Tag Archives: gospel singer

Dave

Dave: (n) a male given name.

 Realization: it is the goal of life.

To come to some sort of conclusion that fits both the circumstances and the purity of truth.

Sometimes a realization is a couple of steps away; sometimes so it sits on top of you.

But there are times that a realization seems so uncertain that it may take many years for the brain, the soul and the heart to have a decent meeting and come to common ground.

I knew a fellow named Dave.

Dave was four years older than me.

Dave loved music.

Dave loved gospel music.

He was one of those classically attractive men of bygone days—with long, dark, straight hair, which he wore in bangs coming down to his eyebrows, making him appear much younger than he actually was.

Even though Dave had graduated from high school, was married and had a baby, he wanted to sing so much that he lobbied to join our group of high school friends.

What helped us make the decision was that Dave had a van and went out and bought a bunch of sound equipment, causing his entrance into our organization to be much more likely.

I didn’t like Dave.

Dave didn’t like me.

I was a precocious young man, who my enemies would have called “arrogant.”

It was my group. It sure wasn’t Dave’s.

As I look back on it now, I realize that Dave was unpopular with people his own age. Dave felt trapped in a marriage and was completely uncertain of fatherhood.

Dave wanted to be a professional gospel singer, traveling around the country wearing fancy suits and new patent-leather shoes.

Well, that didn’t fit in with our group—but he was so desperate to stay in the cattle call that he just decided to be one of our steers.

I probably didn’t like him because he was good-looking.

But Dave was one of those guys who had enough insecurity that attractive women were a bit put off by his tentative nature.

So even though he didn’t want to hang around a bunch of high school punks, he needed us to have a band. We needed him to have a van and a sound system.

It was all very nasty.

But recently, as I’ve thought back on this arrangement, I’ve realized that Dave was the greater loser from interacting with us. Well, especially with me.

I had lots of friends, I talked a good game and I was fortunate enough to have plenty of musical talent.

I undercut Dave, I made him angry and was so unsure of myself that I nearly gave him a nervous breakdown.

And even after I graduated from high school and he still wanted to work with me, I treated him like my neighbor’s dog’s poop.

Eventually, at the end of a singing engagement one night, he went his way and I went mine.

I never saw Dave again.

I’ve tried to locate him but had little success.

Or maybe I know that if Dave wanted to get in contact with me, he probably would have done so by now.

Here’s the thing about realizations:

Be prepared.

Because they’re pretty damn real.

Crouch

Crouch: (v) to stoop or bend low.

I’m going to do what I don’t normally do—but when I do it, I feel free to do it at will.

I’m going to abandon this definition and tell you a story about a man named Andre Crouch.

It’s spelled the same.

Many, many years ago, when the United States was recovering from a war and an egotistical President who was a tyrant, and crooked (pause)…

Hmm.

Anyway, it was a while back.

There was a young, black soul and Gospel singer named Andre Crouch who came on the scene for a season and did his part to open up the United States to racial harmony and integration—taking the land of Dixie and the world of Southern music, and twirling it on its head.

For these old church singers did not want to accept a black man into the inner circle (which could not be broken) but also could not deny that this gentleman was one helluva songwriter, and an even greater performer.

Arguably, it could be stated that he was the father, or at least uncle, of contemporary Christian music.

He was my friend.

I had a puny little group from Central Ohio. We were desperately seeking some attention from the marketplace when I met Andre Crouch. He did something he should never have done. He took us in—pale though we were—and allowed us to be the warmup group for his large concerts.

Even though he was gradually integrating, most of his audience was of a darker skin color. Why he thought he could get away with having a white warmup group when there were probably hundreds of black brothers and sisters in the audience who sang a “choir’s-full” better than us, is a mystery.

But it’s what Andre wanted to do—his way of integrating his race—by using us.

He was an unpredictable, never-on-time, kind, flakey and humorously fussy individual.

He helped me.

I got to see firsthand how an audience is to be gently handled—loved to life.

I got to climb onto his tour bus and drive around with him, seeking good barbecue in Toledo, Ohio. (We failed).

And I was shocked one Saturday morning when he arrived at a tiny gig I had—a breakfast for about forty people. Andre decided to drive up some 150 miles from Detroit, where he’d been in concert the night before, and surprise us.

Needless to say, that itsy-bitsy audience came alive once Mr. Crouch entered the room, and soon forgot I was even there once he walked over to my Wurlitzer electric piano and banged out some tunes.

Andre died several years ago.

But as is the case with all of us, he lives on because one of the people he loved and helped is here to tell a good story.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

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Amnesty

dictionary with letter A

Amnesty: (n) an official pardon for people who have been convicted of political offenses

It is a concept beyond the comprehension of any young man living in America today.

But the reality in my youth was that at eighteen years of age, if you were not bound for college or standing around flat-footed, you could receive a letter in the mail from the Selective Service Administration, be drafted into the military, endure six weeks of basic training, two weeks back at home and then be shipped off to Indochina to fight a war that was only truly understood in the minds of aging politicians and deliberate generals.

It happened to my friend, Marty. He was a gospel singer. But because he was only nineteen years of age, he could sing Amazing Grace and slip out behind the church and tell you some of the dirtiest jokes to put pink in your cheeks.

He was fun. But he wasn’t college material.

So he was drafted.

Within a month he was gone off to basic training. Two months later, he was bound for Vietnam.

But before he left for basic training, he told me he was scared, against the war and wanted to run off to Canada to get out of the military.

He said the only reason he wouldn’t do it is because it would bring shame to his family and he did not want to be branded a coward or a Commie.

So he went.

Fifty-eight days later, they sent him home in a box. It was only six years after they buried my friend, Marty, that an amnesty was declared by the President for all those who objected to the war and went to Canada.

When the grace was offered to those who escaped across the border, I thought about Marty. Yes, he would have been returning to our country at twenty-eight years of age. And his parents probably would have gotten over the shame.

There is no amnesty from the grave.

May we all remember that the next time we’re scowling at an enemy across the pond, thinking about the nastiness of war.

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