This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #290, on the subject of James the Other Ward.

I have several times asked myself why I listed James Ward for an article of his own, instead of grouping him with the batch of male vocalists in one article still to come.  Part of the answer, I think, is that my cousin the Reverend Peter Grosso would probably kill me if I overlooked or minimized this artist who is, I understand, a friend of his, but part of it is that his Mourning to Dancing album is among my favorites, so he has at least earned that much from me.  I also heard him live once, but that’s part of the story.

It is of course not uncommon for persons with the same surnames to be unrelated, and although James Ward has the same name as Matthew Ward of Second Chapter of Acts, same as the maiden names of Matthew’s two sisters Annie Herring and Nellie Greisen from that same band, it does not appear that they are related; at least, no one ever suggested this, and in the entertainment world you usually do hear about such connections.  The Ward family of Acts appears to have been west-coast based, while James was on the east coast.  I know this because Peter, my cousin, apparently knew him through a New York state area summer camp called Peniel.  Sometime, possibly when I was still in high school (graduated in ’73), certainly before I got to Gordon (started in ’75), he was waving an album in front of me and raving about it–as “raving” as my soft-spoken older Presbyterian cousin ever raved.  Somehow, I don’t think he played any of it for me, and I can’t tell you anything about the sound, but my recollection of the cover was that it was that of a low-budget self-produced release, and in perhaps my own youthful hubris I was not impressed.

When I was at Gordon College, Peter was at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary right up the road (the official connections between the two schools were finally and formally dissolved during my first year there), and when Ward played in our cafeteria (we had no auditorium, and the chapel wasn’t large enough to hold the entire student body) with his band Elán, Peter came.  After the concert, Peter wept.

I, a musician in my own mind, found the concert interesting and enjoyable.  Elán was an avant-garde jazz band that did a lot of atonal and non-metered instrumental music.  They were very good at it.  I don’t know that I would have bought an album had they offered one, but it was the sort of music a composer should hear at least once so he has some idea of what’s beyond the traditional boundaries of music.

Peter was a pastor, in training, and his memories of the performances of James Ward were that they ministered.  Elán did not minister; they performed, and they talked about how they achieved some of the effects, like a song that really was a musical version of an impressionist painting of a sunrise.  For Peter, every good thing about a James Ward concert was lost.

Perhaps half a decade later, when Mourning to Dancing was released, Ward commented in an interview that people “didn’t understand” Elán.  I thought at the time that he was wrong, at least that in relation to his earier fans–such as Peter–it wasn’t about whether or not they understood the music, but that they missed the ministry.  I once sat on the edge of a conversation between some listener who had opinions about the nature of music (possibly reflecting Francis Schaeffer’s work) and some Christian musician who had grown up in church (and it may actually have been Ward after that concert) in which the musician was attempting to elicit from the listener an explanation of what made particular kinds of music “Christian” or “not Christian”.  As a composer, I am inclined to agree with the musician:  if modernist tonalities communicate what I want to say, they are Christian to the degree that I am communicating a Christian messsage through them.  However, if I have placed this conversation correctly in my memory, both parties were missing that critical element:  it isn’t whether the music fits a particular style or mold, but whether it is communicating a worthwhile message.  Pendereki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima is one of the most discordant atonal non-metered pieces ever written, but it communicates something significant.  There is no particular reason why avant-garde jazz could not be a medium for a Christian message.  The problem with Elán was that it wasn’t.

Peter and I never talked about Ward again.  He left Gordon-Conwell for a pastorate in Pennsylvania, and I became a Christian disk jockey in southern New Jersey.  Thereafter we were rarely at the same family gatherings, and the matter never arose.  However, I received Ward’s Mourning to Dancing album at the radio station, and the spare copy went into my collection and was much enjoyed here.  It is the kind of album that has no losers on it, and which is best heard straight through.  From the opening strains of Highway (reminiscent of the the Elán days until the verse shifts into light rock), the album gives insights into the life of an on-the-road Christian musician along with solid Christian songs such as Hold Up My Hands (no online video found), Who Can Separate Us (again, no video found), and then the mellow title song Mourning to Dancing.  The “B” side began with another glimpse into the life of the musician, Late At Night Again (again, no video), and the intriguing Holy Observer (need I say it?), then Gotta Get Home (“…to her own bedroom….”) (again), in which the life on the road includes that he traveled with his wife and young daughter.  The bouncing Precious Is Your Mercy follows, and I am really disappointed at just how many of these are not available online, but the final song, the wonderful So His Honor, was covered by the band Truth in this recording.

I find myself very confused as to why I recognize the cover of his next album Faith Takes a Vision, but none of the titles are familiar and the music is barely so, despite being very good.  Maybe it was just that I didn’t get a copy so it slipped into forgetfulness.  Listening to the vaguely familiar Not How, Maybe I’ll Trust You Now, Take Hold, Don’t Blame It On My God, and others, I can’t help feeling that I missed something good.

Those were the only albums I heard; I wish I had heard the one Peter had, which does not appear in online discographies, although I don’t know the title and barely remember the cover.

I feel I should mention that Ward’s talents lie in his musical compositions and lyrical content.  His piano work and arrangements are always solid.  His voice, though, is unique, and it would be easy to fault him there.  He does his own backup vocals quite well, but it would be difficult to imagine someone else blending with him.  He is in the category of singer-songwriters carried by the strength of their songs rather than their singing.  That’s not, from me, a criticism.  I just sometimes notice the flaws in his voice, as one does often with other popular singer-songwriters.  I like it overall; it’s expressive.  It certainly is not operatic, and probably wouldn’t win any television competitions.  Yet it makes for comfortable listening.

*****

The series to this point has included:

1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.
5. #240:  Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.
6. #242:  Disciple Andraé Crouch.
7. #244: Missed The Archers.
8. #246: The Secular Radio Hits.
9. #248:  The Hawkins Family.
10. #250:  Original Worship Leader Ted Sandquist.
11. #252:  Petra Means Rock.
12. #254:  Miscellaneous Early Christian Bands.
13. #256:  Harry Thomas’ Creations Come Alive.
14. #258:  British Invaders Malcolm and Alwyn.
15. #260:  Lamb and Jews for Jesus.
16. #262: First Lady Honeytree of Jesus Music.
17. #264:  How About Danny Taylor.
18. #266:  Minstrel Barry McGuire.
19. #268:  Voice of the Second Chapter of Acts.
20. #272:  To the Bride Live.
21. #276:  Best Guitarist Phil Keaggy.
22. #281:  Keith Green Launching.
23. #283:  Keith Green Crashing.
24. #286:  Blind Seer Ken Medema.
25. #288:  Prophets Daniel Amos

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #283, on the subject of Keith Green Crashing.

As we already covered (in web log post #281:  Keith Green Launching, linked below), Keith Green had two excellent and successful Christian albums without a weak song on them.  Now he produced So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt, of which the somewhat goofy title song was an instant hit.  There were several other excellent songs on this album as well, such as Pledge My Head to Heaven, Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful, and Grace By Which I Stand.  However, whether it was because they weren’t quite as good or because by the early eighties the Christian music field was starting to get more crowded, it was not the music on this album that made it significant.

When Keith delivered the masters to his company Sparrow Records, he told them he did not want them to sell it–he wanted it to be given away, to anyone who requested it, for whatever they chose to give, even if it was nothing at all.  He thought it more important to get the music into the ears of people than to worry about paying bills, and was confident that the contributions would cover all the costs of the record.

Sparrow didn’t see it quite the same way.  They were certain that donations would cover the costs of Keith’s record, but that’s not how the music industry worked, even in the Christian field.  The problem wasn’t whether those donations would cover the costs of distributing Keith’s record but whether there would be what we would call profits–a dirty word for some, but an essential facet of the way the system worked.  You see, when Keith made his first album, Sparrow Records took a chance, advancing a considerable sum of money to pay for professional level production of an album by an unknown artist which might be completely lost.  Sparrow was still in the business of finding and funding new artists, paid for from the profits from the established artists, and a new album from Keith Green was a guaranteed best seller which would provide a lot of money for that purpose.  Keith was taking that away from them, on the grounds that he thought he should be able to give away his record free if he paid them the cost of producing it.

A compromise was reached.  In the United States, Egypt was released by Pretty Good Records; Sparrow handed the standard distribution channels–record stores, radio promotion–and all overseas releases.  Keith and and his wife Melody set up an organization to mail copies to anyone who wrote to them requesting one, putting the donations toward costs and future recordings.  In a sense, he had cut himself off from helping any other Christian artists; in another sense, he had focused his ministry on reaching the listeners.

Two years later he released Songs for the Shepherd, which was a good but not remarkable recording, again through Pretty Good Records with Sparrow’s assistance.  Several other Keith Green albums would be released in the years to come, but this was the last one he would see.  That year, 1982, he had visitors at the ranch where they ran everything, and wanting to show them all they were doing he took them up in his private airplane.  The plane was already heavily loaded with records and literature that went to concerts with him, and the number of passengers exceeded recommendations, and it crashed killing all on board.  Melody was not on that plane.

Many in the Christian music world were upset; many said that apparently God had decided to take Keith home.  That was not the unanimous opinion.  At least one Evangelical author at the time wrote to say that Keith died because he broke God’s law–in this case, God’s Laws of Aerodynamics, trying to fly a plane that was overloaded.  If, he argued, you violate the laws of God, the end is death, and sometimes it comes swiftly, as it did here.  This is on some level a bit ironic, because Keith often veered toward legalism–his The Sheep and the Goats misses the point of that parable, and Glen Kaiser (of Resurrection Band) informs me that more than once others in ministry felt it necessary to admonish him on that point.

I cannot begin to guess who is right.  I know Keith has been missed since, and that he would have continued as a popular and successful artist, but it seems likely that, as with quite a few of those we have already covered and will cover yet who were huge then but are barely recognized now, he was probably past the zenith of his career and on the slow decline.  Those first two albums are still among the best Christian music has ever produced, and it is doubtful that even he could have surpassed them.

*****

The series to this point has included:

1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.
5. #240:  Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.
6. #242:  Disciple Andraé Crouch.
7. #244: Missed The Archers.
8. #246: The Secular Radio Hits.
9. #248:  The Hawkins Family.
10. #250:  Original Worship Leader Ted Sandquist.
11. #252:  Petra Means Rock.
12. #254:  Miscellaneous Early Christian Bands.
13. #256:  Harry Thomas’ Creations Come Alive.
14. #258:  British Invaders Malcolm and Alwyn.
15. #260:  Lamb and Jews for Jesus.
16. #262: First Lady Honeytree of Jesus Music.
17. #264:  How About Danny Taylor.
18. #266:  Minstrel Barry McGuire.
19. #268:  Voice of the Second Chapter of Acts.
20. #272:  To the Bride Live.
21. #276:  Best Guitarist Phil Keaggy.
22. #281:  Keith Green Launching.

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #281, on the subject of Keith Green Launching.

We come to someone whose perhaps brief footprint in the Christian contemporary music world was huge, so big in fact that we’re going to cover him in two articles.  Keith Green might have been a footnote in the history of contemporary music, a one-hit wonder in the 60s who recorded a few singles for Decca and one for ERA, one of which charted at some point.  Then, as he was facing the frustration of already being a has-been in a field in which maybe he never was, the Christian musicians of the area met him and brought the young Jewish boy to faith in Christ.

He embraced his new faith strongly, and became something of a prophetic voice in contemporary Christian music, challenging believers to live the lives they claimed in words.  In 1977 he released his first album, several of the songs co-written with his wife Melody, For Him Who Has Ears to Hear, packed with powerful, challenging, and excellent songs, beginning with You Put This Love In My Heart, continuing with I Can’t Believe It, Because of You, and When I Hear the Praises Start, and as the first side ends with the playful He’ll Take Care of the Rest, things get even better.

Side two opened with Your Love Broke Through, the song he co-wrote with Phil Keaggy and Randy Stonehill, and then the genuinely fun song No One Believes In Me Anymore (Satan’s Lament), which is not a lament at all but the devil’s boast that he can work without being recognized.  This is followed by the heart-breaking Song to My Parents (I Only Want to See You There), then Trials Turned to Gold, and the album concludes with his rousing rendition of Annie Herring’s famed Easter Song (the only version of which I am aware that has the second verse lyrics he sings).

This was only the beginning, but every song on that first album was a classic–and he would follow it in the next year with No Compromise.  This opened with the soft rock Soften Your Heart, then the heart-rending Make My Life a Prayer to You, written by his wife Melody.  This is followed by the album’s fun song, Dear John Letter (To the Devil), then back to the heart-rending How Can They Live Without Jesus?.

The flip side opens with the tearful and demanding Asleep in the Light, which on the original segued electronically into My Eyes are Dry, which faded in over the fadeout of the other, and then faded out.  I am persuaded that it was a mistake in later releases to separate these two songs, as Keith clearly intended them to be heard together that way.  After this heavy opening, it lightens with the rocky You!, and then another heart-felt song, I Don’t Wanna Fall Away From You (interestingly covered by Petra on their Keith Green tribute album).  The bouncy Stained Glass gives a bit of relief before the intensely challenging To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice.  He then does a cover of the Jamie Owens (Collins) The Victor, which was her break into the Christian music field as the song gained popularity and was also picked up by The Second Chapter of Acts, who along with Phil Keaggy were part of Keith’s recording, and wraps the album with Altar Call, a closing call to salvation.

There wasn’t a weak song on two albums, and Keith was one of the stars of Christian music, but things were about to change significantly.

*****

The series to this point has included:

1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.
5. #240:  Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.
6. #242:  Disciple Andraé Crouch.
7. #244: Missed The Archers.
8. #246: The Secular Radio Hits.
9. #248:  The Hawkins Family.
10. #250:  Original Worship Leader Ted Sandquist.
11. #252:  Petra Means Rock.
12. #254:  Miscellaneous Early Christian Bands.
13. #256:  Harry Thomas’ Creations Come Alive.
14. #258:  British Invaders Malcolm and Alwyn.
15. #260:  Lamb and Jews for Jesus.
16. #262: First Lady Honeytree of Jesus Music.
17. #264:  How About Danny Taylor.
18. #266:  Minstrel Barry McGuire.
19. #268:  Voice of the Second Chapter of Acts.
20. #272:  To the Bride Live.
21. #276:  Best Guitarist Phil Keaggy