By Willis Webb
When you’re born, bred and raised ‘country’, there are some givens. My mother saw to my baptism, inoculation and total exposure to what is known today as “Southern Baptist quartet sangin’.”
That was enough to ensure my lifelong liking for that music genre’ and to always marvel at the variety of the music and the devotion of country Baptists to the Stamps “brand” and the resulting “products.” And, if that wasn’t sufficient, we happened to live across the street from a veterinarian by that same last name and a brother of Frank and V.O. Stamps, founders and leaders the well-known quartet.
Occasionally on their travels to concerts, the Stamps Quartet would stop in my hometown to visit their vet brother. With the reaction and activity among the neighbors you’d think that day’s version of a rock band was making an appearance.
Our little one-room country church had paperback “song books,” not hymnals (too citified), for all to use in the congregational singing. Those songbooks were published by the Stamps Quartet Gospel Music Publishing Company.
And, the Stamps boys thought of everything. Musical notes had different shapes, one for each part — soprano (lead), alto, tenor and bass — to help the untrained singer easily follow his part.
At that age, I only knew one part – LOUD – and sang that way. After all, in our little frame one-room church – the Luna Missionary Baptist Church – we needed every one of the two-dozen or so voices booming away to sound like a sizable congregation and, more likely, to match the faithful zeal expected of all seated on those handmade wooden benches.
As I grew older, I imagined myself more “manly” than my years and thought I should sing bass. However, in high school choir director LaClair Williamson set me straight and had me in the tenor section. I couldn’t read music, so I was thankfully seated next to Douglas Aycock, who had a good tenor voice and could read music. He also played piano and had a brilliant mind (later P.D. Aycock, M.D.).
My musical ear was pretty good, so I could follow a tenor note from the piano or from someone nearby who could belt out the tenor part where I could easily follow. Doug was my ticket to a good grade in choir.
Through the years, a sinful trail of cigarettes, a pipe and demon rum deepened my voice to the much-desired “manly” bass. Now, I can chirp along with the best of ‘em. Oh, and the only sinful contribution to my manly voice now is an occasional glass of white wine before dinner/supper.
My exposure to the gospel music continued into young manhood, thanks to my mother.
She loved to sing, particularly the Southern Gospel she’d grown up singing all of her life. Mother was basically always shy, or as she would say, “timid.” She often described herself as a “timid alto.”
Once I attended a gospel quartet concert and was keeping my ear closely tuned to the bass singer, who was quite good. At a break in the concert, I caught up with the bass singer and told him I admired his singing. During the conversation, I said Mother labeled herself a “timid alto,” and that I supposed I must be a “closet bass,” meaning to me shy or timid.
The concert quartet bass looked at me in shock and said, “Well, I don’t think I’d describe it quite that way.”
I made a mental note to eliminate the phrase from my vocabulary.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience.
wwebb1937@att.net
