Article from December 1998

	As featured in December 1998
	Steelin' A Way

Rochester, New York Musical Stars Cultivate an Old and Noble Art

By Doug Curry and Vincent F.A. Golphin

In 1997, Arhoolie Records of California highlighted a form of "roots" music almost totally undocumented to that point. Sacred Steel Guitars, a series of four CD recordings, showcased a time-honored and extensively practiced form of African-American religious music. Volume II, Pass Me Not, by The Campbell Brothers of Rochester, New York, a gospel quartet, emerged as a favorite of the public. Now, the group members' hands are full.

Sacred Steel Guitars almost went unnoticed amid a plethora of New Age, hip hop, acid jazz and modern blues releases. Arhoolie is a folk label, miniscule compared with the big commercial outfits such as Columbia and Sony. But the word spread fast among hard core folk, gospel and blues fans. Now, the Pentecostal musicians are international stars.

In early November, the steel guitar players turned out the Berlin Jazz Festival. Producers said the brothers, "left no attending soul untouched." The group shared a bill with jazz greats such as David Murray, John Scofield, Pee Wee Ellis and Oscar Brown Jr. Best of all, the group is the first act invited back in 35 years. That's just another of many high points in The Campbell Brothers' new career. Last summer, they played at the Lowell (Massachusetts) Folk Fest, alongside blues greats Marva Wright and Little Milton.

For some 25 years, the group-which includes siblings Darick, Chuck and Phil Campbell, singer Katie Jackson and Carlton, Phil's son-were seldom heard outside of their father's church, The House of God, a Keith Dominion, Holiness-Pentecostal church, formerly located on North Goodman Street in Rochester, New York, and now relocated in a new edifice in Rush, New York (see the August 1998 issue of about...time). In playing to accompany the service and the choir, Chuck Campbell says he is taking on a role usually filled by organists in African-American churches.

"We're like the third generation in what has been dubbed 'Sacred Steel' by Bob Stone, our producer at Arhoolie," says Phil. "In reality, Willie Eason started that tradition when he began playing the steel guitar in our church. What it really comes down to is the steel guitar mimicking the human voice."

The music sounds like the strains of vintage Hank Williams and other early country and western music singers. It's a style most people don't associate with black music.

"Really, though, the style we play goes back further than that," Phil Campbell said. "It is really inspired by the same thing that gave us the country and western steel guitar playing-the Hawaiian music sounds of the 1920s and 1930s."

Arhoolie Records is an original American music outlet that has been owned and operated by California folklorist Chris Strachwitz for over 35 years. It offers an extensive catalogue of blues, zydeco, Cajun, hillbilly, Tex-Mex and assorted styles of American and world folk music. That such a folk-oriented label should be the first to advance this music to the public at large, is itself of providential inspiration.

Arhoolie's ability to tend to the preservation of the natural sound and temperament of the music is vital to retaining its purity. This is paramount to a form of music that is unspoiled by commercial demands and meddling. Even more, "sacred steel" was rarely heard outside southern Holiness-Pentecostal circles.

The House of God in Rush is a branch of the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of Truth Without Controversy, founded in 1903 by Mary Magdela Tate. When she died in 1930, the Holiness-Pentecostal denomination split into the Lewis, McLeod and Keith Dominions. It was in Florida's Keith and Jewel Dominions where the music really gained prominence. In general, most of the sacred steel guitarists play and minister in the southeastern quadrant of the United States. Many have never performed for anyone but their families and House of God congregations.

"People ask about the use of this kind of guitar music in church," Chuck Campbell said. "Well, it was like anything else-necessity being the mother of invention."

In many African-American churches, the give and take between the pastor and his congregation is often punctuated and accompanied by music. Because of the ability of the guitar to sing or "talk back" the way the congregation did with its preacher, the blues playing technique was favored by many black guitar evangelists of the 1920s and 1930s. The most notable of these was Blind Willie Johnson of Texas.

"Well, in the poverty of Florida back in the Depression years, it was simply much cheaper to use an electric Hawaiian guitar than it was to have an organ brought in," Chuck Campbell said. "And the Hawaiian music was so popular then, it was an easy thing for people to accept."

The truth is, Hawaiian music was so much in vogue that it reached all segments of the American society at the time. The fad began about 1915. It reached new levels of popularity in the mid-1930s when the Hawaiian steel or lap guitars went electric. In fact, the vast popularity of the Hawaiian steel guitar did spawn a strain of popular secular music in both the white and African-American communities in the rural South.

Country and western playing was one offshoot. Another was a cruder form of "slide" guitar playing favored by blues players in the impoverished black bottoms. Played on cheap, mail-order acoustic guitars instead of the more expensive electric steel guitar, the style was performed by sliding the neck of a bottle, or a metal tube across the guitar strings to produce a whining, voice-like sound.

"So, on the one hand, you had the country players creating a type of music for their honky-tonks and hoedowns," Phil explained. "Most people know about that. But what people don't know is that on Sundays there were some very accomplished players who used these Hawaiian steel guitar techniques to accompany church services."

Amazingly, as they take their place in the long lineage of black guitarists in sacred music, the Campbells know nothing of Blind Willie Johnson or others like him. They never heard of the flamboyant 1940s and 1950s guitar evangelist, the Reverend Utah "I Got Two Wings" Smith, or the great street evangelist and guitarist, the Reverend Gary Davis of New York City.

Their entire musical upbringing was at the hands of the House of God Church. Upon hearing the Campbells, one realizes that this speaks volumes for the depth and quality of the church's musical tradition.

Keith and Jewell Dominion lore dubs Willie Claude Eason, a sharecropper's son from Schley County, Georgia, "the father of steel gospel guitar." The 13th of 18 children born to Addie and Henry Eason, turned his piano and guitar skills to God in thanksgiving for a healing. At 77, he still pushes the hard-driving blues sound from the steel strings. The Campbells are proud to share that tradition.

True to the mass media penchant for labeling running to hyperbole, Chuck Campbell has been called the Django Reinhardt, the Jimi Hendrix and the Van Halen of the sacred steel. Someone obviously has missed the point.

"I've been playing for a long time, trying to measure up and build my stature within the community of church steel guitarists," he said. "To think of playing funk or rock, or any of those things really has not entered into it. We are meant to make a joyful noise, to be within our congregations' music. My goal has been to be one of the best steel players in our church's tradition. Then when we are at a church convention, and someone says there goes Willie Eason or Sonny Treadway, they might also say, 'Hey! Chuck Campbell is here, too!'"

Phil Campbell stressed that the steel guitar is only a part of the overall House of God musical tradition. He said all kinds of singing and playing goes along with the church service. So, growing up in the church, most youngsters sing, some play an instrument. "But, make no mistake about it, the steel guitar is what all the youngsters have their hearts set on playing," he said.

Older brother Chuck began playing drums in church as a youth, then moved up to lap steel guitar, then on to the more formidable pedal steel guitar. Consistent with that tradition, Phil's 13-year-old son, Carlton, is the phenomenal drummer of the family group. His dad used to quiet him during service by sitting the boy near the drums. Darick plays an eight-string steel guitar. Phil plays electric guitar and bass. On "Pass Me Not," the ensemble is augmented by the addition of the dynamic singer Katie Jackson and electric guitarist Charles Flenory. Still, it is Chuck Campbell who has garnered most of the media and popular attention in the wake of the 1997 CD.

"Music is universal," he said. "You know what? We got a call for an interview from this big, well known music magazine. And I figured, 'Wow! Arhoolie is a small label and we're gospel players, not rock 'n roll. So, how did they even hear about us?' So I asked the guy, and he told me there were some country and western players in Nashville, Tennessee, who had heard our record and called him up ravin' about it. It kind of blew my mind."

The article by Robert Stone in Living Blues' September/October 1998 issue is one of many of the group's recent recognitions. In July, The Campbells and Kate Jackson were the cover feature in Share, Canada's largest ethnic newspaper. They've even been profiled in Toronto's and Rochester's alternative weeklies.

From neighborhood church to the world's concert stages. From being totally unknown to being in demand for interviews and reviews by Guitar Player, Living Blues, Real Blues and Downbeat magazines, there go Rochester, New York's Campbell Brothers. Now they must balance the demands of their day jobs, families, the church and a growing legion of music lovers who marvel at their playing.

"It's all been great, but I can tell you there's no place like home," said Phil Campbell. "You know, when we get back to our little church, there may be fewer people. But they are our own people, in our own town, in our own church. We don't get paid. We never did. But we don't have to tell them when to clap or stomp their feet, or shout back at the singers."

The sons of Bishop Charles Campbell, the House of God's pastor, are old enough (in their 40s) that a little attention doesn't disrupt their lives. They see themselves as working class, church-going, family men. Of that they are proud.

Chuck still makes service calls for Rochester Gas & Electric. Phil sells computer chips for Motorola. Darick is working back in Macon, Georgia. Carlton, the youth, studies hard at Rochester's East High School.

Fully aware of how easy it would be to be taken totally out of context and to be misunderstood, Chuck Campbell prefers to think of the unifying force of the music. " We've been blessed to be able to play out of the country, in places where they don't even speak English," he said. "But when the spirit in the music begins to move, so does the audience. Oh sure, we might have to show them when and where to clap their hands or answer us back, but in their own way they eventually get it."

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Steelin' A Way