Ken Sitz was interviewed for RE/Search Publications, Incredibly Strange Music, Volume 2. His record interests include Hawaiian steel guitar, country and cold war theme albums.
Let's take a look at some of my favorite "incredibly strange" religious records. The religious genre is actually much bigger than you might expect, especially if you were to include all the albums that begin the artist credits with, "Thanks to the Almighty." My selection falls into several loose categories: testimonials and services, documentaries, and sacred lite entertainment.
Testimonials and sermons were, and still are, a great money maker for evangelists and their organizations. The production cost is minimal, and the profit margin handsome. Everything about these productions is cheap, even the distribution which is usually out of the back of station wagons to congregations, churches and revival services. Religious documentaries fulfill the "literalist" urge so essential to Fundamentalist faith. Even the devout need a little divine entertainment to uplift them from their world-weary days on Earth.
UNCLE BUD'S HOSPITAL EXPERIENCE
Talk about production values! "Uncle Bud Robinson's Hospital Experience" (Beacon Hill Records, Kansas City, MO, L-114) is a re-processed, pre-WW II recording of the folksy Robinson recounting his remarkable recovery after a catastrophic 1919 automobile accident in San Francisco. From the liner notes: "An ill-prepared preacher who came from a depraved background... Partly because of a speech impediment and partly because he was uneducated, his style was simple and his syntax confusing...no matter where the words came out in the sentence, the meaning was understood." His voice and cadence is reminiscent of one of Red Skeleton's TV characters. Converted by a Methodist circuit rider in Texas in 1880 he stuttered and stammered his inspirational message for 62 years before meeting his Heavenly Father.
DEMONS USING YOUR LIPS AND YOUR TONGUE
"Crying Demons" (Miracle Revival Recordings, No. 101, Miracle Valley, Arizona) was recorded "under the Miracle Revival Big Top" by A.A. Allen Revivals, Inc. The goofy, cross-eyed cover and translucent blue vinyl are easily its best features. Screeching demon spirits declare "I will not come out!" Recorded live at tent revival services with various possessed women, the production suffers from poor pacing, although I'm sure it was more compelling in the flesh. At $2.95 in 1960's dollars it was no doubt a great fundraiser for Brother Allen's work and was soon followed with "I Am Lucifer" and "God's Message To A Fast Dying World."
"The Gift of Tongues: Glossolalia" (Mace Records, New York, MCM 10040) claims to be the first commercially available recording of "the gift of tongues" and features a man who wished to remain anonymous, praying "in other tongues." Despite the psychedelic collaged cover art, its 6 monaural tracks of "Psalms and Prayers" totaling just over 30 minutes is pretty tame. The utterances of strange, new tongues, ancient languages, extraterrestrial dialects? Sorry to disappoint. No hot Pentecostal scatting, just reasonably well sung "foreign sounding" riffs. Given its minuscule production values, this record probably found a small but profitable market among unsuspecting "seekers" in the late sixties and early seventies.
IN THE BEGINNING, GOD
"Musical scene paintings" from arranger-producer Gerald Helson ("No other talent could have been acceptable") as the First Foundation for One Nation Under God issued "an album never before attempted... and never to be forgotten." Crediting "Sound Effects: Apollo 8" and "Lyrics: The Holy Bible" (in other words, no royalties!), "In The Beginning, God" (First Foundation, Starksville, MS, ST1776) is inspired by astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders' reading of "the creation story" during their lunar orbital mission. While this was long before the rise of Creationist "Science", it was intended to be a Christian "documentary" in response to all the popular secular audio histories of space exploration (for instance Decca's "We Came In Peace for All Mankind" from the Apollo 11 moon landing.)
"Modern Art and the Gospel" (United Church Press, 1964, Boston-Philadelphia) is a cool jazz-theme scripted soundtrack for a 76-frame filmstrip using inaudible signals to drive an automatic projector. Author-narrator J. Thomas Leamon presents a sympathetic (and orthodox) reading of modern painting drawing out parallels with the visions of "the Prophets and See-rs of the Bible." The jazz score would be equally at home in any number of UPA cartoons of the fifties and sixties. A fantastic opening line reminiscent of J.G. Ballard: "February 20th, 1962. A Presbyterian astronaut, traveling at 18,000 miles per hour, two hundred miles above the Earth, sees this view out of his capsule's window..."
THE COMING WAR WITH RUSSIA
Had enough Bible Code yet? For a quarter you could have heard it all decades ago from the "walking Bible" Dr. Jack Van Impe in "The Coming War With Russia" (Jack Van Impe Evangelistic Association, Royal Oak, MI, 691103.) The LP, subtitled "According to the Bible, Where? When? Why?," while not strictly code, does flaunt some numbers; "He has memorized over 8,000 verses... 3500 persons jammed the Canton Baptist Temple auditorium to hear this message... over 1500 invitations to conduct services in some of America's greatest churches." The "Latter Days" gets a spirited treatment (though Russia is supposed to march on Jerusalem for the last time in 1990 - I must have missed it). He red-baits the National Council of Churches, cites Gus Hall (some bogeyman!), runs through the rapture ("Headline: Multitudes Missing") and climaxes with a scary, 2:00 a.m. CONELRAD scenario: "China has just declared Hydrogen War. You have 12 minutes left to live! You can either lay there and wait for it, or look out the window and watch it. Oh, boy!...Thank the Lord, I'm Saved!"
WHISTLING IN THE DARK
Besides Muzzy Marcellino, a whistling virtuoso some people might recognize from his work with Juan Garcia Esquivel, who's the best known whistler in sheer volume of vinyl product? Fred Lowery, the Blind Whistler, by far. This Word Records recording artist has numerous albums and was fond of combining his talents with the seemingly inevitable pipe organ and tape loops of bird calls. It's easy to confuse Word's Lowery, "It's Well With My Soul" (Word Records, Waco, TX, WST-8563-LP) with Sacred's Ralph Platt's "A Visit with Ralph Platt in God's Great Outdoors" (Sacred Records, Whittier, CA, LP 9027) since Platt also whistles to birds tapes and pipe organ accompaniment. Here's a micro-genre ripe for revival.
GIMMICK PIANOS, CATHEDRAL BELLRINGERS, AND STEEL GUITARS
Most vinyl collectors looking for stray, oddball sounds come into contact with religious records in obscure sub-genres like sound effects, audio documentaries and "prepared" instruments. Westminster's Hi-Fi series was the first home for the dynamic piano duo Arthur Ferrante and Louis Teicher, two Julliard prodigies whose first couple of albums are collectors' items just now being reissued on CD. Their 1956 "Adventures in Carols" (Westminster Recording Sales, New York, NY, WP 6021) delivers on the promise "The Sound of Tomorrow - Today" as the teamed "gimmick" pianos knock out 12 traditional carols in a decidedly unorthodox fashion. The "preparation" of the Steinways with wood and metal gadgets, and the extended performance technique of plucking, strumming, and beating with various implements and body parts, are a decidedly downtown treatment of the avant-garde methods identified with such high modernists as their contemporary John Cage.
Westminster's cultivation of the hi-fi crowd continued with another Christmas selection, "Cathedral Bellringers' (Westminster Stereo Corp, New York, NY, WST 15018) which featured the handmade tuned bells of the Atlanta Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip conducted by Rev. Canon Fredick L. Eckel. Each bellringer was trained for a particular position, or pair of bells, and it was apparently so demanding a skill that it was not readily exchangeable with other bell positions. The weight of the bells and the timing of their striking varied considerably from one end of the line to the other. The 27 tracks tend to get a bit 'samey' but then it's a Christmas album, so what can you expect?
Nothing drags the lilting strains of a steel guitar performance down to the ground quite like a pipe organ, but then this is Lorin Whitney "blending" his instrument with "the tropical beauty" of Bud Tutmarc's steel guitar to produce, "Sacred Music in the Hawaiian Style" (Sacred Records, Waco, TX, LP-73045.). Tutmarc was an old-school steel player and is probably most famous as the man who converted the legendary Hawaiian steel guitar innovator Sol Hoopii to the Gospel. Hoopii gave up entertainment for preaching and never looked back. Whitney was a regular featured "Sacred Artist" on the label that promised "a cherished possession... that keeps the Home Sacred."
