Heaven Playlist 3--some more from English folk musicians

So, right after I posted the last Heaven Playlist post, I found another Watersons' song I wanted to include, plus Spotify's 'Your Daily Mix' gave me a couple more in the next day or so that also fit the bill. I go hot and cold on Spotify—sometimes it gives me a good list of new stuff in my Daily Mix and other times it is abhorrent. I'm struggling along still to see if it works for me. But it sure did on this particular night.

The new-found Watersons', don't know how I missed it because it is from the Sound, Sound Your Instruments CD, MORNING TRUMPET. The hymn, O When Shall I See Jesus, is ascribed to John Leland, an 18th century Baptist minister from Massachusetts. Julian (Julian, ah, Julian—WAS the highest authority on info about hymns back in the old days and I treasure my copy before the internet—maybe I'll write a short blog about Julian at some point) calls this a 'vigorous lyric' which is not how I'd describe it at all. It seems very comfortable to me—we just need to put our trust in Jesus, with a beautiful recall of all the things that seeing Jesus will bring us—"endless pleasure," "eternal life," end of "sin and sorrows, troubles, trials, cares," a life of "rest." (I think I wrote about rest in Heaven Post #1; this past week of horrible sleep has left me feeling more and more like this is a really good thing, though I don't think it means just being indolent! It means not having worries about being able to sleep or not!)

Sleep on Beloved—Somehow getting MORNING TRUMPET led me to the Waterson:Carthy version (see this for a nice example of them in live performance) of Sleep On Beloved. I had never heard this Sankey tune before See Heaven Post #2 for some more on the Waterson:Carthy use of Sankey—no wonder they like to record his music, he just wrote beautiful tune after tune. The poem, "The Christian's Good-Night" was by Sarah Doudney. This Englishwoman who died in 1926 wrote all kinds of stuff, novels, you name it. This poem is just chock-full of lovely lines, "Until made beautiful by love divine, Thou in the likeness of the Lord shall shine," and "Thine is a perfect rest, secure and deep," are just two. However, I want you to listen to the Lady Maisery version—the harmony is just so lovely in this version by one of the English folk scene's young groups, a women's trio.  

Following the trail somewhat (I can't actually recreate in my head how Spotify had such a good night) I found Heidi Talbot's, "Here We Go, 1, 2, 3." Not expecting this to be something for my list, I was surprised when I heard her singing "I'll meet you, my love, on the bright river side, where all sorrow has drifted away" as it somehow rang a bell for me. I had to do a bit of sleuthing, but I read a bit about what she had to say about the song and then looked up a couple of lines of the lyrics, and voila, of course! She excerpts bits of lyric from Albert Brumley's "I'll Meet You in the Morning," (here in a lovely, lovely singing at a graveside by some Mennonite singers), a well-known song to me. Well, Albert E. Brumley was as famous to me as a child as Sankey himself. Brumley was a fellow Sooner (from Oklahoma—if you don't know that term, look it up) and he wrote "I'll Fly Away," possibly one of the very first songs I knew (and one that is among the first, let's say, five songs on my heaven list). I'll Meet You was obviously very important to Brumley as he dedicated it to his wife and sons. Back to Heidi Talbot; I loved her when she sang with Cherish the Ladies, the mega-American female Irish trad group—we heard them summer after summer at the Irish Festival. Then I hadn't listened to her in ages, but her voice is even more beautiful after all these years. Her remaking of this song, with her husband, the Scottish fiddle player John McCusker, is just as good as it gets. 

And now for something completely different and equally compelling—Offa Rex's "In the Old Churchyard." For a more 'elemental' version, see this video of them playing at the Newport Folk Fest. Offa Rex is a collaboration between the English folksinger and harmonium (I want one!) player and the Portland rock band The Decemberists, who I have hitherto had no interest in listening to, but might take a sashay that way. I had heard Waterson:Carthy do this song (the Watersons had done it years ago), which is apparently so old that no one knows which side of the pond it even comes from. I had remembered hearing it in some fashion years and years ago, maybe at church, but it took this incredible rendering to get it on my Heaven list. After all, it is really a song about burial and not so much about heaven, but Wow, it is just so powerful in so many ways. (By the way and nothing to do with a heaven playlist, for a powerful song, Offa Rex's Sheep Crook and Black Dog is amazing.)

As an aside, I took a good look at my very worn copy of New Songs of Inspiration (to find the Brumley song), possibly my very first hymnal, as it was used at Crusader's Temple, the Free Will Baptist church where we went until I was about two and half? (Need to query parents!) My mom was the piano player and she and my dad and Aunt Jeri used to sing together there with my dad also playing guitar. I'm really hoping (and have been nagging away) my mom will write a song about music in her life. So many things about it intrigue me. She did write a short one about her playing for the Southern Gospel group, the Gospelaires, on the radio every week when she was a girl. My mom was a mean Southern Gospel-style player. We have a double-sided 'phonograph record' that I'm hoping to get digitized so we can listen to her in her heyday. My aunt Jeri was almost Patti Page (you can look her up on Wikipedia, the story of how Clara Ann Fowler became Patti Page is not quite correct). I wish I'd heard Aunt Jeri sing more, but I do remember that she sang O Holy Night a few times at Christmas at Grandma's house. Whoa, I have never heard a more breathtaking performance and believe me, I have heard lots of great singers on recordings of O Holy Night. My dad was an awesome guitar player as well; very memorable, in fact so much that one of my very first memories is sitting in my mom and dad's bedroom and getting the guitar out and him playing and singing On the Wings of a Snow-White Dove. So back to my worn out copy of New Songs of Inspiration—I had thought it was my mom's, but she must have given it to me while I was still fairly young. Must have been my mom's because at some point she wrote the short list beginning 174 on one of the endpapers. But what I really wonder about is the list I wrote in my teens, guessing from my handwriting, that starts out Act 1. If anyone knows what that is about, I'd be mighty glad for the reminder. I see there are some other songs in this hymnal I need to think about adding to my growing playlist.