Tag Archives: southern baptist churches

oh yeah, I met Neil Diamond once


Peering into the darkness from my designated position next to the pianist who would accompany me for my two songs I had to sing for the four vocal judges sitting in the audience that were my jury and would determine my final exam grade in my voice class, I was unable to see the judge who had asked me about my attendance at the Neil Diamond concert that night. The bright spotlights directed to the stage to simulate actual performances blinded me.

“I heard you on the radio this morning,” he continued as I tried to melt into the floor from embarrassment. Surely not one of these classical music teachers had even heard of Neil Diamond and would think pop music was the last rung on the ladder of musical hierarchy.

“Congratulations on winning the two tickets to the concert – and the backstage pass. That’s quite something,” he said.

“Thank you, sir. I rarely listen to that radio station,” I lied. “I was just trying to relax for the jury today. Lucky,” I mumbled and then tried to regain my composure to sing the Italian and German songs I had prepared.

***

In 1969 I was a twenty-three-year-old lesbian struggling to find a girlfriend and the meaning of life – but mostly a girlfriend. I was a displaced Texas girl living in Seattle, working for a local CPA firm doing taxes and bookkeeping, and looking for love in the only comfort zone I had: the Mercer Island Baptist Church which had been introduced to me by a straight woman I worked with at the CPA firm.

I came from six generations of Southern Baptists and was thrilled to know Seattle even had a Southern Baptist church out there in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. In my flight to escape my family and my “passing” as straight in the Houston area I drove 3,000 miles to a place where I didn’t know a single person except my lesbian friend who traveled with me, a girl who turned out not to be a lesbian (much to my disappointment) and left me two months after we arrived to move to California with a man she met at a bar. I hadn’t really made a plan to find friends.

Enter the Mercer Island Baptist Church with mostly other displaced southerners whose religion made them feel that they were strangers in a foreign land, biblically speaking. That church became my lifeline to community with the unintentional bonus of developing my own personal “gaydar.” Without delving into specifics, let’s just say that lust and hormonal longings became so intertwined with my religious understandings at the time that I answered a clear call from God to move back to Texas and enroll in the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. The “call” came in the form of a rejection by a married woman in the church that I was madly in love with but a woman who was older, wiser, had three very young children, and identified as heterosexual.

My mother wept when I called her to tell her of my career change and told me she believed I was following the path predetermined for me at my birth when she gave me to God for Christian service. Unfortunately, my voice teacher at the seminary seemed to disagree with my mother’s euphoria. As a matter of fact during one of our lessons, she abruptly asked me why I had decided to pursue a career as a church music director when I had such wonderful opportunities in business as a CPA. Church music directors were mostly men, she went on to tell me as I sang the scales with less enthusiasm.

My music teacher was right on all fronts, but I’m not a quick learner so I stayed in the seminary for two years after switching my major to theology which didn’t require standing in front of four teachers singing words I didn’t know the meaning of. After two years at Southwestern, I left with a girl friend I had met there which in my mind at the time proved that God truly answered prayers.

My new girlfriend was my date for the Neil Diamond concert that night in Dallas, and we did go backstage after a fabulous concert to meet him. He had long hair at that time (circa 1971), appeared to be exhausted, was shorter than I expected, but shook hands and spoke to each of us with a slight smile. I seem to remember a female guitar player who left with him…

Yesterday I heard that Neil Diamond is retiring from touring as a result of Parkinson’s Disease, and I had a flood of memories of that night in Dallas so long ago. The world has lost a great performer, but thankfully we have his concerts preserved for posterity via new technology.

Today is Neil Diamond’s 77th. birthday, and I would like to sing Happy Birthday to him, but alas, I’m worried that it might be slightly off key. Instead, I will simply thank him for the music he wrote and performed during the past 50 years of his life -and mine. His songs have brought joy to millions of people who will remember them with their own feelings, but not everyone will remember the privilege of meeting him backstage.

Stay tuned.

 

The Special Music


 

033

 Backwoods Baptist Church

Order of Service

Typical Sunday, 1950s

Call to Worship                                                                          Reverend Jones

“On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand”                                             P. 156

Bible Verses                                                                              Reverend Jones

“There is Power in the Blood”                                                          P. 232

“Beneath the Cross of Jesus”                                                            P. 311

Offertory Prayer                                                                        Reverend Jones

Offertory           “Great is Thy Faithfulness”                    Organ and Piano Duet

Special Music                                                                     To Be Announced

The Sermon                                                                                 Reverend Jones

Invitation           “Just As I Am”                                                       P. 268

Benediction                                                                                  Reverend Jones

The congregational singing was enthusiastically lusty in the hymn singing led by the male member of the church who had the loudest voice in the days before “paid” ministers of music performed that job.  In my Southern Baptist Church in the backwoods of rural southeast Texas, that man was my daddy. He led the singing with gusto and could carry a tune with the best of them.  No hand waving was necessary for him. He just reared back and sang, and the sixty or so people in the little church sang with him.

 Reverend Jones was always sincere in his prayers but took way too much time in his sermons so I busied myself with unwrapping pieces of Wrigley’s Spearmint or Doublemint Chewing Gum that my grandmother wisely provided for me.  I can still smell those gum aromas today and never see the white or green wrappers without thinking of Reverend Jones’s distaste for sin.

My mom played the piano or organ while my dad led the singing, so the preparation for the music on Sunday morning and evening was a major part of our lives. Some people might say my family provided the entertainment portion of the church services every Sunday, and Reverend Jones was the spiritual provider. I’d probably say just the opposite.

The highlight of every service was the Special Music.  Whatever restlessness and whispers and other noises in the pews that took place in the early part of the service were quieted by the Offertory instrumental music. When my mom hit the last note of that song – whatever it was – a hush took over the sanctuary and everyone waited in suspense for the solo or duet or trio or quartet that sang the Special Music that would set the stage for the sermon. It was great theater, like the finale in a musical before the final curtain falls.

Since my mom accompanied whoever sang, she practiced with them on Wednesday nights after prayer meeting and Daddy and I had to stay late to wait for her.  It was like we belonged to a special club that held a regular meeting on Wednesday nights, but instead of a secret handshake, we knew a secret song. I loved those practice times and all the people who sang.

My favorite, though – and everyone has a different favorite – was the quartet singing. The quartets were sometimes mixed with two women and two men and sometimes were all men.  “Just a Little Talk with Jesus” was a toe-tapping hand-clapping rousing harmony  that made me want to jump with joy while “Sweet Beulah Land” was a haunting melody that evoked powerful images of sadness and loss. Sopranos, altos, tenors and basses…we had them all on Wednesday nights.

My daddy led the singing for many years in the next larger church they belonged to when we moved, but he retired from that volunteer position when the church hired a minister of music.  Luckily, he was happy singing in the choir after that.

 My mother played the piano and/or organ for sixty-five years in the churches she belonged to and saw ministers of music come and go while she kept playing the beautiful Offertories and accompanying the Special Music. She was never happier than when I enrolled in a Southern Baptist Seminary to study church music and then became a minister of music in my adult years. She loved to play for me when I visited her church and often asked me to become the Special Music for her church on Sunday. We practiced on Wednesday night.

My church-going days ended more than thirty years ago and most of my musical family is gone with them, but I still remember them and the little church where we sang with great love and true affection. Talk about special – with my apologies to Jesus, I’d much rather be able to sit down and have a little talk with them tonight.