We had a choice of about six or seven different LPs to spin on a Sunday afternoon. There was Tennessee Ernie Ford who had a couple of gospel albums that I best remember for the spectrum coloured circle around the rim of the central inset but also because of his rendition of 'will the circle be unbroken.' For some reason, in those formative years, I had always thought that his Christian name was Ernessie. Anyway it seemed to roll well off the tongue. Then, like most folks, we had the two Jim Reeves gospel records, with such classics as 'supper time', 'teach me how to pray' and 'this world is not my home'. Mum always said that when she listened to him sing that song, she felt he suspected that his life might be short and though I wasn't so sure I didn't disagree. After all, she owned the records! Being a big fan of Billy Graham, mum was always going to have one or two George Beverley Shea records in the collection, but I never really warmed to his deep voice at the time, though lately, as he reaches ninety years of age, I've come to appreciate not only his talent but his faithfulness. I watched him the other night on some sort of advertisement for Gaither DVDs and I have to say that he is held in such high esteem by everyone, though some of the audience had so much make up and had spent so long in the hairdressers that they made the puppets from Thunderbirds look good. And the women were just as bad. Well that was almost the complete collection, apart from a really rare album called 'dust on the bible' by Kitty Wells, that a good friend allowed me to borrow. Recently, I discovered that it is available on CD so I feel a purchase coming on. It is really just a good old fashioned country and bluegrass album and though I don't really subscribed to being a big fa n of such music, the record itself just brings back so many memories of a time since gone and has some beautiful and thought provoking tracks including 'I dreamed I searched heaven for you,' (hardly a theologically sound lyric but at the same time maybe something which makes us think about our own destiny), 'You've got to walk that lonesome valley' and of course the title track which probably shakes most of us up more than any other.
Well after those gems, the only other Sunday afternoon listening was from two LPs by Burl Ives, an actor cum singer cum instrumentalist cum film star who passed away not many years ago. Most people remember him for singing 'the ugly bug ball' from the film 'Summer Magic' but in my mind he always remains as the man who sang 'We're marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion' from his vinyl LP 'Sunshine in My Soul.' But there were so many classics on that piece of black vinyl, like 'Standing on the Promises', 'Beulah Land' , 'Bring them in' and 'Where HE leads me I will follow.' You know sometimes I think today we have become so narrow minded in our desire to be contemporary in worship that we miss the beauty of such old songs. But the one album of his that I always remember is the disc that he made with the Korean Orphan Choir way back in 1963. It wasn't many years after the Korean War and it was so beautiful to hear such classics as 'The Way of the cross leads home', 'I love to tell the story' and 'Revive Us Again.' And of course that's what I intend to do exactly, to revive some of these old songs so that not only do they not die but the truths within them remain alive for generations to come. As John says in his gospel, 'God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.' Happy Listening.
