Music Notes 2-16-25

The month of June is going to be special for the music in our church, because the 1 st Sunday of

the month will feature the music of the band Chicago. Formed in Chicago in 1967, they created

a dynasty that exists to this day. In 1968, they relocated to Los Angeles, and the family of

sax/multi-reed player Walt Parazaider joined the congregation of FPCE. They were very active

in the church, with Walt’s wife JacLynn taking the reins of Christian Education for several years.

The Yamaha piano in the chapel was donated to the church by Walt and his family, and includes

what was, at the time, a state-of-the-art player system called Disklavier. There are a huge

number of logistical ducks to line up for this, so the June date gives us enough time to get ready.

Wind Beneath My Wings (sometimes titled Hero) was written by Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley in

1982. They recorded a demo of the song, which they gave to Bob Montgomery, who recorded

his own version. It was shopped to several artists, eventually being released in 1982 by Roger

Whittaker. It was subsequently recorded by Colleen Hewett, Lou Rawls, Gladys Knight and the

Pips, and Gary Morris. The version we all know and love is the version recorded by Bette

Midler in 1988 for the soundtrack to the movie Beaches, which was then released as a single in

early 1989. It spent 1 week at #1 on the Billboard Hot Singles chart in June of that year, and

went on to win Grammy Awards for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1990. In

1991, Bette’s version was certified Platinum, selling over one million copies. It seemed to be

appropriate for the message of the week, and we’ll get a chance to hear Lauren again.

John Rutter’s A Gaelic Blessing, also known by its opening line Deep Peace, was commissioned

by the chancel choir of 1 st United Methodist Church of Omaha, Nebraska, and their conductor

Mel Olsen in 1978. The original text was not a specifically sacred text, but rather an old Gaelic

rune that made reference to elements of nature. Rutter added a line referencing Jesus and Amen

to it to make it a Christian anthem. It has become popular for baptisms, weddings and funerals,

and was performed at the funeral Mass for Tip O’Neil. It became a hit when a recording by Aled

Jones was released in 2003, and has been recorded often, including by the composer with the

Cambridge Singers and the City of London Sinfonia.

We Shall Overcome is a gospel song and protest song that became an anthem for the civil rights

movement. It is generally said to have its lyrical genesis in the hymn I’ll Overcome Some Day

by Charles Albert Tindley, which was first published in 1900. A modern version of the song was

said to have been first sung at a 1945 tobacco strike in Charleston, South Carolina. It was

published in 1947 as We Will Overcome in People’s Songs (Pete Seeger was a director and added

it to his repertoire). The version we know was created by Seeger and Guy Carawan, and was

introduced in 1959. In August of 1962, a 22-year-old folk singer named Joan Baez led 300,000

people in singing that song at the Lincoln Memorial during A. Phillip Randolph’s March On

Washington. Dr. Martin Luther King recited the words in a sermon at an interfaith service at

Temple Israel in Hollywood in 1965, and then again in his final sermon in Memphis on Sunday,

March 31, 1968, before his assassination. It has been pointed out that the first half sounds very

much like the Catholic hymn O Sanctissima (published in London in 1792), the second half

sounds like the 19 th century hymn I’ll Be All Right, and in general sounds a lot like the

Neapolitan art song standard Caro Mio Ben. It was sung by hundreds of thousands of people in

Wenseslas Square in Prague during the 1989 Velvet Revolution. In India, the renowned poet

Girija Kumar Mathur created a literal translation, which became a popular patriotic/spiritual

song, especially in the schools, in the 70’s and 80’s. In 2012, Bruce Springsteen performed the

song at a memorial concert in Oslo after the terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011.

Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace is also commonly known as the Prayer of St. Francis.

However, it was almost certainly not written by St. Francis. The true author is unknown and it

was more probably written around the time of the outbreak of World War One. It is also

incorrectly called the Serenity Prayer of St. Francis. The Serenity Prayer is, in fact, a different

prayer from the 20 th century written by Reinhold Neibuhr. Sebastian Temple adapted the words

in 1967 to create the hymn that we know now.