Saturday, March 14, 2009

Jesus put a yodel in my soul ...


I didn't intend to head down this road today, but "George Jones and Jesus" got me to thinking about some other favorites, Wanda Jackson's "Jesus Put a Yodel in My Soul" among them.

Let me say right off the bat that when it comes to Gospel, I prefer old-time religion, the kind best sung on Sunday morning in that old-fashioned Baptist church with lots of stained glass down the street there where piano and organ are played with feeling and in unison, "Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?" being a personal favorite.

I'll sit in front of the TV watching a Gaither Homecoming video featuring Vestal Goodman and start blubbering. They just don't make 'em like Vestal any more, God rest her (and Howard, too).

Now this is in the land where there are no praise bands or contemporary worship, although I figure the good Lord must have a mighty sense of humor to put up with such and that may be why he lets country artists take a few liberties without knocking them right off stage when their tongues become lodged firmly in their cheeks. Not that Wanda, who needless to say was an accomplished yodeler, had tongue in cheek when she sang:

"My life was empty, without a goal,
Then I let Jesus into my soul;
Now I'm so happy, never feel low,
Jesus put a yodel in my soul."


Sawyer Brown's collective tongue was I figure in its collective cheek, however, when it performed "Eight-hundred-pound Jesus."

"Out by my driveway, he looks down the street,
With His long hair and sandals made of rebar and concrete;
I painted him white with a long purple robe,
He's a rock of ages on our gravel road."


And there's little doubt that Bobby Bare was having us on just a little when he wrote:

"Drop Kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life,
End over end, neither left nor right;
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights,
Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life."


Golly.

I've got to get back to work now. You'd have thought I'd have shredded all those cancelled checks years ago, but found two more boxes yesterday. And then there are those magazines hauled down from Thompson I fear a good many years ago and stashed so neatly I'd forgotten about them.

Then I'll load up, I hope, two big book cases and a ton of books tomorrow. I'll start the day with the Book of Common Prayer, and I love that, too, but you can bet that once I hit Chariton it's going to be a Gaither Homecoming weekend.

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