Doc: The Story of a Birmingham Jazz Man

2. The Church

2 The church Going back to the late twenties, I found myself in the church. In fact, the church I go to now, Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion, is the one I was reared in. I had to go to church every Sunday—my daddy was the superintendent of Sunday school, so there was no doubt about it. The only time I got free from church, really, was when I went to college: I didn’t go any, then, at all. I go now, but at that time, I guess, it was just a freedom from church. They’re probably turning over in their graves right now, because I’m telling the truth. But the church was a great part of my life. And I didn’t know any other life. One thing we had at that time, I remember vividly: when you were four or five years old, every neighborhood had its Bible school. Up the street from us there was this lady, Mrs. Guy, who had a Bible school, and you’d go every Wednesday to her class. You had to learn the whole Bible, from the Old Testament to the New Testament. You memorized those verses every week, and you had to get the words just right. She had a cow in the backyard, and at the end of the class we’d get a glass of milk from her cow. That was your reward: warm cow milk and oatmeal cookies. Of course, those who couldn’t say their Bible verse would get a lick—but then she’d feed them anyway. Every Christmas at the church, you had your Christmas speech; Easter, you had your Easter speech. Everybody stopped to listen to you on Christmas and Easter, to see how you were developing. Every child, from the cradle on up, had to recite a verse. They’d write them out for you, and they’d give you a couple of months to learn your speech. If you got up and recited a long Bible speech—“the valley of the church 19 shadow of death,” and all that—you would be rated high. You knew from the very beginning, when you’re about six years old, who’s going to be the intellectual, who’s going to be able to do something— because this little girl recites so much until you just want to say, “Sit down!” Then there’s little Johnny—he would get nervous and run, but they’d get him to the mic, and finally he’d say: “Jesus . . . wept.” Well, you’re just a dummy if you can’t learn more than that! If little Johnny did that for two or three years, they knew there was no hope for him; but they’d clap to encourage him to do better. And you had to say it with a firm voice, too—“Jesus wept!”—even if you didn’t know anything about Jesus, you had to say it. People in the church would see how your family was rearing you. If you spoke in a dialect, they’d say, “There’s a lot of bad stuff going on in that house.” My brother got up there one year, and he said, in this deep voice of his: “I’m not going to speak today.” Little bitty fellow! When Daddy heard that, he went up there with his belt and whipped Oscar out of the pulpit. Of course, the church people said that was so bad for Brother Adams to whip that boy like that—but when Daddy got after you, once you got your punishment, it was over. There wasn’t any aftermath: you got what was due, and now you’re free again. When we got home, the phone was ringing; they were asking, “Did he do something to that boy?” No! No, no, no. We were sitting up there eating a chicken dinner , and everybody had forgotten about it. That’s the way it was. You didn’t have a grudge: you had served your time. It’s like you were sick, now you’re cured. That’s the end of it. I remember one day we were in Sunday school, and my dad was reviewing the Sunday school lesson. He would do it annually; Peter was his favorite person in the Bible, so when it came around to Peter, he’d review the lesson. I think it was Peter who cut somebody’s ear off—Daddy always said Peter was...