I Got Two Wings:Incidents and Anecdotes of The Two-Winged Preacher and Electric Guitar Evangelist (book with CD)
Artist: Utah Smith
Label: CaseQuarter 

Utah Smith worked as both an itinerant preacher and, for a few years, pastor of his own Two Wing Temple in New Orleans, both under the aegis of the African American-dominant Church of God In Christ (COGIC) denomination. The spectacle of a stout, raucous preacher dressed in wings and suit preaching, singing and playing his newfangled electrified six-string for hours on end made him a draw at tent meetings and COGIC conventions, though it was only in his obituary that his family upped his church office from Elder to Bishop, something denied him in his earthly life.

Although interest lies chiefly in the relation of Smith's expressive, animated playing to his career, but the elder's ecclesiastical practices are likewise worth noting. He was enough of a showman to get away with charging $5 (in a day when that was real money) per head for events where he claimed he would preach Satan's funeral;"mourners" would then see themselves in a mirror installed in the coffin on display.  Hilariously brilliant, eh? Other means by which would raise funds resemble the frenzied techniques used by today's word-of-faith adherents, if not their aberrant theology. Asking his congregation to pray for the radio station where his church's show aired to land in the hands of the half of the divorcing couple that owned it who was more sympathetic to Smith's ministry seems at odds with an understanding of God's hatred for the dissolution of marriages, too. 

Despite such doctrinal indiscretions (and his puzzling stance against black voter registration), Smith's work looks to have been mostly on the scriptural up and up. Alongside pictures of the labels of his and associated artists' 78 RPM singles labels and other musical miscellanea, Wings' pages are rife with newspaper, magazine and church bulletin documentation of Smith's ministerial efficacy and celebrity. 

The latter was such that he was the subject of pieces in Newsweek and a BBC radio documentary. Arguably most unusual of Smith's interaction with the broader culture is his New York City concert at the Museum of Modern Art. The show was precipitated by his discovery by East Coast swing music experts and further first-hand church investigation by New York Times music critic Virgil Thompson, leading to the patronage by a socialite with a passion for musical diversity.

The ten Smith tunes offered on the 18-track CD accompanying the book certainly evince what those swing mavens heard. He may not have had the nimble finesse of his closest Afrimerican electric guitar peer, jazz man Charlie Christian, but what Smith lacked in technicality, he made up for in joyous enthusiasm. Other artists featured on the disc, labeled as by Elder Utah Smith and his COGIC Friends, include contemporaries such as pianist Arizona Dranes and singing pastor Elder Curry and folks he influenced, including prolific guitar gal Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Reverend Robert Ballinger. As for Smith, each of his three singles for sale each contained a version of his theme song-what else?-"Two Wings."

Abbott's research, especially his interviews with Smith's children, make for a riveting read about a singular figure in U.S, musical and ecclesiastical history. The CD makes for a compact starting point for exploring soul gospel prior to and during its critical consensus golden age (post-Word War II to roughly 1964). The whole package makes for a slim, but vital, volume to add to Christian music's development. 

Jamie Lee Rake

CaseQuarter: http://www.aumfidelity.com/casequarter.html

*A fine place to hear Smith's six commercial single sides in the context of other artists who wielded guitars to further the Lord's Kingdom is four-CD, 96 song Blind Willie Johnson and the Guitar Evangelists: http://www.jsprecords.com/id8.html