Same River Twice, part 3

CONTINUED FROM THE PREVIOUS POST ....


Marshall furrowed his brow. “I done tried to land a song on the Christian charts, Carl. Afore we met. Little rap tune.” Marshall stood and looked to the street and each neighbor’s yard. Quiet as usual.

“Now Marshall, what I mean is --“

“No Carl, I wanna do it for you. Goes like this:” He began spitting out his words, staccato, machine-gun style, gesturing and gyrating, slightly at first, then more so ….

Jesus and his posse in the market one day,
They seen a mean woman with her head spinning ‘round.
Her eyes a burning read but her lips were all grey,
Talking real evil ‘bout burning up the town.

Witness, witness, can I get a witness?
Witness, witness -- word up!

Carl wanted to interject but words failed him, so Marshall continued:

Everybody started leavin’
Cuz the girl, she had a demon,
But Jesus He said, Jesus He said, Jesus He said --

“Everybody get down with me.
I’m the smack-talking savior from Galilee.
Gonna throw down on the street,
Gonna pop this sucka till she knows she been beat.”

“MARSHALL! What the hell!”

“Just getting started, Carl.”

“No, no, no! I feel like I just seen someone set fire to a sanctuary.”

Marshall sat down and buried his face in his hands, pressing his long fingers into his bulbous, smooth head. “That’s almost exactly what they said at the record company.”

Carl took his tumbler in Marshall’s house as Marshall continued to sit in his lawn chair, face down. Carl sat the tumbler on Marshall’s kitchen sink. He remained standing and fished out a business card from his wallet. He grinned as he examined the card, then stifled a chuckle. “These poor bastards,” he said. He walked back outside and handed Marshall the card. “Now that’s the address for Parker Sanders, the leader and tenor singer of the Ohio River Boys.”

Marshall studied the card as Carl described quartet gospel music -- the high part, the low part, the two in between, all harmonizing on piano-driven songs about God, heaven, and all the fixings. Marshall tried to cut Carl off a time or two because he already knew this stuff. His grandfather had been in such a quartet years ago, and his mother had dragged him to church for the first fourteen years of his life and guilt-tripped him into two more before he’d run off to the Delta to reinvent the blues.

“Important thing is the harmony, boy. You got to know your role. And you got to project. Diaphragm singing. And lose the twang. Same thing with that raspy, breathy voice you worked up back in your coffee house singing days. You got to sing out strong. And e-nun-ci-ate.”

He droned on while Marshall thought, why not? If these Ohio River Boys check out okay, this might be his break. Think of all these born-againers, always turning up at the polls to make life rough for the abortionists and atheists and communists and all that other stuff you hear them squawking about. Why, it’s a HUGE built-in audience. Plus, he wouldn’t even have to play guitar. Be a lot easier just to sing and play at the same time. And no more lugging around the beat-up acoustic. So after Carl said his piece, Marshall sent the old goat home and called Parker to set up an audition time.

~

Marshall auditioned in the empty choir room of the Your Move Baptist Church. He’d already gone over the embarrassing stuff on the phone with high-pitched Parker, questions like “When did you get saved? Do you believe in the inerrancy of God’s holy word? Are you a proponent of clean, moral living?” Marshall hadn’t been raised in church for nothing; he knew how to handle these queries. Also his children’s choir days had taught him a few things about harmony, so when he met Parker, Darren, Brandon and Phil (the pianist) he shook hands with the confidence that he was destined for the second tenor role with the Ohio River Boys.

Reality is a terrible thing.

TO BE CONTINUED ....