{"id":2339,"date":"2009-09-22T00:19:09","date_gmt":"2009-09-22T04:19:09","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-09-22T00:19:09","modified_gmt":"2009-09-22T00:19:09","slug":"my-sweet-lord-the-rock-spiritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/my-sweet-lord-the-rock-spiritual\/","title":{"rendered":"My Sweet Lord:  the Rock Spiritual"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wynYMJwEPH8?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Those who know me well know that my father passed away a few years ago.  Those of you who know me *really* well know that my pop was &#8212; in addition to being the man with the best phone manners on the planet &#8212; a genuine musical talent, able to pick up just about any good musical thang being laid down, and proficient on many instruments.  A man of Tom Dowd-ian spirit *and* talent, and a man to whom I have always been proud to claim kinship.<\/p>\n<p>Anyhow, when sweet, talented Conrad drifted off this mortal coil three years ago, he left me a wonderful instrument:  his 1959 Gibson Southern Jumbo acoustic guitar, purchased while he was in the Air Force and under the sway of righteous folkies like Pete Seeger.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/blogs\/rth\/42123_l.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The Gibson &#8220;SJ&#8221; is a peculiar animal:  round-shouldered, but not one of those fey little 3\/4-sized acoustics you see today&#8217;s folkies delicately plucking away on.  It&#8217;s a full-sized instrument, meant to be strummed, HARD &#8212; but it&#8217;s not engineered to provide big, booming bass and twinkle-twinkle high-end like the acoustics in favor these days.  No, it&#8217;s a throw-back to an era when there was a market for high-quality *folk* instruments; ones that could be heard banging away on the opposite end of the fire house or the church hall an&#8217; meetin&#8217; room.  All mid-range and bang-whang-a-lang &#8212; that&#8217;s the Gibson Southern Jumbo.  <\/p>\n<p>(Actually, if you want to hear a 1950s Gibson Southern Jumbo in action, listen to the early Everly Brothers hits.  Before they could afford the big, Everly-namesake Gibson rock star acoustics with the fancy inlays &#8212; like you see on their publicity stills from the day &#8212; they played the Appalachian yeoman&#8217;s guitar, the Southern Jumbo&#8230; and *that&#8217;s* what you hear on most of their hit records.)<\/p>\n<p>Anyhow:  I sat down this evening with Papa&#8217;s old guitar, just bashin&#8217; away, and I noticed that there were certain chord voicings that just sounded *amazing* on the old Jumbo.  In particular, a good, old-fashioned E major raises the hair on the back of my neck.  A7 sounds pretty good, too.  In any case, as I went through all my &#8220;cowboy chords,&#8221; I found myself playing a song that not only sounded great on Papa&#8217;s old Southern Jumbo, but that was a big favorite of his, too:  &#8220;My Sweet Lord,&#8221; by you-know-who.  (Extra nerd demerits for reminding me and everybody else who supposedly *really* wrote that number.  Who fucking cares?!)<\/p>\n<p>This got me thinking:  man, how many &#8220;rock spirituals&#8221; are there?  And how many of them are actually *good*?  I know we often correct each other &#8217;round here, insisting that we remember all the proud, prodigiously talented and deeply influential African-American artists that laid the groundwork for all the pimply-faced white kids whose music we seem to disproportionately prefer &#8212; but I suppose I&#8217;m actually playing a bit of a &#8220;race card&#8221; in asking this question.  I&#8217;m looking for &#8220;spiritual&#8221; songs that you might have heard on FM rock radio back in the day &#8212; or just songs of a deeply spiritual bent that don&#8217;t share that sunday-go-to-church-meetin&#8217;-and-git-sanctified vibe that we all love, but that most of our fave White bands actually suck at.<\/p>\n<p>Is there one that tops &#8220;My Sweet Lord&#8221;?  I&#8217;m just askin&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>I look forward to your responses&#8230; and I know Papa&#8217;s curious, too.  Actually, I&#8217;m betting he knows the answer to this one already, where he&#8217;s at these days.<\/p>\n<p>HVB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those who know me well know that my father passed away a few years ago. Those of you who know me *really* well know that my pop was &#8212; in addition to being the man with the best phone manners on the planet &#8212; a genuine musical talent, able to pick up just about any <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/my-sweet-lord-the-rock-spiritual\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}