have the name for it also), even though the garage rock era was several years later (1965-1968). Allmusic summed it up well in their article on the band: “Unfairly depicted as a novelty act, the Trashmen were in actuality a top-notch rock & roll combo, enormously popular on the teen club circuit, playing primarily surf music to a landlocked Minnesota audience.” They say that the Trashmen only released the one album Surfin’ Bird, although I have a copy of a second album Bird Dance Beat that sure looks it could have been a follow-up album (though my copy was obviously much newer than the mid-1960’s), along with The Great Lost Trashmen Album. Sundazed Records even put out a 4-CD box set in 1998 called Bird Call!: The Twin City Stomp of the Trashmen.
