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Of and about: bluegrass gospel

“WYC” is not itself religious music, though, but rather music about religious music. When I was a kid, I was a regular listener to WAMU’s Stained Glass Bluegrass in the DC area. My exposure to bluegrass gospel was early and extensive, but collateral. My dad’s enormous German stereo, roughly the size and shape of a buffet table, played it in the middle of our house. The music stayed with me in many ways.

Bluegrass gospel has at least these two common varieties: sacred music and music about sacred music. The former includes songs that might figure in a worship service, in that they tell a Bible story or are themselves a prayer or anthem. Blue Highway’s “Wondrous Love” is in this category, adapting Sacred Harp music to bluegrass:

The other category incorporates religious experience in the deep reservoir of nostalgia from which bluegrass draws. Religion becomes one of many “old” things we miss in bluegrass, like the old home place. These bluegrass gospel songs are songs about worship, but not of worship. A surprising amount of bluegrass gospel falls into this category. Flatt and Scruggs’s “Preachin’ Prayin’ Singin’” fits this category, along with “WYC.”

Incidentally, “Angel Band” may be an example of a song that transitioned from the first category into the second. It started as lyrics to be applied to various hymn tunes. It is now more a popular song about religious themes. “Angel Band” is certainly a predecessor of Dickens’s song, if not a forebear.

Fortunately for us, Dickens brought together the spiritual power of unaccompanied Primitive Baptist music with the dynamic drive of bluegrass. She, and therefore we, benefited from her father’s enthusiasm for country music outside the context of worship. Bill Malone mentions that the Dickens family listened to a lot of country radio, and that Hazel modeled her guitar style on that of Mother Maybelle Carter. This guitar style is another reason I came to love this song. Like much of the Carter repertoire, “WYC’s” melody can be played on the bass strings of its chords, with occasional minor modifications. For a guitar player of my meager attainment, it’s a good song to learn.

Here’s hoping they sang for you

Dickens wrote in her memoir, “’Won’t You Come and Sing for Me’ was the first commercial recording of one of my songs that contained lyrics, music, and ideas that were entirely mine.” She recorded it in the 60s, but it stayed unreleased until competition between Folkways and Rounder records nudged it out into the open. Since then, it has become a standard for some leading bluegrass voices.

Hot Rize first introduced me to this song, in a concert at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Poignantly, this was Charles Sawtelle’s last tour with them. They were raising money for his medical treatment at the show.

When I learned from Sing Out! that Dickens passed away in 2011, I posted a Hot Rize performance to social media. “RIP Hazel Dickens. Here’s hoping they sang for you.”

Hot Rize recorded “WYC” on their 1987 release Untold Stories, and it continues to be a standard for them. If you’re concerned that I’m giving an overly religious reading to the song, perhaps you’ll take Hot Rize’s embrace of it as a sign of a broader tent. The song brings into harmony Tim O’Brien, who grew up singing in Catholic folk masses with his sister in Wheeling, West Virginia, and Pete Wernick, noted Secular Humanist and advocate for the Openly Secular movement.

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