Birthdays roll around every year—yes, that is obvious. When I was young, the future lay ahead and I would imagine what being an adult would be like. I made plans for my future self. Now several decades (more than several!) later, I tend to look back as much as I look forward.
Happy Birthday to You! Today you are You, that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is Your than You.
— Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) (1904-1991) American children’s author and cartoonist
In 2006 as I was preparing to move to a new location, I wrote:
“One day as I was packing all of our belongings to move to Birmingham, I thought about how odd it is to have someone’s life narrowed down to just a few possessions. As I packed items once belonging to my maternal grandmother, my mother, and my father, I was filled with the realization that one day my possessions would be scattered and only a few things would remain . . . maybe with someone who remembered me—or maybe not. What would my life be boiled down to? What tangible items would represent my life?”
My grandmother left a legacy of over two hundred quilts. I have many of them, but the item I cherish the most is her small, tattered hymnal—maybe it’s because I am a church musician. However, I believe it is more than that.
Mama Coker was a Primitive Baptist her entire life and I also grew up in the Primitive Baptist church. Primitive Baptists descend from the Calvinist tradition—particularly in their view of predestination and the role of music in the church. They did not believe in the use of instruments, thus everything was sung a cappella. And, much of the music was Sacred Harp.
The cover is gone from the hymnal and I never knew what hymnal it was. Through recent investigation I found that it is The Primitive Hymns: Spiritual Songs and Sacred Poems compiled by Benjamin Lloyd in Greenville, Alabama. [See below for more information about the hymnal.]
The hymnal represents the fabric of who I am. My childhood church used many of these same texts with mostly Sacred Harp tunes. Sung in four parts without accompaniment, the singing was strong and boisterous, almost otherworldly. The music represented a connection to the divine with poetic and thoughtful texts. This early experience shaped my life and the sounds have found their way into my compositions.
My house is filled with many wonderful things that were my mother’s—from beautiful furniture, collectible items, to her wedding rings. One of my favorite possessions is a dress she made for me when I was in the third grade. She inherited her skill and love of sewing from her mother. I remember wearing that dress and how I loved the black, tan, and white checked material. I also loved the design—the square neck, fitted bodice and waist, full skirt, and ruffles down the front and around the hem. For me, this dress represents her creativity and patience . . . and most of all her love for her family—and for me.
My husband has some of my father’s ties. When my husband wears one of them, I am reminded of Sundays with my family at church. My father wore work clothes all the other days—on Sundays, everyone dressed up. I also have some of the books he used when he attended Gadsden Business College after the war. He never bought much for himself. He worked to provide for mother, my sister, and me. (And, it was a source of joy for him to see us delight in gifts or everyday items he got for us.)
I have two necklaces that he purchased for me from a jewelry store in Birmingham. He bought them as Christmas presents when I was in the fifth and sixth grade. I particularly loved rocks and one necklace is a lovely, dark green jade. He sold truck parts and one item I chose from his shop after he died was an air horn from an old truck.
I have a birthday coming up. I have more birthdays behind me than I have ahead. It makes me ponder what I will leave after I am gone. I have a lot of material possessions . . . but that is not what I want to be remembered for or by. I want it to be my music and my writing. They are the essence of who I am. If someone in the future wants to know something about me, I hope they will listen to my music or read my essays.
No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.
— Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author, humorist, and satirist
More about the Hymnal
Benjamin Lloyd (1804-1860) was an Alabama businessman and prominent elder in the Primitive Baptist church. He published the definitive hymnal for the denomination in 1841 and it is still used by Primitive Baptist congregations across the country. During the late 1820s and early 1830s a division occurred among Baptists over various theological issues and practices—including the use of music during worship. Some congregations withdrew from the main church to join other like-minded congregations under the name “Primitive” Baptists—to identify with the practices of the early church.
Lloyd saw the need for a hymn book with selections that expressed—or at least did not conflict with the beliefs of the new denomination. He selected 535 hymns from other popular hymn books and published the words, without musical notation, in palm-sized books under the title The Primitive Hymns: Spiritual Songs and Sacred Poems, Regularly Selected, Classified and Set in Order and Adapted to Social Singing and All Occasions of Divine Worship.
He included hymns by important English writers such as Isaac Watts, John Newton, and Charles Wesley, as well as those by his contemporaries in the Primitive Baptist church. As the hymns were intended to be sung a cappella, he placed at the top of each hymn an abbreviation signifying its meter. Markings such as C.M. (common meter), L.M. (long meter), S.M. (short meter), and P.M. (particular meter) indicated to song leaders the type of tunes to which the words could be sung. If the congregation wished to sing a hymn marked C.M., for instance, a good song leader would have in his memory a number of tunes to which that hymn might be sung. One week he might call for the hymn to be sung to one tune, the next week to another. The hymns passed from one generation to the next as oral tradition and thus have taken on regional variations as well as varying preferences for tune and lyric combinations among congregations.
Published and revised by members of the Lloyd family for 130 years, the hymnbook, which now contains 705 hymns, is published by The Primitive Hymns Corporation of Rocky Mount, N.C., which is owned by a group of Primitive Baptists who incorporated to keep the book in print.
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