A look at the history of this powerful song and some of the bluesier arrangements. “That’s a song that gets to everybody” – Marion Williams.
I stumbled upon an album the other day that brought a smile to my face as I listened. Its title is Amazing Grace and it was released in 2020 by those great folks at the Music Maker Foundation. As I listened, I realized that Amazing Grace is not just the title of the album, but that every song is a version done by a variety of roots musicians, including Guitar Gabriel, Guitar Slim and Cora Fluker. It’s raw, it’s honest and it serves to show the power of this old hymn to connect over 200 years since John Newton penned the lyrics.
Guitar Gabriel
Piedmont bluesman Guitar Gabriel, who contributes a couple of versions to the album, was once arrested for stealing a package of bologna and a bottle of wine from a supermarket. When he appeared in court Judge Freeman asked him if he did it. Gabriel replied “Yes sir, I did, and I am ashamed.” Noticing that Gabe had brought his guitar into the courtroom, the judge asked if he could play Amazing Grace. “Yes, sir,” Gabe answered as he picked up his instrument and began to sing. As the last notes of the song resonated, the judge pronounced Gabe “Not Guilty” and he was carried out onto the streets by a cheering crowd. Amazing grace indeed!
There are a lot of great, bluesy versions of the song. Here are two of my favourites: the first by ace Austrian slide guitar Gottfried David Gfrerer on his resonator; the second, Brooks Williams, who hails from Statesboro, Georgia, now resident in England, with another stunning slide guitar version.
Gottfried David Gfrerer
Brooks Williams
John Newton was a notorious slave trader in the eighteenth century, who mocked Christian faith, and whose foul language made even his fellow seamen blush. In 1748, however, his ship was caught in a violent storm off the coast of Ireland, which was so severe that Newton cried out to God for mercy. After leaving the slave trade and his seafaring life, Newton studied theology and became a Christian minister and an ardent abolitionist, working closely with William Wilberforce, a British MP, to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire, which was achieved in 1807.
The song clearly references the struggles of Newton’s own life and the remarkable change that had taken place in him.
The tune we know now for the song was composed by American William Walker in 1835 and became popular in a religious movement called the Second Great Awakening which swept the US in the 19th century. In huge gatherings of people in camp meetings across the US, fiery preaching and catchy tunes urged the thousands who came to repent and believe. Amazing Grace punctuated many a sermon.
Walker’s tune and Newton’s words, says author Steve Turner, were a “marriage made in heaven … The music behind ‘amazing’ had a sense of awe to it. The music behind ‘grace’ sounded graceful.” Walker’s collection of published songs, including Amazing Grace was enormously popular, selling about 600,000 copies all over the US when the total population was just over 20 million.
Here are the Holmes Brothers with a passionate and soulful version
Anthony Heilbut, writer and record producer of black gospel music has noted the connections of the song with the slave trade, saying that the “dangers, toils, and snares” in Newton’s words are a “universal testimony” of the African American experience. Historian and writer, James Basker, chose Amazing Grace to represent a collection of anti-slavery poetry, saying “there is a transformative power…the transformation of sin and sorrow into grace, of suffering into beauty, of alienation into empathy and connection, of the unspeakable into imaginative literature.”
Here’s the Blind Boys of Alabama’s version, this time to the tune of House of the Rising Sun.
The song was popularized by Mahalia Jackson, who recorded it in 1947 and sang it frequently. It became an important anthem during the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War.
The song has been recorded by a great many artists over the years, those with faith and those without, such is the power of the song. These include Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, The Byrds, Willie Nelson, and of course, Judy Collins, whose 1970 recording, which I remember well, was a huge hit in both the US and the UK. Collins, who had a history of alcohol abuse, claimed that the song was able to “pull her through” to recovery.
The song’s long history and its evident power to touch everybody, whether with Christian faith or not, is evident, summed up by gospel singer Marion Williams: “That’s a song that gets to everybody.”
Two final versions: the first in the hands of acoustic guitar maestro, Tommy Emmanuel, here accompanied to excellent effect on harmonica by Pat Bergeson; the second a short moving version on harmonica at the site of Rev. Martin Luther King’s grave in Atlanta, by Fabrizio Poggi.
Bruce Springsteen and his Seeger Sessions Band kicked off their tour on April 30, 2006 at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, with a stirring version of Oh Mary Don’t You Weep. It was a mere eight months after Katrina had devastated the city and, in a performance hailed by a local critic as the most emotional musical experience of her life, Springsteen sought to inject some hope into the city with his collection of spirituals and roots songs.
This opening song is an old spiritual, a slave song, that heralds the theme of liberation and new beginnings. The recurring phrase “Pharoah’s army got drown-ded” recalls the Old Testament story of the children of Israel escaping slavery in Egypt in the Exodus. This was a story that had captured the imagination of people who were enslaved or disenfranchised (it was an important song during the Civil Rights movement). Black slaves resisted the bondage they suffered in a whole range of ways.
One of these was the sort of religion they developed, a Christianity that was not just that of their masters. Theirs was a faith where freedom and liberation were vigorously affirmed and one where black humanity was affirmed, despite everything that slavery and white people said. The songs sung were often coded messages of hope and resistance. Their God was the God of history, who works and intervenes in our world to bring change and transformation. A God who brings life from the dead.
The other recurring phrase in the song is “Oh Mary don’t you weep, don’t you mourn,” which for me refers to Mary Magdalene, who stood weeping at the tomb of Jesus that first Easter morning. She had lost her friend and his body was nowhere to be found. Her weeping and mourning is dispelled, however, by meeting someone she thought was the gardener, but who turned out to be Jesus, risen from the dead. It’s remarkable, that in a world where a woman’s testimony was thought unreliable and not viable in a courtroom, the gospel writers were willing to record the women as the first witnesses of the resurrection – not something you’d do, if you were trying to pass off a story.
The resurrection is right at the heart of Easter, and at the heart of Christian faith. In fact, there’s no point in faith at all, if it’s not. If it didn’t happen, as Paul, Christianity’s first exponent and himself a witness of a risen Jesus, said, then, we might as well just eat, drink and be merry. Christian faith doesn’t make any sense without the resurrection.
But with it, suddenly there are possibilities. Christian faith says that, because Jesus is risen, there is to be a new creation – the evil and the injustice we see in our world is not the last word. Pharaoh’s army got drown-ded all right; the challenge is to find the promised land, to be people who bring life from the deadness around us by living out, and seeking the love, peace and justice of, God’s new creation right now.
Finally, here’s Kenny Meeks’s great Easter song, which draws out the personal hope of Easter, which stretches beyond this life.
“Her words have a clear message, but her deep feeling could move anyone.” VICE Magazine
Photo: Houston Cofield
Elizabeth King is a remarkable woman. She was the female lead of a successful, previously all-male gospel group, The Gospel Souls, in the 1960s and 70s, which had a significant gospel hit on the D-Vine Spirituals label, I Heard the Voice.
She quit singing professionally to raise her children, and now, after a hiatus of nearly 50 years, she has gone into the studio to record a fabulous new blues-tinged gospel album, Living in the Last Days, on Bruce Watson’s new Bible and Tire label. [check out our interview with Bruce here]
Her powerful vocal performance on the record, reminiscent at times of Mavis Staples, is supported by a top-class band assembled by Watson (Will Sexton and Matt Ross-Spang (guitars), George Sluppick (drums), Mark Edgar Stuart (bass), and Al Gamble (organ)) and features the excellent harmonies of Christopher and Courtney Barnes from The Sensational Barnes Brothers. It’s a funky, blues, soul-filled pot of rich gospel fare.
Down at the Crossroads called Ms. King at her Memphis home, and asked her about making the album. She said first of all that this album was her debut solo album and it’s been forty-seven years since she stopped singing professionally. She told me that she was “just sitting at home one day,” when Pastor Shipp, the founder of the 1970s D-Vine Spirituals label, who had recently started collaborating with Bruce Watson, called her up. “And he asked me, did I want to record again? I told him, yeah. That’s how it came to be.”
From initial call to getting into the studio was very quick – “Yeah, no time for rehearsal or nothing,” said Elizabeth.
I asked her about the songs on the album, all terrific, positive songs. She told me that there are some that she has been singing for many years, and some that Bruce Watson brought to her. “And then there are a couple of songs on there I did myself that I have been singing from when I was, you know, a child growing up. The song Walk with Me, my mom used to sing that to me. And then, I got a song, Blessed Be the Name, I kinda got most of that out of the Bible.”
She sings this song unaccompanied on the album, a quite spine-tingling performance. The song tells the story of Job, perhaps a story that not a lot of people are familiar with these days. Job is a character in the Old Testament book of the same name, who suffers tremendous loss, including his family and all his possessions, but somehow is able to say, “God gives and takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
“To me,” she told me, the story “means that we can be blessed, in that God gives us a thing, and he has a right to take it away. And, I take the role of Job to just be patient. And when things are going good, or going bad, you just have to be patient.”
That’s a lesson that Elizabeth King has learned through the ups and downs of life. “Well, I kind of learned it mostly through my lifetime. And when I was a child – because my mom, you know, would tell me she gonna give us something, but you got to wait for it. So, as I got older. I found out that if you really want something, just wait, it’ll come.”
Elizabeth King was born in 1944 and grew up in Charleston, in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Life wasn’t easy, with the young Elizabeth having to help the family pick cotton before going to school each day. Positive person that she is, she had nothing negative to say about that.
“Well, to me it was fun, I guess, because that was all I knew. And we had to walk a long way to school and I would get tired walking, so my brothers would carry me because I was younger than they were. But it was a lot of picking cotton and chopping cotton. I loved to chop cotton. It really wasn’t so hard for me because I guess I was the only girl in the family and my brothers kinda spoiled me a little bit.”
I mentioned one of the songs on the album to her, Testify, which is a rocking, upbeat number. I wondered if, looking back over the years, this song of a testimony to God’s goodness and God’s guiding hand, reflects her own experience?
She told me that she had recorded a version of this song back in 1970, but was keen to have it on this new album, though rearranged somewhat. “It’s been a part of my life, because I’ve gone through quite a bit. I got fifteen children, and I’ve gone through three accidents. So, I do have a testimony.”
Elizabeth King quit recording music in the mid-seventies to concentrate on family life. She told me she has fifteen children, 57 grandchildren and 33 great-grandchildren. And she is proud of every one of them, including some of her grandchildren who are now recording artists in their own right.
“When my children were small, I stopped. Let’s see, what year was that? It’d be around, 1970, maybe 1972, and an opportunity for travel overseas came. But my children, my older two, were small and I didn’t want to leave them. So, I stayed at home to raise my children. Everybody said ‘you won’t get a chance to do your dream if you have to wait until your kids get grown.’ But I still have an opportunity. I just still believe I would have an opportunity to sing, you know?”
And here she is, all these years later, having just made this wonderful album. Not that she had quit singing entirely – for many years she has been singing in her church choir and singing solos. But “the only music and singing I know is a spiritual song and they call it a gospel song.” She was never interested in sing the blues or R&B.
“I guess because my heart just wasn’t in it. I didn’t like going to parties and stuff like that when I was young, I just didn’t like it because I always was afraid of drunk people.”
I asked Ms. King why music is important to her, and in particular, why gospel music is so important to her. She told me that it was her way of communicating with God and the source of God’s power in her life – to help her “be a better person. That’s what inspires me.”
And what does she think is at the heart of gospel music? The music, the feeling, the words?
“The words mostly would count for me. The music is good, don’t get me wrong. But it’s the words that carry the message for me. Because you know, you got some songs that they call gospel songs but they really don’t have too much of a meaning. But when you sing songs like Precious Lord or Amazing Grace, when you sing songs like that, it touches people’s heart. If you do it from your heart it’s going to reach the heart of any man, whether he’s saved or unsaved, and you can connect to that spirit.”
She had mentioned the accidents that had affected her life and I asked in particular about the one back in 1969, that was very serious.
“That one was a serious accident. I worked for a florist at the time, and a man hit me head on. I stayed in the hospital, I think, around 17 days. I really couldn’t remember anybody coming to visit me, but there was this one priest in the hospital that would come in every morning and ask me, ‘My child. Can I pray with you today?’ I would say, Yes. And so, when I came to myself, I was asking the staff, you know, the nurses about him. And they said that they didn’t have anybody on their staff like that. So, I said, who was this? Now I never could see his face, so I just described his body and what he had on and all of that. And they said, ‘we don’t have anybody like this on the staff.’ So, I just started praying and I just knew it was God. I knew I was in bad shape. I really was; I had to learn to walk all over again.”
With her remarkable recovery, Elizabeth King said she “dedicated my life to God, to my singing and to try to encourage people. My job now is just try to encourage people…when you’re going through something, just turn to God. If you don’t know him, get to know him.”
I wondered how Ms. King had got on with the musicians when she’d gone into the studio to make this record, and how had she learned the songs so quickly.
“Oh, they had the music all lined up for me and I don’t know, I just sing to the music! I used to be real fast learner when I was young, but the process of learning now is quite a bit slower, as I get older. But it wasn’t hard for me to adapt to the music because, you know, I never stopped singing. I’ve been singing all the time. I just hadn’t recorded.”
The album finishes with a very cool, bluesy version of one of my favourite songs, You Got to Move, famously recorded by Mississippi Fred McDowell and then, of course, the Rolling Stones on their Sticky Fingers album. I’ve always thought of that song as a resurrection song. When the Lord gets ready, you gotta move – it always reminds me of Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones. Elizabeth agreed and said, “I would say no matter what nobody tried to do to keep you here, when it’s time for God to say you got to move, you got to move. I just love it.”
I asked her about another song on the album, A Long Journey, another one about Christian hope which talks about going home to get your crown. Elizabeth said, “My mom used to sing that to me when I was a child. Now that was a long time ago because I’m 76 years old! And that song has been with me all these years, but she used to tell me that I’m gonna leave you one day. I’m going on a long journey and I won’t be back. And I tell you, that song, it has stayed with me in the heart, and anytime I record an album, A Long Journey going to be on there.”
We finished up our conversation by talking about Elizabeth’s faith, which is clearly central to her life and being. She told me, “It’s been important to me because of the things that I suffered, things that happened to me, a lot of things that I had to go through. My faith made me strong about suffering, that’s what made me strong.” Life has not been easy for her, but she is certain that it was God that kept her going in the hard times and it was her faith that sustained her. “I believe in God, God gives me strength. And that would keep me going.”
Elizabeth King is a remarkable woman. She is positive, upbeat, ready to take on the next challenge and opportunity in life. She is a breath of fresh air. Here’s what she finished our chat with:
“Every day I get up, I thank God. Just let me be able to just take care of myself you know, and I just thank him. And I’m going to keep on trusting him until the time comes when he says that you gotta move!”
Living in the Last Days is testimony to Elizabeth King’s remarkable spirit and faith. Not only that, it’s a top-notch album, full of great songs, music that touches you, and Ms. King’s powerful vocal performance. It’s a gift for us all.
Bob Dylan called him “one of the wizards of modern music.” His biographer, Ian Zack, called him “one of the world’s greatest, if not the greatest, of all traditional and ragtime guitarists” And for Alan Lomax, the folklorist, he was “one of the great geniuses of American instrumental music.”
We’re talking about Rev. Gary Davis, the blind son of dirt-poor sharecroppers in South Carolina, who went on to exert a major influence on the folk scene of the 1960s and the early rock scene of the 70s. Yet for most of his career, he refused to perform blues music publicly until the latter years of his life.
He was remarkably musically gifted and his guitar virtuosity was an inspiration to people like Jorma Kaukonen, Bob Weir, Stefan Grossman and many others. Davis was born in 1896 in the Jim Crow South Carolina, became blind as a small child, and was abandoned by his mother. Raised in poverty by his grandmother, it was a thoroughly unpromising start. But she made sure young Gary went to church where he sang in the choir. He took up the guitar early, playing spirituals in earshot of his grandmother and other songs learned from traveling minstrel shows when she wasn’t listening,
He began to have real success as a musician in his late teens at picnics and in string bands, then playing on street corners for nickels and dimes, eventually adopting the rambling lifestyle of the wandering bluesman. But, at the age of 38, when his mother was dying, Davis experienced a vision, where an angel, appearing as a child, called him to God. Right there, he says, he “surrendered and gave up. Gave up entirely.” He soon was ordained as a Baptist minister.
He now harnessed all the musical skill he had amassed in playing ragtime, jazz, blues, and minstrel music and his considerable creative energies in composing and playing spiritual songs in pursuit of his new calling in life. There had been a great change.
One of Gary Davis’s song which reflects this is simply called Great Change Since I Been Born, and I got to thinking about it, when a good friend of mine, Gary Bradley, an Irish musician, sent me a recording he had made of the song for use in the book launch of my new book.
The reason I wanted the song is because my book, Paul Distilled is about the thinking of the apostle Paul, whose letters form part of our New Testaments. He, too, experienced a great change – from a man of violence to a man promoting love and peace, because of his own encounter with God. Specifically, meeting the resurrected Jesus on the famous Damascus Road. In his letters, it’s clear that he thought the epoch-shattering event of Jesus’s resurrection meant the possibility of transformation – both personally and for the world. A transformation based on love. These short thirteen letters of Paul dropped a depth charge of thought into the ancient world, whose effects are still being felt in the world. Can love really change the world? According to Jesus, and the greatest exponent of the meaning of his life, Paul – a resounding Yes!
Gary Davis eventually made has way to New York City, where his incredible skill and talent became appreciated and where he was eventually persuaded to perform more than just spiritual songs in the 1960s Though his faith was still intact, the good Reverend clearly struggled with alcohol and was known to be pretty foul-mouthed and angry at times. As Bob Dylan observed in Solid Rock,
“It’s the ways of the flesh to war against the spirit
Twenty-four hours a day, you can feel it and you can hear it”
He was reflecting, of course, St Paul’s letter to the Romans, where he talks about doing the things he doesn’t want to do and not doing what he knows he ought to do. We’ve all been there. The good news, is that a great change is possible. A life empowered by the Spirit of Jesus “is life and peace.” The secret is, in Gary Davis’s words, to “surrender and give up. Give up entirely.”
Document Records, an independent record label that specializes in reissuing vintage blues and jazz, has a great set of five Christmas Blues albums, which feature a host of well-known artists from yesteryear, like Victoria Spivey, Leadbelly, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker and Freddy King, and many more you’ll likely have never heard of. Volume 1 alone has a massive 52 tracks, so it’s great value.
In this disk, we get fun songs like the delightful Bring That Cadillac Back by Harry Crafton with the Doc Bagby Orchestra, where Harry’s Christmas is ruined by his girl eating his turkey and running off with his Cadillac.
There’s some terrific blues, like Chuck Berry’s Merry Christmas Baby on Disk 2 and Victoria Spivey’s naughty I Ain’t Gonna Let You See My Santa Claus (Volume 3), and of course, we get Robert Johnson’s Hellhound on My Trail, with its mention of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
There’s a fair sprinkling of Christmas gospel along the way, including some interesting preaching. Like the 1918 sermon of Rev A.W. Nix, which he preached during the Spanish ‘flu pandemic, addressing the fact that many in his congregation were broke. He cautioned his flock not to spend money they didn’t have. Pretty good advice, don’t you think? Reminds me of Mr Micawber in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, who famously observed, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
Rev. Nix goes on to tell his flock that rather than go broke splashing out at Christmas, they needed to “spend your Christmas praising God and giving him thanks for what he’s already done for you this year.”
Being thankful maybe seems a tall order after 2020. So many lives lost all over the world to the pandemic, with the resultant economic fallout, domestic violence on the rise and isolation and restrictions causing no end of misery. And, in the developing world, hunger and poverty on the increase, along with sex trafficking and early marriage of girls.
But Nix was preaching to people in as bad a situation or worse in 1918. The influenza pandemic affected a third the population of the world, killed up to 50 million, and came in four waves, lasting until 1920. He’s on to something when he talks about thankfulness.
Modern psychology tells us that if we can find something to be grateful for, it improves our self-esteem, increases our energy, helps our immune system, increases our sleep quality, and enables us to cope better with stress. So being thankful, even in the midst of trouble, can be incredibly powerful.
Christmas, of course, gives us something particularly to be thankful for, in the gift of the child in the manager. The Christmas message is one of hope in the midst of fear and distress, because of this incredible event of “God with us.” God come to share in our humanity, our distress, our joys, our sorrows.
The traditional song Go Tell It On the Mountain captures the celebration and thanksgiving for what happened on that first Christmas. The Document Record collection includes the Famous Jubilee Singers’ version, but I rather like the Blind Boys of Alabama’s take on this.
Volume 3 of Document Record’s collection fittingly closes with Ella Fitzgerald’s The Secret of Christmas. Forget the warm glow you feel, the sleigh bells, the children singing and the presents. For Ella, the secret of Christmas
Is not the things you do
At Christmas time, but the Christmas things you do
All year through.
Christmas is coming, and if you’re a music fan, you’ll want to drop a few hints to Santa. Here are seven books you’ll definitely want in your stocking:
Michael Corcoran, Ghost Notes: Pioneering Spirits of Texas Music
What a sumptuous feast of a book this is. Coffee table sized, lavishly illustrated, and utterly engaging, it oozes quality from the standard of the writing to the beautiful quality of paper. With Corcoran’s engaging stories highlighting the careers and contributions of a wide variety of pioneering Texas musicians, you begin to realize how important and formative Texas is for American music. Top of your Christmas list. Read our review. Buy it here.
Annye C. Anderson, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson
Memories of Robert Johnson from Annye Anderson, Johnson’s almost sister, which introduce us to the Robert Johnson we never knew. A wonderful evocation of a time and place. For any music fan, and particularly if you’re a blues fan, this book is a must-read.
Adam Gussow, Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of Music
Blues harp master and professor of the blues, Gussow, asks an important question of every blues fan – who do the blues belong to? Expertly and sensitively written by a man who has spent his musical career learning from and playing with black musicians.
Ian Zack’s biography of Odetta is masterful, as he charts the life of this seminal cultural figure who helped spark the folk revival and became a vital part of the protest movements of the 1950s and 60s. She was on the front line of the struggle for equality in America, combatting racism through her music and actions. An important book and a great read. Full review to come.
Check out also Ian Zack’s excellent biography of Rev. Gary Davis, Say No to the Devil. Here’s our review.
Freeman Vines, Hanging Tree Guitars
Freeman Vines, born in 1942 in Greene County in North Carolina is the focus of a quite remarkable book, written by Zoe Van Buren and featuring a stunning set of photographs of Vines, his guitars and his environment by Timothy Duffy. The focus of the book is on one particular aspect of Vines’s life – his crafting of guitars from a tree near where he lived that had been used for lynching. Don’t miss the companion music album. Read our interview with Freeman Vines. Buy it here.
Gary Golio & E.B. Lewis, Dark Was the Night: Blind Willie Johnson’s Journey to the Stars
Another beautifully illustrated book (by E.B. Lewis), and cleverly written by Golio, guaranteed to engage the interest of small children. That’s no small feat, given the harshness of Willie Johnson’s life, a man blinded as a child, who lived in poverty and died penniless in the ruins of his burnt-down home. For parents who’d like their children to encounter something of America’s musical heritage, this, really is a must-buy. Highly recommended. Read our review. Buy it here.
Gary W Burnett, The Gospel According to the Blues
It’s been out for a while, but no matter – it’s mine and I’m gonna recommend it! “The Gospel According to the Blues is at once a primer in American music, culture, and race and religious history. Gary Burnett moves deftly from lyrics to theory and back again, from Blind Lemon Jefferson to the insights of contemporary scholarship. Highly readable, thoroughly researched, and with deep respect for the art form on every page. For best results, read with scratchy vinyl recordings of the masters as accompaniment.” An interview with the author and more details here.
Vika and Linda Bull are two roots artists that may not have come across your radar. You ought to remedy that straight away! They are two sisters, based in Melbourne, who have been singing, harmonizing and rocking for many years, delighting audiences in their Australian homeland. Along the way, they’ve supported the likes of Billy Joel and have performed with Iggy Pop. The sisters are members of Paul Kelly’s band – Kelly is a hugely successful Australian rock music singer-songwriter and guitarist, whom a Rolling Stone writer claimed to be “one of the finest songwriters I have ever heard.”
Vika and Linda released a new album this year, called Sunday (The Gospel According to Iso, a fabulous album of rootsy, bluesy gospel songs and we got chatting to Linda about it.
But first of all, because a lot of people in the US and Europe may not be familiar with Vika and Linda, despite their success in Australia, I asked Linda how she would characterize their music?
“Well,” she said, “we’re very hard to pigeonhole. We love harmonizing together and singing together and we cover a lot of different genres. We don’t like being pigeonholed. But I think it’s basically roots music is where our heart is – and harmony. Vika and I have got very different tastes, Vika is more rock and I’m a bit more country. And in between we can cover blues, soul, R&B and gospel. And we love to do that. We love to just sing together – regardless of the genre, we just love singing together.”
Turning to the new album, I wondered what “iso” means. Turns out it’s Australian slang for “isolation.” Linda told me:
“Because we made the album in isolation in the first phase of lock-down in Melbourne, not knowing then that we would have two. The background of the record is that we’ve been singing gospel music for probably about 35 years now.” She and Vika have made a few gospel-tinged recordings along the way, but “this one in its entirety is kind of the next step. We had restrictions with lock-down, so we made it minimally. And I think gospel music actually works really well like that. It works really well when you have very few instruments.”
The album is something of a gem, really pared back, largely featuring the wonderful harmonizing of the two sisters, and backed mostly by piano with those lovely sort of gospel chords that you get with the piano.
“We have piano all over it, in every track, and our musical director, Cameron Bruce, is a beautiful piano player. We’ve worked with him in Paul Kelly’s band, and he took charge of everything with us, helped to select the songs with a lot of zoom meetings. Cameron arranged the songs and then sent them back to us as files and we sang over the top.”
The Gospel According to Iso has 13 gospel songs (with a bit of latitude, we’ll count Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water and Chuck Berry’s Downbound Train as gospel!), mostly old traditional songs or spirituals like Sinnerman, Walk With Me Lord and Jesus on the Mainline. The album kicks off with a rockin’ version of Claude Ely’s Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down, and once you hear these two sisters harmonizing, and the bluesy vocals, you know this is an album you want to hear. The high quality is sustained throughout, and even though the arrangements are relatively sparse, there’s a nice variety to the way each of the songs is handled.
The album, Linda told me, all sprang from a weekly Sunday sing-song that she and Vika started to do when everything stopped in Australia early in the year. “I went out on Facebook and Instagram live every Sunday morning at 11:00am and we did one gospel song. That grew in popularity to the point where we thought we could make a record. We’d just ring a friend, they played guitar, we’d sing over the top, and we thought we could make a record like that.”
Why, I wondered, did they choose this particular selection of songs?
“We had lots of gospel songs in our back catalogue that we’ve been singing over the years, but we wanted to do something new. So I dug into the gospel collection that I had amassed over the years and we had about 70 songs from all different sources. Then we whittled it down and the focus was mainly just to do something that meant something to us and bring a bit of joy because it was pretty sort of sad over here – and everywhere.
“But we wanted also songs that people knew. So we have Bridge Over Troubled Water and Amazing Grace. But then there are other songs that we thought, we’ll just throw those into the pot because we love singing them – songs by Mahalia Jackson and so on. That’s how it came together.”
It’s a great selection of songs, but I particularly like Rosetta Tharpe’s Strange Things Happening Every Day. It’s got a very distinctive Rosetta Tharpe feel about it, with both the piano and guitar work echoing her original version. Linda said she liked Rosetta’s “rock and roll attitude. That’s kind of right up our alley.”
The other song I asked about was Elder Curry’s Memphis Flu. Curry was a singing preacher and guitar player who preached fiery sermons through his songs, backed by the barrelhouse piano of Elder Beck, and featured the stomping feet and clapped hands of his congregation. Recorded in 1930 for Okeh Records, Memphis Flu refers to the flu’ season of 1929 which was the worst since the 1919 pandemic. Death rates were very high, particularly in the Memphis region. The song is often thought of as the first rock’n’roll record and the original is a toe-tapping rocker all right. But Curry’s lyrics are pretty harsh. For Curry influenza was a manifestation of God’s wrath at sinners and there was little compassion for the large numbers of people who’d died as a result of the flu’.
Linda said that when she stumbled across the song, she thought how perfect it was for the current situation – but “the lyrics were very direct. So we tweaked them a bit in the choruses. It’s a gospel song of course, but you’re not going to die if you don’t go to church! But we thought the song was perfect for record. We weren’t sure whether people would love it or hate it!”
Actually, you can’t help but love Vika and Linda’s version, driven by a rollicking barrelhouse piano. The amended version of the song is well-chosen, actually, so timely, and with a great message talking about the epidemic getting the rich and the poor alike, and saying that it’s going to get a whole more if you don’t listen up and behave. Wear your masks people!
I asked Linda if there’d been any sort of pushback against science and wearing masks in Australia?
“There was a bit of a pushback. Yes, there were marches and demonstrations and anti-mask-wearing demonstrations, but all in all, you know, in the middle of all this, there was a black lives matter movement, and people were very observant of wearing a mask and they still went out and protested, so people in general were pretty good. No one loves wearing a mask or being told what to do – I get it, you know, but the result was good.”
Talking about black lives matter, the spectre of racism is something that we’re all increasingly aware of these days. What, I asked Linda, has been her experience in Australia, with her Tongan background?
“Well, yes, we have dark skin. So obviously we look different. So we have experienced a certain amount of racism, but nothing like our mother experienced.” The sisters’ mother came to Australia during the White Australia Policy, which from 1901 basically sought to forbid or restrict people of non-European ethnic origin, especially Asians and Pacific Islanders, from immigrating to Australia. It was only legally disbanded in the mid-1970s.
The racism encountered by Linda and her sister has been “nowhere near as much as the previous generation. So it’s getting easier in some ways, but we feel very strongly about being treated equally, and why shouldn’t we? We are respectful, but we are direct, so I always say we stand up for ourselves.”
The sisters are half Tongan – Tonga is a Polynesian neighbour of Australia, and it’s a heritage they feel proud of.
“Polynesian culture is very strong in our family. And the way they sing – when they sing in church, time pretty much time stops, it’s so beautiful. That’s how we were raised. We were raised listening to the Tongans sing in church, and that’s where we get our voices from. Because they taught us, our mother taught us.”
From listening to Linda and Vika, I’d sure love to visit one of those Tongan churches.
“Everyone we take cries when they see the Tongans fire up…as soon as you walk into the church and they start singing and they get into it, how can you help but not be moved?”
The album finishes with a beautiful, unaccompanied Amazing Grace. The slow tempo and the pure quality of the voices make it an appropriately emotional end to the album. There’s something about this song that seems to appeal to almost everybody, so I asked Linda what she thought it is about gospel music that has such a wide appeal even to people of no faith?
“I think that it’s uplifting and it’s one of those sort of genres that you can lean on when feeling a bit down, or when you could do with an uplift. It lends itself naturally to that sort of universal feeling. You know, we all want to live a little bit better sometimes. Although we grew up in a church and had a very religious upbringing, we think this music is for everybody. And I think that we love singing it because for us, it’s a release. I think it’s ultimately our aim with a gospel record to make people feel better, whether they believe or not.”
Sadly, with the restrictions still in place because of the pandemic, the Bull sisters haven’t been able to go out and play on the road. But, Linda told me, they can’t wait to sing these songs to a live audience. Hearing these two sing these songs live is going to be some experience. I just hope I get the opportunity to hear them.
I’ve been listening to the latest album by Larkin Poe, Self-Made Man, and there’s a great track on it called Holy Ghost Fire. You tend to get a few references to the Bible in a Larkin Poe album, not doubt reflecting the sisters background in the Southern Bible Belt.
“Who’s gonna help me carry my load
Burn, burn baby burn with that Holy Ghost Fire
From your fingers to the frets…gonna testify.”
It’s raw, apocalyptic sounding stuff, conjuring up images of wild Pentecostal exuberance. Exuberant joy, is of course, the mark of the Spirit moving – it seeps through the Bible’s pages, even though you wouldn’t think it when you attend most churches today. Kenny Meeks’s song, When Jesus Takes You Dancing, catches the exhilaration of all this on his 2016 bluesy Americana album, New Jerusalem. “When Jesus takes you dancing…the Holy Ghost takes over you and sets you all on fire…”
You get the same holy dancing in Beth Hart’s Spirit of God from her 2012 album, Bang Bang Boom Boom which takes us on a rockin’ journey from Beth’s house to the house of God where she goes “hip shakin’ down the aisle”, then “breaking bread with my own special style”. Spirit of God worship is clearly not the sombre sit-in-your-pew, be quiet and sleep through the sermon version which is served up in too many churches. In Beth’s church, it’s a “soul celebration,” where the preacher’s “goin’ crazy…knocking devils down on the floor,” the choir is “giving it up to the Lord,” and Beth knows she’s sure “feeling something!”
The Holmes’ Brothers Speaking in Tongues from their eponymous 2001 album, gives us more Pentecostal action:
“You got me speaking in tongues, speaking your name,
Lord let me understand you
You got shaking my head, lifting my hands…”
Think it’s strange? Sister Rosetta Tharpe was singing in 1944 about the strange things that happened every day when God’s on the move. People might get healed:
“There are strange things happening everyday
He gave the blind man sight
When he praised Him with all his might
There are strange things happening everyday.”
Songs about the Holy Spirit in the blues go back to Blind Willie Johnson, with his Latter Rain. The lyrics of this are often misunderstood. You need to appreciate that for Willie Johnson’s Pentecostal church, the latter rain was the rain of the Spirit that the Old Testament prophet Joel had prophesied. Joel was quoted by Peter on the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit fell on the first group of Jesus followers – “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.” But Joel also talked about the early rain and the latter rain. The early Pentecostal believers like Willie Johnson believed that what they were experiencing was a fresh shower of the Spirit’s blessing – the latter rain, as opposed to the early rain that had fallen on the first believers. “It’s for you, it’s for you, it’s for you and your children too,” go the lyrics, reflecting the prophet Joel’s word.
Spin forward another 25 years and you have the Rev. Gary Davis singing I Heard the Angel Singing, where the “Holy Ghost on fire” fell on him, and he “got in the Spirit and began to shout.” The devil tries to stop him praying, but the singing of the angels spur him on. Eric Bibb has a great version of this song. [check out, too Eric’s Spirit and the Blues album]
Larry Norman, father of Jesus rock in 1972 wondered “why should the devil have all the good music?” He’d been filled with the Spirit, he sang, “I feel OK, because Jesus is the rock and he rolled my blues away.”
And bang up to date, we have the Mason Creek Project’s Holy Spirit Blues. “Everytime I feel the Spirit, I feel like dancin’ in my shoes.”
Giving a slightly different different angle is this great Kelly Joe Phelps song, The Holy Ghost Flood. There are no fireworks in Kelly Joe’s beautiful song, featuring his characteristic and wonderful guitar picking, just a recognition of his own need: “Oh Lord a sinner I am, Asking you to forgive me.” He needs a “flood” of the Holy Spirit, of God’s presence which means:
“Blessing us in kind,
Leaving not a soul behind.”
According to Pew Research, Pentecostalism and related “charismatic movements” represent one of the fastest-growing segments of global Christianity, with around a quarter of the world’s 2 billion Christians. They celebrate the gift of the Spirit in exuberant worship and a keen sense of God’s Spirit at work in their everyday lives.
Actually, this pretty much reflects the early Christian movement that we read about in the New Testament. These early communities were communities of the Spirit where the speaking in tongues, healing and prophesying we’ve seen in the songs above, were a regular feature of their worship. As were other Spirit inspired ways of life like love, patience and kindness.
Maybe it’s time to let the Spirit move and go with Beth Hart “hip shakin’ down the aisle.” Something to try next Sunday morning you’re at church!
How much can one man pack into one lifetime? In the normal scheme of things, not remotely as much as Paul Jones has. From incredible success as the singer in Manfred Mann in the 1960s, with chart-topping hits in the UK and US, like Do Wah Diddy Diddy and Pretty Flamingo, to lead roles in musicals and plays on London’s West End, to acting in films and on TV, presenting the Blues Show on BBC Radio for over 30 years, and singing and playing harmonica with his Blues Band for the last 40 years – and, “don’t forget songwriter,” he gently chided me, when we chatted recently about his life, the blues and faith.
Now in his eighth decade, Paul Jones is still going strong. He told me that next year is scheduled to be “the most gig heavy year out of the last ten or fifteen,” with shows all round the UK with the Blues Band and the Manfreds, a reformed Manfred Mann. Where does he get the energy from? “Oh,” he said nonchalantly, “I have energy! I always have. I enjoy what we do.”
That enjoyment and zest for life came across in spades during our conversation. I asked him, first of all, of all the things he’s done along the way, what does he consider himself most successful at. Singing was the obvious thing he said, because of all the Manfred Mann hits, the West End musicals and the other bands he’s been a part of. “But from, from my point of view,” he said, “I like being a harmonica player as much as I like being a singer.” It’s the one thing he would choose out of all he’s done, if forced to.
He’s been a top-notch harmonica player for a long time, and has played a long list of major artists, including Joe Bonamassa, Van Morrison and Eric Clapton, as well as his own bands.
What was the most challenging of all the things he’s done? Although in his acting career, there were some straightforward roles where the play was good and he had a top-notch director, sometimes, “at the other end of the scale, there’s stuff where you really have to dig deep.” Although he enjoyed the acting, he’s left that behind – “Things have changed and there’s very little I would want to be acting in now.”
Jones presented the BBC Radio Two Blues Show for 32 years, as well as broadcasting on Jazz FM and the BBC World Service. He told me he thoroughly enjoyed his years with the Blues Show.
“All credit to Dave Shannon, who was the BBC producer who invented the program in the first place and actually offered it to Radio One. They turned it down saying, no, that’s music for old people. You want to go to Radio Two. So we did, and it worked. The program survived for 32 years with me at the helm. And it still exists with Cerys Matthews.
“At the beginning Dave Shannon wrote most of the script. I was allowed to make some additions, which kind of suited me. If, for instance, we were talking about somebody that I had a personal knowledge of, then obviously that would be of interest to the listener. So that was fine. I could do that. And then after a while Dave said, ‘Just talk about this record yourself. You don’t need me writing stuff for you.’ And so I said, ‘Okay, I think I can do that.’ Well, actually I knew I could do it because before I was at Radio Two, I had about three or four years of the World Service so I obviously knew how to present the program.”
I asked Paul about the many artist interviews he’d done on the show. Were there any that particularly stood out for him?
“Van Morrison stands out. He was one of the first people that I interviewed – I had interviewed him previously for the World Service before the blues program came along. I concentrated mainly on that wonderful double album that he recorded in 1994, A Night in San Francisco. He was absolutely brilliant, tremendous guest. I remember doing that interview with Van, because people had warned me, he’s not easy. And actually, Van did sort of throw me a curve ball here and there, but I enjoyed it. And Junior Wells was notable.
“But the very first person I interviewed in my life was Memphis Slim. At that point I was still an undergraduate in Oxford. I noticed that he was in the UK, and with the confidence of youth, I got in touch with the organization for which he was touring. I’d just been asked if I would write on musical subjects for a magazine called Oxford Opinion, which was just starting up – we’re talking round about 1960, 1961. So they said, yes, okay. And Memphis Slim was staying in a rather nice hotel, not far from Trafalgar square. So I went to visit him and I think he thought I was very young. I was still spotty!
“But I, you know, I got a nice interview out of him. I remember he said that he thought it was not entirely fair that Ray Charles was a lot more successful than he was! And, of course, at that time, Memphis Slim was having a lot of commercial success with a couple of albums that featured not only him, but Matthew ‘Guitar’ Murphy – wonderful guitar player – and he also had terrific horn players in those times as well. They were some of the most successful, the most commercially slanted things that Memphis Slim ever did.
“So he sticks out. I never interviewed him again, although I did play on an album that he made at Ronnie Scott’s in London.
“Several times I interviewed Taj Mahal. He’s an artist I admire greatly because he’s never been entirely easy to categorize. And I kinda like that and I’m impressed by it, but he does have a wonderful voice. And he has lovely sort of style on guitar when he chooses to do that. And, of course, he plays harmonica and percussion and all kinds of stuff. I’ve interviewed him several times – the last time was when he came over to Britain with Keb’ Mo’ in 2018. They came in and did an absolutely marvellous interview.
“I’ll tell you one more, Gary. There’s an absolutely marvellous, wonderful jazz singer called Cassandra Wilson. And she sometimes does Robert Johnson songs and things, and always surrounds herself with absolutely stunning musicians. She’s wonderful. And she came in for an interview and somebody said, she’s very nice, but she is very serious. And one thing you mustn’t do is compare her with anyone else because she might get very difficult. She had a marvellous album out at the time and she’d done a song, I think it was a self-written and an absolutely wonderful piece of work. And I played the track somewhere about halfway through the interview. And I said as it came up, I don’t know if I should say this, but as I listen to that, surely I can hear just a teeny bit of Nina Simone. And she said…’I love Nina Simone!’
“And one more somebody warned me about was Koko Taylor. What a great artist and absolutely part of blues history. And the person who warned me was actually her manager and the boss of her record label, Alligator Records, Bruce Iglauer.” [Check out our interview Bruce Iglauer about his book, Bitten by the Blues].
“We had run into Bruce and Koko Taylor in Chicago. Bruce had warned me in advance, ‘She’s in a filthy mood. And you can have 20 minutes if you’re lucky.’ Now I actually think that Koko Taylor was tremendous, great artist. Anyway, I had all my Koko Taylor facts and all my Koko Taylor records lined up. And she came in and sure enough, she had a face like thunder and she was really just barely tolerating me. Well, I just told her what I thought of her, and I played the records and I told her what I thought of the records, and then I asked her some questions. And after about 25 or 30 minutes, Bruce said to me, ‘Well, Paul, I think that’s about it.’ And Koko turned round to him and said, ‘Shut up, Bruce, guy knows what he’s doing!’
“So I’ve had some marvellous interviews. I’ve always liked interviewing people over all these years – I’ve loved all the people that I interviewed.”
I then asked Paul about his relationship with the blues, which he’s been immersed for nearly all of his life. What is it about the music that really resonates with him?
“Well, like so many people of my generation and background, you can blame Lonnie Donegan for a lot of it. I was a jazz fan by the age of 14 and was listening to everything from Nat King Cole to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and by the age of 17, 18, I was into modern jazz. However, alongside that along came Lonnie Donegan. I think I was still only 14 years old when Lonnie Donegan did this wonderful recording called The Rock Island Line. And I heard him being interviewed on a radio program. The presenter said, ‘What an extraordinary song. What on earth made you write this?’ And Lonnie said, ‘No, no, I didn’t write it. I got it from Lead Belly.’ And the presenter said, ‘Who?’ It was Lead Belly – Huddie Ledbetter, of course, a wonderful folk blues artist.
“Anyway, I used to go to a second hand record shop in Portsmouth where I lived, and on Saturday mornings I would take my little amount of pocket money and I would I would buy a 78 – I think 45s were just coming in about then. I would buy a Humphrey Littleton record or a Count Basie record and I was already listening to singers like Jimmy Rushing in those Count Basie records.
“Then in first term at university, I went down to stay with my parents for the Christmas holiday in Plymouth where my father was captain of Plymouth dock yard. And I went into a record shop – Pete Russell’s Hot Record Store. I thought that sounded really hip. I mean, nobody used the word ‘store’ in those days except in America. So, I went in there a few times during that particular Christmas vacation, and about the fourth time I went in, Russell said to me, ‘You like blues, I suggest you should listen to this.’ And he put on the record, and it had wonderful electric guitar – most of what I’d been listening to had been acoustic guitar. And not only that, but it had a harmonica. I said, ‘What is this?’ And he said it was a 10-inch LP on French Vogue records by an artist called T-bone Walker. And I looked at it and I saw that the harmonica player was called Junior Wells. I went out of Pete Russell’s shop with that album and then I went to a music shop and bought a harmonica.
“And eventually, not long after that, I heard Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Walter. I’d already heard Sonny Terry by then. Although I was impressed, he didn’t make me want to play; Junior Wells made me want to play.”
Paul Jones became a Christian in the early ‘80s and his faith is central to him. So, I wanted to know about the relationship between blues and his Christian faith. People have referred to the blues as the devil’s music and there’s all the mythology linked to the blues about the crossroads, mojo and so on. What was his take on all of that?
“Well, one of my favourite interviewees – I can’t absolutely say for definite whether this was Pop Staples, or Clarence Fountain from the Blind Boys of Alabama, but one or other of those two eminent gentlemen – wonderful singers, and in Pop’s case, great songwriter as well, but just two absolute icons of gospel – one of them said to me, ‘What is this devil music stuff? Devil ain’t got no music, except what stupid people give him.’ And that’s right. Because if the devil could make music, then he would be doing something that was true. But as Jesus said, he’s a liar! He’s the father of lies. So, if he did anything, if he actually invented anything or created anything himself, he wouldn’t be a liar. No, all he can do is mess around with stuff that’s already been created and make lies and try and mess people up. So that’s what I think about the phrase, the devil’s music.
“I actually loved gospel music throughout my years of atheism and believe me, I was a serious atheist. I was brought up in a Christian family, we went to church as a family and it was real. At a fairly early age, I was discovered to have a fairly usable voice, so I was drafted into the local cathedral choir, and I actually began to take Christianity seriously. But at that stage – I was probably slightly younger than 14 – some very, very bad behaviour on the part of a Christian turned me against Christianity entirely. And I decided since I was never going to be a Christian, as long as I lived I should be an atheist.
“But in all my years of atheism, I liked gospel music. And in particular I liked early Mahalia Jackson, the records that she made the Falls-Jones Ensemble, which chiefly had a piano and a church organ, and sometimes a rather jazzy bass and drums as well. Boy, that woman’s voice! In 1958 I remember going to see the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day and Mahalia sang The Last Mile of the Way. So here I am, an atheist collecting Mahalia Jackson and Blind Boys and The Swan Silvertones, and things like that. I liked The Swan Silvertones because Claude Jeter had an almost falsetto voice and reminded me of quite a number of soul singers who did the same thing. And I used to walk around singing falsetto all those gospel songs like Smokey Robinson or somebody like Eddie Holman might sing.
“I loved all that stuff. I remember when I was doing a play in New York on Broadway, and I used to walk from my apartment to the theatre, singing the whole way. And at one point I was singing something by Smokey Robinson, Tears of a Clown or something like that. And this guy passed me and he stopped and turned around and said, ‘Righteous man, righteous.’ I just loved that music. So, when I finally became a Christian, I had all these albums I could pick out and listen to.”
We turned from talking about the blues to talking about Paul’s faith, which he said means “everything” to him. I asked him about deciding to follow Jesus – whether looking back, some things had happened along the way that were stepping stones, or whether it was a very sudden thing. He told me how important discovering the work of a 19th century German landscape artist had been in starting to unravel his atheism. As the Blues Band began to take off after 1979, and they started touring in Europe, it had tremendous success, with large audiences cheering, clapping and stomping their feet as the band came on stage. Paul was only too aware from the height of his success in the 1960s, when his life had gone badly off the rails, of the dangers of getting into a fantasy world of fan adulation where you could begin to think that was the only reality.
Paul told me he needed to “Get out from the centre of that maelstrom of his own success and popularity,” and that visiting art galleries whilst on tour allowed him to do that. And it was there that he discovered the spirituality of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. “When I look at them now, I don’t know why I didn’t become a Christian right there and then,” he told me. But he went on to explain what brought things to a head for him as far as faith is concerned:
“In 1982, Richard Eyre, the director of the National Theatre [in London] called me up and asked if I wanted his ticket for Guys and Dolls’ opening night, because he hated sitting in the audience on his own opening nights. So I sat in the best seat in the house, right in the centre of the stalls. And it was absolutely wonderful, and I’m a man who did not like musicals. By that time I had actually been in one or two, usually Lloyd Webber’s or something like that, but I didn’t really like musicals. And here I was absolutely blown away by this musical.
“And there was this one girl in the cast who really caught my eye. Anyway, about five or six weeks later, Richard rang me again. And he said, “My next production at the National Theatre is going to be the Beggar’s Opera. Would you like to come and play Macheath, the highwayman?’ So I soon found myself in the Guys and Dolls company. And the beautiful girl was in it! So, to cut a long story short, I fell in love with her. In October of that year [1982] – about 9 months after I’d first gone along to see Guys and Dolls – I wound up in Guys and Dolls as well, because Ian Charleson, the actor who was playing Sky Masterson, decided to leave. So I found myself playing Sky Masterson, and then the girl who was playing smaller roles in Guys and Dolls and Beggar’s Opera was suddenly promoted into lead roles in Guys and Dolls and Beggar’s Opera, so there we were, playing opposite each other, and life started imitating art, and we fell in love.
“So, fast forward to 1984. We were still at the National. And something happened where Fiona began to think she was missing something and she really need to do something about it. She was doing a play at the BBC on the radio, and when she finished, she came in to do the evening show at the National. So, she knocked on the door of my dressing room, and she said, ‘Don’t laugh, but I came out of the BBC and I went into that church just opposite the entrance to the Broadcasting House. And I just opened the Bible, and I read something about Jesus and eternal life.’ Turned out, of course, it was John 3:16.
“So she said, ‘I’m going to that church on Sunday,’ and I said I would go with her – partly motivated by the fact that I didn’t want her to go anywhere without me! But also partly because I’d been following these Caspar Friedrich paintings, and they’re so obviously Christian and so powerful. So we went to that church, All Souls, Langham Place, and we thought, this is absolutely marvellous.
“A few weeks later, the phone rang one afternoon, and it was Cliff Richard. And he asked us to come and hear a man called Luis Palau speaking at White City Stadium in West London. I hummed and hawed a bit, so Cliff said, ‘Tell you what, when the evening’s over, I’ll buy you dinner!’ And do you know something, he was just doing what God told him. God told him to get as many people from show business as possible into that stadium. And he invited over 130 people! The night that Fiona and I were there, we were not the only show business people there, there were some other very well-known people.
“And Cliff bought dinner for all of us. So I was pretty impressed by him at that point! Essentially, we gave our lives to Jesus that night. It wasn’t just what Luis said, it was what God said through Luis. And we just looked at each other, and we said we have wasted enough of our lives, let’s not waste any more.
“The next day I telephoned All Souls and asked if we could get married in the church – and they said no! And this lovely guy – who actually conducted our service of blessing, and with whom we’re still friends and are godparents to his three daughters – explained that because I was divorced, the Church of England couldn’t marry us. So we got married in a registry office on a Saturday, and then on the Sunday we went to All Souls and had a great service of blessing with a wonderful black gospel choir, and a large contingent of actors and directors from the National Theatre. We had a wonderful day, and we always celebrate our wedding anniversary on the 16th December, the day of the blessing.”
I wondered how Paul’s faith had developed and matured over the past 36 years, what his faith means to him, and he told me that it meant everything to him.
“Really, for the rest of my days, getting people into the kingdom is my priority. The Bible calls it ‘bearing fruit.’ That’s what both Fiona and I want to do.”
Paul Jones has had a remarkable life, and after nearly six decades as a performer, has clearly no interest in retiring – “retirement is a dirty word, as far as I’m concerned. We usually just refer to it as the ‘R’ word!” He was a breath of fresh air in our conversation, full good humour, full of stories from his rich and varied experience, clearly in love with life, and still inspired by the faith that dispelled his atheism all those years ago. If he’s appearing on a stage near you, or you hear of him coming to your town to tell his story along with his wife, Fiona, don’t hesitate to go and see him. You’ll not regret it.
[interview slightly edited for clarity and length]
“I’m tired of posting social media – I got a black husband, a black son. I’m tired of them killing us. This is the civil rights movement and it’s 2020.” Fatima, from Brooklyn
Layla McCalla posted a new version of her Song for a Dark Girl, Langston Hughes’s poem set to music and said,
“When you hear of another innocent black person getting killed by the police, you never get the full picture of them. The narrative always follows along the lines of – They were black, things escalated and they were killed by well-meaning white people. You don’t see or hear about the people that they loved or who loved them.
I’ve been singing this song for years and the words were first published in 1927. It’s interesting how song meanings change and apply to different situations over time. This song breaks my heart but I have to keep singing it.”
Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.
America is reeling from the death at the hands of the police of George Floyd. Mr Floyd’s death comes hot on the heels of the incident where Ahmaud Arbery, a black man in southeast Georgia, was pursued by three white men and killed, and the fatal shooting by the police in Kentucky of Breonna Taylor a black woman. Layla McCalla’s song traces America’s long history of racism back to the lynchings of the early 20th century. But if course it goes back much further than that.
As far as the blues is concerned, they grew up in the iniquity of the Jim Crow era in the United States and were a visceral response to the suffering and afflictions of the black community. Skip James’s Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues captures the grim reality of the time for his community:
“Hard times is here
An’ everywhere you go,
Times are harder than ever been before.”
Leadbelly’s 1930 Jim Crow bemoaned the social situation he was in and pleaded, “Please get together, break up this old Jim Crow.” A few years later, in Bourgeois Blues, he takes issue with the idea of America being the “land of the free” and “home of the brave” – for Leadbelly, it was somewhere he was “mistreated” by the “bourgeoisie.” Shortly after that, Josh White gave us Southern Exposure, where he complains he “ain’t treated no better than a mountain goat.”
And Josh White’s Trouble in 1940 says bluntly, “Well, I always been in trouble, ‘cause I’m a black-skinned man.” All he could expect from life was “Trouble, trouble, ever since I was born.”
Clearly there has been change, but racism remains entrenched. Systemic racism is still a problem facing the black community. In a Guardian newspaper article from a while back, Gary Younge defined racism as “a system of discrimination planted by history, nourished by politics and nurtured by economics, in which some groups face endemic disadvantage” and went on to say that, “The reality of modern racism is…the institutional marginalisation of groups performed with the utmost discretion and minimum of fuss by well-mannered and often well-intentioned people working in deeply flawed systems.”
Blavity, a website geared toward black millennials argued that the fires in Minneapolis reflected “the rage of Black protesters fed up seeing the lives of our brothers and sisters robbed by racism…We are fed up because we are forced to fight a pandemic amid a pandemic…We are being disproportionately killed by systemic and overt racism at the same time — and are expected to accept these deadly conditions.”
Despite the evidence that just goes on building up, incredibly you have the national security adviser Robert O’Brien denying in an interview on CNN that systemic racism exists in the US: “No, I don’t think there’s systemic racism…there are some bad cops that are racist and there are cops that maybe don’t have the right training.” The long record of police brutality and the fact that black families need to coach their children in how to appear subservient to law enforcement in order to stay safe tells a different story.
As does the statistic that in Minneapolis more than 2,600 misconduct complaints have been filed by members of the public since 2012 but only 12 have resulted in an officer being disciplined.
A basic starting point for those of us who are white, said New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof, is “to wake from our ongoing mass delusions, to recognize that in practice black lives have not mattered as much as white lives, and that this is an affront to values that we all profess to believe in.”
It’s certainly an affront to Christian faith. The God of the Bible is one who “loves justice” and cares for the poor and oppressed. Just read the Psalms and the Hebrew prophets if you’ve any doubt about that. Here are the prophet Amos’s hard-hitting words:
“I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making…
Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”
Jesus declared those blessed who sought after justice and peace. The apostle Paul said that the kingdom of God consisted of “justice, peace and joy.” He also said that equality in Christ trumped all human divisions.
The challenge for us all, and particularly for people of faith, is to understand how black America is feeling right now. The challenge is to share in the anger about systemic racism that has gone on for far too long.
This blog is about the blues – but the blues were forged at a time of deep distress and racial oppression, and they continue to be a howl of protest about the evil of racism.
Josh White speaks the truth in Free and Equal Blues: “Every man, everywhere is the same, when he’s got his skin off…That’s the free and equal blues!”
