My earliest church memories are of me standing beside my grandmother during the congregational singing. She would always hold the hymnal down so I could see the words, and point with her finger to what line we were singing. I would listen to her singing harmony with the melody line of the hymn. To this day I love to sing harmony with others, and I believe that goes back to my grandma in church.
One of the first songs I remember singing in church is Give me Oil in My Lamp…or as it is more properly known, Sing Hosanna. (As a child, I always wondered who Hosanna was, and why she wouldn’t sing?) This may actually have been the song that my grandmother was singing in my memory. To this day I still love that song. For some reason whenever we’d sing it in church, I’d always imagine an Old West-style covered wagon coming down the center aisle, driven by a grizzled old man, saying, “Come on, Hosanna! Sing!” (I guess that’s how I imagined the children of Israel traveled through the desert…probably because of all the episodes of Gunsmoke and Wagon Train my folks watched on television…black-and-white television, that is. Yes, I’m an old guy.)
Read More