The Church of the Good Groove, Jackie Shane's Nashville Monument & the Dove Awards

Over the last month, #GodsMusicIsMyLife has gained almost 200 new subscribers! It’s astounding!

If you are a free subscriber, I encourage you to upgrade to a paid subscription for $8 a month if you’d like to support the archival and narrative work that I am doing. You can also contribute via the GoFundMe for the New York Community Choir book or via CashApp.

I’m grateful to each of you for the ways you are helping to spread the word about my work!

Hello all!

What a response to last week’s newsletter!

It was heartening to hear from people who remembered the music of Sheila Walsh, Steve Taylor and Rez….and even more exciting to hear from people who had NOT…and ventured into their work for the first time. It makes my heart glad!

I’m in the middle of a few projects and articles that will be rolling out over the next few weeks…but I have some things to share!

Church of the Good Groove

In June, SoulandJazz.com reached out to me about curating an hour’s worth of music for their #ChurchOfTheGoodGroove. Since my days hosting “Out the Box with Tim Dillinger” almost a decade ago, this has been something I love to do! My second playlist just went live and I wanted to make sure you knew about it. I do my best to not be predictable, so expect deep cuts by artists you know like Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Candi Staton and Rizen and tracks by lesser known artists you may have never heard before like Shawna P., Eric Robinson and Living Faith Mass Choir. Take a listen here!

Jackie Shane’s Nashville Monument

Image courtesy of the Jackie Shane Estate

A few weeks back, I wrote an article for UDiscoverMusic about Nashville’s famed Nashboro Records. One of Nashboro’s session musicians throughout the 1950s was a young Nashville native, Jackie Shane, who played drums on Nashboro’s R&B and gospel recordings. She joined a traveling carnival and began performing throughout the south, ultimately migrating to Canada where her career as a performing and recording artist took flight. Infusing the gospel spirit with soul, Jackie stood out. She told writer Rob Bowman, "When you get into the spirit it takes over. People who don't know think [the spirit] is just a word, but it's not. It's almost like [being] in another dimension, because you're no longer in charge. But you're being driven so beautifully that you want it never to end."

Jackie ended her music career in 1971 and lived a quiet life until her death in 2019. At the advent of the internet, the world began to re-discover Jackie, now regarded as a trans icon, who laid the groundwork for artists like Sylvester, RuPaul, Billy Porter among others. She was acknowledged in a Toronto (the city she considered to be her home) mural that paid homage to the city’s musical history, placing her in the center alongside Ronnie Hawkins, B.B. King, Muddy Waters and others in 2016.

And now, Nashville is ready to acknowledge this international star whose roots were in our city. Nashville historian Sarah Calise has been working with Jackie’s family to install a historical marker in North Nashville in honor of this pioneer. In an interview last week, Sarah told me, “I've met so many young trans folks and non-binary folks in Nashville who really just are inspired by her story and so I thought, you know, we really need to create something permanent that would honor her legacy.” Sarah met with Jackie’s family to craft the text for the marker which the Metro Historical Commission approved in May.

Sarah and Jackie’s family created a GoFundMe to manufacture and install the marker and they are just $1000 away from the goal. If you would like to contribute to the campaign, just click here!

Stay tuned for details about the installation ceremony!

Dove Award Consideration

For any subscribers who are voting members of the Gospel Music Association, I wanted to make you aware of two favorites of #GodsMusicIsMyLife that are on the ballot of potential Dove Award nominees.

The voting deadline is TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT, so if you haven’t yet cast your ballot, be sure to remember Everett Drake, formerly of Nashboro Records’ Johnson Ensemble and Twenty-First Century Singers, who is on the ballot in the Rap/Hip-Hop Recorded Song of the Year for “Amen Right There,” his collaboration Emcee N.I.C.E and Angela Primm, who is in two categories: Traditional Gospel Recorded Song of the Year and Traditional Gospel Album of the Year.