AMERICAN QUICK FIX RELIGION by JOHN FAHEY

(Liner notes to “American Primitive, Volume I”) - John Fahey, August 1997

In our commentary to the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music (HFSM) collection we noted that in the history of American Folk scholarship, scholars and non-academic collectors as early as Cecil Sharp noted affinity, affection and syncretism between three ethnic groups: (1) people from the British Isles and Brittany, i.e. Celtic France, (2) Blacks, and (3) Acadian French descendents of the Huegnots—Protestants—who immigrated to Louisiana from Nova Scotia in the 18th century. By the time Evangeline was written almost all Acadians had again become Roman Catholics.

We should now like to note that the largest repository by far (99%) of recordings of American Folk Music (AFM)(1) has not been established by academic institutions or folk music associations, but by the combined efforts of the American commercial recording industry. This phenomenon is as evident today as it was in the past. What institutions have stuffed their vaults with bluegrass, rap and the other last gasps of the American volkselle? Commercial recording companies.

In the 1931 RCA-Victor numerical catalogue, recordings are listed for almost every single ethnic group resident in the USA. Recordings by Filipinos, Serbo-Croatians, Yiddish, Japanese, Swiss-German, Lithuanian and on and on. Having read the entire catalogue we find specifically religious “instructional” and/or preaching records only among these few groups: Jews, Negroes and American Whites of primarily British descent who speak English i.e., WASPS. There are no religious recordings of French or Acadian performers.

So, why Jews, Negroes and WASPs only?

Muslims traditionally call Jews the “people of the book,” an apt epithet for a studious people who ponder their holy books with love and devotion and for whom knowledge and education are more significant than any other facet of Jewish life. While I was a member of the UCLA Folklore and Mythology Dept. several of us participated in an exhaustive but abortive search for AFM recording artists who were Jewish. We only found two. One was Eck Robertson’s wife who played guitar in Eck’s band, along with Verd, his brother (banjo). Jews, Orientals, Finno-Ugarics, the autochthonous of Easter Island, Italians etc., played no significant role in the development of AFM. They continued to play the same music which they played in “the old country.” Meanwhile, the members of the AFM Big Three—Cajuns, Negroes, and WASPs—looked for and found new concepts, new rhythms, new harmonies and new structures. Blacks learned 8-bar pentatonic reels of the people from the British Isles, and Whites learned the tripartite, call-and-response 12 bar blues from Blacks.

But as we have said, only two of the Big Three made specifically religious records of Christian preaching and instruction, exhortation, apology, hot singing with instrumental accompaniment, etc.: WASPs and Blacks.

Religious records sold enormously to Blacks and fundamentalists WASPs. Rev J.M.Gates, the Black Southern Baptist preacher from Atlanta, GA, sold more race records than any other Black artist during the classic AFM era. Specifically religious Cajun records simply do not exist and never have existed. Executives of commercial record companies were aware of the enormous sales potential of religious records, yet no religious records were made for French speaking Acadians – or for Spanish speakers or German speakers for that matter. Why? The answer to this question brings us into the study of the church, and the study of the history of dogmatic theology – into the study of the raison d’etre of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches.

Roman Catholicism has always recognized three sources of Doctrine: 1) Scripture, 2) Tradition, and 3) Authority. Protestantism purged itself of tradition and retained only the authority of the individual and his interpretation of the BOOK. (The Reformation happened as a result of corrupt practices by prelates, not because of corrupt teaching.) Once authority is vested in individualism – as opposed to studied and corporate interpretations by the educated ecclesia – one man’s interpretation is as good as another. No education is required. Certainly no education, no credentials are needed to make religious phonograph records. Important Roman Catholic books are studied by educated prelates and stamped “Nihl Obstat” – free from doctrinal error. And what commercial recording company could stamp its records “Nihl Obstat”? None. They had no ecclesiastical authority.

Protestants didn’t require the imprimatur and so phoney preachers such as “Rev.” Moses Mason and “Rev.” Emmit Dickenson could and did make records of a most preposterous nature. Dickenson, on The Death of Blind Lemon Jefferson, compared the lives of Jefferson and Christ.

Protestant doctrine, already grown way out on the many limbs of many trees, finds itself in a state of acute confusion and profusion. Numerous positions are held by illiterate preachers. When I went through the library of the Rev. James (Skip James’s father), I found amongst the bound volumes a copy of the thoroughly and ridiculously apocryphal Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, ostensibly dictated spirit-to-man in the late 1800s. I wonder how many sermons the Rev. James taught re Jesus’ youth in Tibet, learning yoga and meditation, etc.

Individual reading of scripture without education, tradition and authority and infused grace through the sacraments can lead anywhere – and has. Thus the endless parade of Protestant churches’ manifold multiplication – which continues today. Thus Rev. Radio Preacher, Jim and Tammy, etc. And while these crooks were caught, we must ask: why should one trust what any Protestant “authority” says?

Most sources state that the first Radio preacher was Father Charles Coughlin (2)– a Roman Catholic priest. Many Protestants and Catholics listened to Coughlin for years. Catholics listened with awe and rapture because the popular belief among American Catholics was that anything a Roman Catholic Priest said was authoritative – a doctrine never taught by Rome. In time, when Coughlin formed a political party and a union and began to preach anti-Semitism, his authority was questioned not only from outside the church but from within as well.

Perhaps more than anything else, the difference between the two churches may be found in the Roman Catholic insistence on: 1) Apostolic succession – by which each pope is a successor to St. Peter, and therefore a successor to Christ himself, and 2) in the doctrine re the sacraments, in which empirically public events and objects, like bread and wine, infuse Roman Catholics with various graces and godly power, i.e. the sacraments. It is here that we should note that the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist partake of the ancient belief in transmutation. Thus, in infant baptism, the child becomes a member of the Corporate body of Christ not through knowledge, or decision, but by what we would nowadays call magic.

We must note that 1) the purposes of the existence of the two churches are quite different; and 2) the causes of the existence of the two churches have been forgotten in the 20th Century both by Roman Catholics and Protestants. The sufficient reason for the existence of the Roman Catholic church is the sacrifice and presentation of the Eucharist under the dogma of transubstantiation. (3) The Roman Catholic church was formed to accommodate the sacrament of the Eucharist, the proclamation of Jesus Christ that “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood” (LK 22:19-20) and the commandment of Jesus Christ to re-enact the sacrifice he made for us by means of the Eucharistic Christ, in “remembrance” of him. This understanding was declared by St. Paul (1.Cor. 11:24-26) and the idea that this was a sacrifice is seen in his statement of the sacrifice being performed on the table (1.Cor. 10:21, Heb. 13:10).

The original meaning of the Eucharist was ontological and Christological. In the consumption of Christ as Host, one becomes Christ himself (4). A more modern method of communicating this reality is to state that through the Eucharist, one becomes a member of Christ’s Body which is the Church. I am not insisting upon a precise formulation of the reality which takes place. The sacrament has efficacy regardless of the intellectual zeitgeist. Nevertheless, it is well to remember Christ’s statement, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” The church and every baptized member thereof is Christ himself without qualification.

Until the 16th Century, this was the belief of the Church. Under the influence of modernism, the ontological Unity of Christ and the Church was replaced unintentionally by belief that the raison d’etre for the Church was epistemological. Learning and understanding the scriptures in the sermon became the new cause for the existence of the Church. Knowledge was sufficient for unity with Christ as opposed to identity with Christ through the seven sacraments. This teaching is nothing more than Neo-Gnosticism.

The doctrines of this syncretic belief system have been preserved by the Protestant church: 1) matter is evil and only spirit is good; 2) knowledge (Gnosis) a species or characteristic of spirit, alone produces salvation; and 3) since matter is evil, Jesus’ body is not real and Jesus is not a real person. Some of the ramifications of these beliefs: a) Jesus is not a true man; b) God did not become a man; c) God did not suffer and die as we do; d) there was no incarnation; e) God and man are completely and permanently separate; f) God is approachable only through prayer (Protestantism) or not at all (Deism). The latter characterized the religion of many of our founding fathers and former is prevalent if not officially embraced today in the Protestant Church.

In the USA, the teaching that reading, hearing, understanding and learning – collectively, faith – was sufficient for salvation first found its stronghold during the Great Awakening (1740-90). This belief that human knowledge and understanding and decision could force Christ to grant one salvation, once and for all, with “certainty of salvation,” captured the minds of the less educated middle and lower classes and is taught and believed to this day by hundreds of thousands of “low church” American Protestants (5). Even the Roman Catholic Church accepted some of this teaching, to the extent that its own sufficiency of salvation through sacramentalism alone became obscure and is now forgotten and unknown.

Amongst Roman Catholics, the spoken, written, or recorded word, as opposed to the Logos, which is Christ himself (6), never acquired the same status, popularity and significance that it did in Protestant Churches.

Paradoxically, it has always been the Roman Catholic Church which has championed Reason and Religious education. But this was always held in check against Enthusiasm (7) by the administration and power of the sacraments. There is, consequently, a historical and contemporary unchanging ontological identity between Christ and the Roman Catholic Church. And while much of this has been unconscious, Catholics did not rely on popular modes of entertainment, especially cheap productions of commercial goods manufacturers for their religious instruction or edification.

The nature of the Roman Catholic Church is to make the here-and-now Christ grow and be available to all. The nature of the Protestant Church is to communicate “cheap Grace” (8)– which is no Grace at all – through emotional, exciting, provocative and stimulating entertainment, especially through the twin talismans of noise and rhythm. Most of the records in this collection were made under the influence of Enthusiasm.

The Goods:

Blind Willie Davis. Very exciting. Davis sounds like he came up right out of the earth. No doubt he’s got ahold of something here. And the repetition, yes. The text in the background is the parable of the prodigal son. But in the foreground is the mother (not the father). “Be sure to write your mother a letter so she can sleep at night. Wake up in the morning and have an appetite.” Sure. Why not.

Blind Roosevelt Graves and Brother of Hattiesburg, MS. Bernie Klatzko and myself think this is the hottest “religious record” ever made. The guitar used is a metal National. Tambourine. Great hot syncopation. Absolutely. They also made terribly lukewarm religious records (Telephone to Glory) and pretty raucous Jazz-Dance records, like New York Boogie.

Taggart. Did record one blues side as Blind Joe Amos.

Crumpton-Summers. Nothing known. Two steel guitars at work here.

Jaybird Coleman. Songster. Master musician as vocalist and harmonica player. This two-harmonica-accompanied piece is one of the greatest triumphant-but-with-restraint religious recordings. This piece also recorded by Carter Family. Coleman got recording contract as a result of beneficent actions of KKK. Source: Richard Spottiswood.

Blind Marmie and A.C.Forehand. And what shall we say about these folks? I believe they were street singers from Memphis. Yet their singing and playing sounds worshipful, adoring and humble – almost apologetic – to me. One foot on earth and one in heaven. They never cease to astound me.

The Smiths. Street singers from Chicago. Recorded poorly on acoustic equipment. Demented.

Clayborn. Very popular – sold many Vocalion records. Enthusiastic. But I hear cruelty in his voice. Like him. Don’t know what to make of him. God is Riding Through The Land: “On July 23, 1927 God Rode Through Pittsburgh.” Probably a resident of this Northern town. A transplant from the South. Why are there only a few Negro Christmas songs? This has never been answered.

Frank Palmers. A cipher. Some say he is Coleman. Not me. This is a Delta song.

Elder Otis Jones. This is the best example of Enthusiasm I have ever heard. Is it Christian or diabolical? Not his hand-clapping. Those are the sticks. Guitar present but inaudible. Note reference on one of sides: “Ain’t you glad for Bishop CM Grace” –Sweet Daddy Grace. Was Jones a member of this church?

Booker White. Was a friend of mine. He was a true Naturalist. He described the beliefs of other people as exactly as he could without comment or personal investment of any kind. Had no particular interest in religion. Victor went and hired the woman from a local Baptist church for this recording. Trying to imitate Blind Willie Johnson.

Charley Patton.“Elder Hadley” was forced on him by record execs. I don’t think he’s pretending to be a preacher here—he’s speaking in the 3rd person and imitating the sounds of a church service, including portions of the preacher’s sermon. His other religious tracks were under his real name.

In conclusion we might ask ourselves, well, what have we here in this collection? Is it one thing or is it many?

I submit that these recordings, along with others of Sanctified Singers, Sacred Harp, large Negro Churches with horns etc. demonstrate that we have here in the USA, both now and then, one very large side of a continuum of an ecstatic as opposed to contemplative religion, which calls itself “Christian.” There are other ecstatic religions in the world, or religions with the same continuum (Hinduism), but is Christianity really intrinsically ecstatic in this manner of hot enthusiasm? Are these tambourine players and guitar screamers inhabited by Christ? Do they know him?

I have to say that, Flannery O’Connor notwithstanding, underneath it all I hear pan pipes tooting and a cloven hoof beating time.


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