the years, we sang that song together a hundred times. It was ours. We made it so. It was our way of honoring Mom and of sharing a memory without ever having to talk about it. It was how we acknowledged and waded through the pain without being crippled by it. “Danny Boy” was the song that taught me what songs can do. That music heals us from the inside out.
That night he finished the story as he sat on my bed, tucking me in. “No credit was ever given to Jess Weatherly. She died penniless in 1939, while Fred enjoyed both fame and wealth.”
I couldn’t understand why someone would do that, and Dad picked up on my distress. “Songs outlive us,” he said. “They’re supposed to. We write them in order to give them away, but”—he smiled and tapped me in the chest—“just be careful who you give them to.”
Dad said he and Jimmy could lead folks most anywhere. Sometimes he would start in the back, winding his way forward. Never even strumming a chord. He would just start tapping out a slow rhythm on the spruce top. Using the guitar like a drum. Dad knew every kind of music known to man and he could play most of it, but when it came to people who were hurting inside, he played old hymns. The simpler the better. Despite his common appearance, Dad was classically trained. He knew Bach and Mozart and Pachelbel, and while he loved their music and he had lightning in his fingers and he could fill the air with more notes than most could comprehend, he said when it came to people, less was more. Fewer notes. Less noise. Just a simple lead. He said, “You play too much, too busy, and people will sit back and observe. Marvel in your talent. Play simple, and people will join in. Sing along. Which, by the way, is the goal. Our job is to put a song in their mouths and let them sing it back to us. That’s all that really matters.” Then he added, “The great players aren’t great because of all the notes they can play, but because of the ones they don’t play.”
One day we passed a gas station with a bunch of velvet Elvises hanging over clotheslines. He nodded once. “Pop stars may set the world afire, but they come and go. They’re a flash in the pan. So are their songs. But good hymns? They live past the people who wrote them. Hymns never die.” He looked down at me. “How many Grammys did Elvis win?”
I shrugged.
“Two.” He palmed the sweat off his face. “For what song?”
Another shrug.
Dad loved the history of music. And he loved to share it.
“In the mid-1880s,” he began, “a Swedish preacher named Boberg wrote and published a poem. No music. Just words. A few years later he attended a meeting and heard his poem sung back to him, attached to an old Swedish melody. Nobody really knows how or who put the two together. Then in the 1920s, a missionary named Hine had climbed into the Carpathian Mountains to minister when he heard—get this—a Russian translation of Boberg’s Swedish poem attached to the Swedish melody. Hine was standing in the street preaching on John chapter 3 when a nasty storm blew in, so a local schoolteacher housed him for the night. As Hine watched the storm roll through those mountains, he added what we now call the first verse. Next he crossed over into Romania and Bukovina, and somewhere beneath the trees and birds, he added the second verse. He finished the third verse after spending time with the Carpathian mountain dwellers and, finally, the fourth verse when he returned to Britain. The song as we know it ended up in the States at a youth camp in California in the early 1950s, where crusade team member George Beverly Shea handed it to a man named Billy Graham. Then in 1967, a fellow by the name of Presley recorded ‘How Great Thou Art,’ and the album went platinum.” Dad held up two fingers. “Twice.”
A couple minutes passed, and rain started pelting the windshield. The wipers tapped out a delayed rhythm. Dad started singing quietly. More for himself than
That night he finished the story as he sat on my bed, tucking me in. “No credit was ever given to Jess Weatherly. She died penniless in 1939, while Fred enjoyed both fame and wealth.”
I couldn’t understand why someone would do that, and Dad picked up on my distress. “Songs outlive us,” he said. “They’re supposed to. We write them in order to give them away, but”—he smiled and tapped me in the chest—“just be careful who you give them to.”
Dad said he and Jimmy could lead folks most anywhere. Sometimes he would start in the back, winding his way forward. Never even strumming a chord. He would just start tapping out a slow rhythm on the spruce top. Using the guitar like a drum. Dad knew every kind of music known to man and he could play most of it, but when it came to people who were hurting inside, he played old hymns. The simpler the better. Despite his common appearance, Dad was classically trained. He knew Bach and Mozart and Pachelbel, and while he loved their music and he had lightning in his fingers and he could fill the air with more notes than most could comprehend, he said when it came to people, less was more. Fewer notes. Less noise. Just a simple lead. He said, “You play too much, too busy, and people will sit back and observe. Marvel in your talent. Play simple, and people will join in. Sing along. Which, by the way, is the goal. Our job is to put a song in their mouths and let them sing it back to us. That’s all that really matters.” Then he added, “The great players aren’t great because of all the notes they can play, but because of the ones they don’t play.”
One day we passed a gas station with a bunch of velvet Elvises hanging over clotheslines. He nodded once. “Pop stars may set the world afire, but they come and go. They’re a flash in the pan. So are their songs. But good hymns? They live past the people who wrote them. Hymns never die.” He looked down at me. “How many Grammys did Elvis win?”
I shrugged.
“Two.” He palmed the sweat off his face. “For what song?”
Another shrug.
Dad loved the history of music. And he loved to share it.
“In the mid-1880s,” he began, “a Swedish preacher named Boberg wrote and published a poem. No music. Just words. A few years later he attended a meeting and heard his poem sung back to him, attached to an old Swedish melody. Nobody really knows how or who put the two together. Then in the 1920s, a missionary named Hine had climbed into the Carpathian Mountains to minister when he heard—get this—a Russian translation of Boberg’s Swedish poem attached to the Swedish melody. Hine was standing in the street preaching on John chapter 3 when a nasty storm blew in, so a local schoolteacher housed him for the night. As Hine watched the storm roll through those mountains, he added what we now call the first verse. Next he crossed over into Romania and Bukovina, and somewhere beneath the trees and birds, he added the second verse. He finished the third verse after spending time with the Carpathian mountain dwellers and, finally, the fourth verse when he returned to Britain. The song as we know it ended up in the States at a youth camp in California in the early 1950s, where crusade team member George Beverly Shea handed it to a man named Billy Graham. Then in 1967, a fellow by the name of Presley recorded ‘How Great Thou Art,’ and the album went platinum.” Dad held up two fingers. “Twice.”
A couple minutes passed, and rain started pelting the windshield. The wipers tapped out a delayed rhythm. Dad started singing quietly. More for himself than
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