![]() The phonograph needle nestled in comfortably rendering her Precious Lord and How I Got Over. And of course no Gospel collection could feign completeness without a helping or two of Mahalia Jackson. I liked Edward Hawkins’ Oh Happy Day James Cleveland was pushing the envelope too. ![]() But at Sweetie’s house Gospel ruled the roost. At home with mom and dad, my sister and I would hear R & B and Soul. Music – gospel music – is part of the soundtrack bed upon which the movie that is my early childhood rests. I’d go fetch things for her – that’s what little boys do – and we’d sing hymns together. We’d watch soap operas together on Channel 4. But it stood as tall as any skyscraper to me because that’s where Sweetie lived and shaped some of my earliest thoughts and impressions. As Brooklyn buildings go, little about that one distinguishes it much from any of the thousands of others that stipple the borough’s landscape. Stephen’s Lutheran School each day and ride the B-49 bus down Rogers Avenue to Lenox then walk about a block to her building. Traveling to her home was part of my daily after school routine. ![]() For a chunk of my boyhood, Sweetie lived (with three of my aunts) in an apartment building on Brooklyn, New York’s Lenox Road. Particularly, it’s the time spent that decade with my Grandmother, Sweetie, that leaps to memory. It’s fitting that on the night I sit to launch this weblog my thoughts race back to my own launching pad – the 1970s. ![]()
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