Church Music
by Bob Millard
Honky-Tonk Angels Sing "I Saw the Light"
I’m currently deepening my knowledge of country music in the immediate years post-World War II, for a book I hope to write. As a music and history buff I’m in hog heaven.
Often forgotten in roundups of country music’s so-called “honky-tonk era” is the huge impact of spiritual and religious music on the genre. Music coming out of rural Southern church experiences often topped the charts for months at a time, and made stars where none had been before.
Much as I love hearing certain popular sacred songs I have long wondered, what really happens to the holy when it meets the Hit Parade?
When the religion becomes entertainment it enters a strange new realm where it’s hard to tell prophet from profit. When the spiritual becomes product can fakers be far behind? How can you tell? And if you can’t tell, does it matter?
Country has a long tradition of “sacred songs” in the popular artist’s repertoire. Red Foley’s “Peace in the Valley” was a huge jukebox hit back when that was the measure of a country record’s success.
Lyrics Roy Acuff penned for his first hit, “Great Speckled Bird,” were inspired by a fairly incomprehensible bit of scripture: Jeremiah 12:9, which begins My heritage to me is like a speckled bird… I don’t suppose it lessens the song’s religious expression that Acuff stole the melody from a Carter Family recording. Later best-selling country hits, “Wild Side of Town,” and “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-tonk Angels” also used the melody.
“Great Speckled Bird” captured the essence of howling, transcendent, mountain mysticism. And suddenly country music had its first out-front singing sensation, introducing the star system that continues with the genre today.
Acuff’s final lasting hit record was the now-ubiquitous Grand Ole Opry standard, “I Saw the Light.” Hank Williams got composer’s credit, thought the tune was lifted outright from a gospel song copyrighted by the great Southern Gospel composer and publisher Albert E. Brumley. The lyrics are not dissimilar either. Goodness knows where Brumley found it, or he’d surely have sued Acuff-Rose and Hank Williams.
As a songwriter Hank is musically best remembered for an amazingly long list of country standards: “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You),” “Honky-Tonkin’,” “I Saw The Light,” “Kaw-Liga,” “Hey, Good Lookin’,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Long Gone Lonesome Blues,” and “Cold, Cold Heart.” It is the most valuable single catalog in country music history.
Hank Williams had a strong, fearful religious side to his unstable personality. He had exposure to back country Baptist and Methodist churches, but he quit going at 13 when he became a professional roadhouse musician. Religion mostly haunted him.
Like his jukebox hits, some of Hank’s sacred songs brought tears of joy for second chances. Others slowly revealed an addictive personality, and a man who desperately needed love and didn’t know where to find it. Too ashamed to seek help, he drank hard. When he drank he was measured and condemned by his mother, his wife and himself.
Secular and sacred alike, Hank Williams’ songs touched people. He experienced what his songs conveyed, which is why by 1949 he was selling millions of records when 150,000 was the mark for a Number 1 smash hit.
I believe Acuff, Foley and Williams expressed their better angels with such songs as “Peace in the Valley,” “Great Speckled Bird,” and “I Saw The Light.” But it was a business, after all. Fans expected emotional release, including religious release, when they paid to see a show.
That’s where the hypocrisy comes in, when the holy becomes a commodity.
I began slipping in the back doors of Music Row in 1969, when backdoors were still open and even the biggest stars were accessible. More than once, when tales were told, I heard who among the country stars in attendance had to be shaken sober to go down and sing a hymn at Hank Williams’ funeral.
Roy Acuff never denied his feelings, saying, “That boy has a million-dollar voice and a ten-cent brain.” Yet Acuff had them crying in the aisles when he stood near the casket and belted out “I’ll Fly Away.” He cried, too, so powerful were the emotions he tapped up to sell a song.
Hank once said, “I won’t sing no sacred song where people are drunk.” That became the patented declaration of hypocrisy for country artists.
I first heard it when I was a high school freshman and a volunteer deejay at the Nashville V.A. Hospital. One of the most foul-mouthed and blasphemous small-time country bandleaders I ever met introduced the customary “sacred song” in his hospital show with that line.
What an unctuous old fraud.
After the set he came to my closed-circuit radio control room. He cracked a cold beer and poured half straight down his throat.
“Phew,” he sighed. “I needed that.”
When one is thirteen, everything seems black and white. I was appalled.
Later I visited men on the orthopedic ward, men missing limbs or recovering from serious surgery. That gospel number had meant a lot to some of them. Somehow, a man from Galilee putting his life on the line for strangers rang a bell with wounded veterans.
At the time I didn’t think it earned that imposter many jewels for his crown in heaven. But who knows how he turned out in the end, and who am I to judge?
Those needing succor found it in his song of God’s abiding love. The messenger was weak, but the gospel is strong. If not for the witness of men and women with deep flaws would there be any witness at all?
The gospel is a seed, and the seed is the thing. Dropped from the hand of a loving gardener or out the backside of a squawking crow, if the seed finds fertile ground it will take hold. What else really matters?
Posted: 11-Jun-2006 6:25 PM
