Feed Your Ears

[little2add]

The Prayer, Christ Our Morning Star

O Christ, our Morning Star,
Splendour of Light Eternal,
shining with the glory of the rainbow,
come and waken us
from the greyness of our apathy,
and renew in us your gift of hope.

Amen.

[Luigi]

^ LIKE ^

In today's Gospel, Jesus explains the parable of the wheat and the tares to the apostles. This song picks up on that parable. It was written and is sung by Jim Sampson and posted to YouTube only four years ago. I can find nothing about Sampson online. It's not a traditional Gospel song in any style I've ever heard, but it has interesting lyrics and an interesting soundscape - it may not inspire you, but it should feed your ears. 

 

[Luigi]

Today is the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, but this song has nothing to do with that. It's just a fun song, written by Dolly Parton and her aunt Dorothy Jo. The song is called "Daddy Was an Old Time Preacher Man," and he was a real person - Reverend Jake Owens - but he was Dorothy Jo's father, not Dolly's. He was Dolly's grandfather. This song does fit into a pattern I've mentioned before, in which singers nostalgically highlight the church experiences of their younger days. Porter Waggoner and Dolly Parton used to have a syndicated show - this video is from that show. Note the hair - both hers and his! It took an awful lot of hairspray to achieve that look!

 

[Luigi]

Rhonda Vincent et alia with an a cappella version of "Fishers of Men." Short, simple verses, but enough of them to tell the story, and very good harmony. 

 

[Luigi]

Planetshakers is an Australian contemporary Christian band formed in 1997. I'm not familiar with much of their work, but I like this one, "I Prophesy." It's electric and energetic, but you can understand all the words (the video also includes the words). It ties in with the first readings from all this week, which are from the latter part of the Book of Jeremiah where he's preaching some pretty unpopular ideas. 

 

[Luigi]

Today's Gospel recounts the beheading of John the Baptist, so here's Emmylou Harris and company singing Bill Monroe's bluegrass classic "Get Up John." 

 

[Luigi]

Here's an old classic written by Sister Suzanne Toolan, RSM in 1964. The story goes that she struggled so long with fitting the words to the melody that she pitched it; then one of her students convinced her that it was worth re-working one more time. She introduced it at a Catholic musicians' conference in 1966, and it's been around ever since. Some might say that it's not just a classic, but that it's been beaten to death over the course of sixty years. But I like this rendition - it's not congregational singing (the wide vocal range doesn't really lend itself to congregational singing) - by Izzy Wignall and Kara Jones. I don't know them at all, but they breathe new life into this poor old over-worked hymn. And it fits with today's Gospel reading. 

 

 

[Luigi]

Kenny Rogers had a hit pop song in 1975 with "Love Lifted Me." But that song started out as a hymn, originally published in 1912. Rogers credited the original writers (lyrics by James Rowe and music by Howard E. Smith), but he wrote new verses. I guess a lot of Protestant pop fans recognized what Kenny Rogers did, but I was completely unaware of it. Here's Randy Travis singing two verses of the original (the full hymn has about six verses). Rowe and Smith were inspired to write the song based on the story of Peter walking on water, then sinking, then being rescued by Jesus. 

 

[Luigi]

Hillsong is a Pentecostal rock group from Australia, started in 1983. Here's their song "Transfiguration," since today is the feat of the Transfiguration. I like their sound, too. 

 

[Luigi]

In today's reading from Jeremiah, and in the psalm which is also taken from Jeremiah, we hear references to "marching up to Zion." So here is "Marching to Zion," written by Isaac Watts in 1707. It's still a popular hymn these days. The singer is Phillip Carter; it looks like an online praise meeting from during the Covid lockdowns - he's talking to all the people online, and little messages show up in the lower left corner. Musically, this is halfway between what you'd hear as standard organ-accompaniment congregational singing and some of the more energetic versions from the Black Gospel tradition. But Carter sets a nice beat, and he sings all the words clearly. I also like his facial expression - he seems like a real nice guy. 

 

[Luigi]

Lauren Daigle is a contemporary Christian singer. She has an interesting and immediately identifiable voice. Her song "You Say" could almost be the song of St. Peter in today's Gospel where Jesus says, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Happy feast of St. Dominic!

 

[Luigi]

IN today's Gospel, Jesus asks, "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?" There are a number of Gospel songs based on that verse, but I chose this one from Fr. Maximilian Mary Dean. I have no idea who he is, and his web page doesn't clarify it much. He might be - or have been - a Franciscan; he might be - or have been - a hermit. Or maybe both. In any case, he has a nice voice, and he composes most of what he records. He also plays most of the instrument (see MORE under the video window). This is what they call a 'lyric video,' meaning it adds images to the music. "What Does It Profit a Man?" 

 

[Luigi]

August 8th was the feast of St. Dominic, so I'm two days late with this. It's the most unlikely song to ever hit the pop airwaves - "Dominique" by Soeur Marie, known as The Singing Nun in English-speaking countries and Soeur Sourire (Sister Smile) in French-speaking countries. She was a Belgian Dominican nun singing in French about St. Dominic. This came out in 1963 and reached Number 1 on the pop charts in England, the US, New Zealand, and Australia. The French lyrics are printed below the video (click on MORE) but this version doesn't include the English lyrics.  

 

[Luigi]

Here's the well-known televangelist Jimmy Lee Swaggart and his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis singing "Lily of the Valley." The lyrics were written in 1871 and set to music in 1881, and it's been a standard in the hymnals of many denominations ever since. This was recorded shortly before Jerry Lee Lewis died, and he looks like it - he's thin, in a wheelchair, he can play piano with his left hand only, and he can't sit up straight, but he can still sing. He actually went to a Bible college  on a music scholarship but was kicked out in his first semester for playing some hymn in boogie-woogie style during a church service. This isn't quite boogie-woogie style, but it's not exactly your standard Sunday morning style, either.  

 

[little2add]

THIS IS THE DAY