Knee slappin'...toe tappin' Gospel

This week we were Youtubing (funny how that's a verb now) Southern Gospel Quartets.  Yep, I mean bass guitars and banjos, tenors and bass singers. Those of you that know me well or grew up with me know that this is the stuff I grew up on.  Gaither Band, Cathedrals, Gatlin Brothers, Oak Ridge Boys, Statler Brothers, bunches of unfamous little country and bluegrass family singers and so on.  Okay, so some of those are country Gospel, but remember I grew up in southern Oklahoma in a small town. 

My little brother and I would ride in the backseat of the car singing at the top of our lungs.  Our favorite part was trying to sing the Bass part.  He'd sing it better, but to me he sounded like a frog.  I'd end up singing stuff like "Momma sang Bass, Daddy sang Tenor.." messing the words up like that often.  Many times we were sitting back there with my precious grandma and she'd sing along with us and pat her sweet hands on her knee and lean her head over against mine when we'd sing.  I can almost feel her soft grey curls pressing against my ear and smell her perfume when she'd love on me like that.  I praise God for her, I miss that amazing lady.

Last Friday, when Andy and I got to go away for the weekend, we started out by going to a small town, gospel singing about an hour from here.  It was mostly older folks picking and singing pickin' and singin' lots of old hymns and country gospel.  There were about 20 of them on stage with various instruments.  Anybody and all ages are welcome and many drive over an hour to get there on Friday nights.  Just show up with your instrument or voice and come up on stage.  Everyone picks along to the music played and sang by others.  When it's your turn, you come up to the mic.  We loved it.  I told Andy he needs to practice up and go up on stage next time. 

As much as we love music and sing with our children, there were some of these songs that had just fallen to the bottom of our memories until last week.  So, this week I was sharing with the kids some GOOD music.  We came across lots of great quartet videos.  Some truly great Gospel Hymns of Faith and other great songs that came from every day living and how our parents and grandparents relied on their faith throughout their lives and then left that legacy to us.

We found several online and have a huge list of songs to add to our family playlist, but kept going back to this video and have played it over and over in our house and, in fact, we are hoping to go hear these guys sing next month in Topeka!  One of my favorite songs...okay, I have lots and lots of favorites, but this is definitely one of them.  So, turn your volume up and clap your hands, stomp your feet and get your kids to do it too, cause this is the good stuff!  Praising the Lord and being excited about it!

"For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself."

Philippians 3:20-21