Chapter Three
The Church Piano and the Gate
About that time, Mama started taking us to East Side Assembly of God in Athens, and the music there opened up a whole new world for me.
Pastor Willie Stanley played the harmonica, and the way he played it sounded like a train rolling through. I remembered Roy Feagin from my daddy’s band and how much I’d admired his playing, and hearing that same kind of sound in church made something start to connect in my mind. It was like two different parts of my life were meeting in the same place.
We didn’t have a piano player at the church, so I started experimenting. I’d bring my guitar with me, play a chord, and then go over to the piano and try to find that same chord by ear. I didn’t know what I was doing in any formal sense, but I kept working at it, just listening, trying, and adjusting until little by little it started to make sense.
One day, Sister Emma Stanley—the pastor’s wife—said something to me I’ve never forgotten. She told me, “The Lord doesn’t have to send us a piano player. He can raise one up among us. I think it won’t be long until you’re our pianist.” I didn’t say much at the time, but that stayed with me. Somebody saw something in me I hadn’t quite seen in myself yet.
Before long, I started playing piano during song services, and I joined the youth band. We traveled around to different churches, and during revivals musicians would show up with whatever they had—guitars, fiddles, accordions, tambourines, mandolins—and we’d play like we meant it. Those were good nights, good for the soul.
Not long after that, I started visiting a nearby church called Lakeside House of Prayer. It was pastored by Carl Day, and he let me come in and practice any time I wanted. He had a guitar there that I loved to play, and I’d spend hours working on songs, just trying to get better and trying to find my sound.
One week during a revival, an evangelist’s son came in and played piano in a style I’d never heard before. It was fast, boogie-woogie, real similar to something you might hear from Jerry Lee Lewis, but gospel. I was hooked, and I started trying to play like that, banging out those high keys and putting everything I had into it.
After one of those services, Pastor Willie pulled me aside. He didn’t scold me or make a big deal out of it. He just said, “Some of the older folks don’t like it when you bang on the high keys.” That was enough.
An older lady started playing piano regularly after that, but whenever she wasn’t there, I’d step in, and when I did, I made sure to tone things down a bit. I learned something right there—not just about music, but about people. There’s a time to let it rip, and a time to pull it back.
Around that same time, my friend Ralph bought an old upright piano from a church next door for fifty dollars, and later on he sold it to me. We loaded that piano up in the back of Daddy’s truck and hauled it through town, and I sat back there playing it the whole way like it was the most natural thing in the world. People stared, some laughed, some probably shook their heads, and one of Daddy’s friends said, “He’s double-clutchin’ that piano.” Where I come from, that was high praise.
When I was nineteen years old, I wrote my first song on that piano. It was called “Willing Heart.” Pastor Willie loved that song and would request it during services, and sometimes he’d drive all the way out to our place to pick us up for church. I’d be waiting down by the cattle guard to open the gate so he wouldn’t have to get out of the car, and we’d head on in together.
Years later, after he passed away, I found myself thinking about those drives and sometimes picturing it this way—one day, when my time comes, he’ll be there again, waiting at the gate.
Looking back now, I can see how much those years shaped me. The music, the people, and the quiet encouragement—that’s where I started to understand that music wasn’t just something you played. It was something that could lift people up, bring them together, and stay with them long after the last note faded. Years later, I’d write songs that carried those roots with me, like “Blackjack, Texas” and “Honkytonk and Holy Roller Music.”