Variations: Moving Into
Evangelism
A BOY HOLDS a private worry while growing up: the worry of what he will be some day—the problem of a direction to take in order to fit into an already crowded world. Things were happening too fast in my life for the direction to cause me much concern. "You were busy playing for church services," said a man who knew me then, "while your legs were still dangling!"
At school, there was the high-school band, where I played the drums and the trombone—but not both at the same time! All of the musical world belonged to me, and reached out to envelop my days.
A visiting evangelist, the Reverend Bert Bruffett, came to our church to hold meetings, and he asked me to play for him in revival campaigns during the summer when I would be out of school. I was eager to go, and my parents gave their consent. That summer I played in tent meetings, mostly in Ohio.
Back in those days, we did not have the fine amplifying
Page 22
equipment which is available today, and of course, the pianos I had to play were atrocious. Once in awhile someone will say, "Oh, you can make any piano sound good!" How I wish this were true!
Another hazard in our tent meetings was the weather. Aside from the bake-oven temperatures during hot weather, and chilling drafts on cool nights, there were the wind and the rain storms which would flatten the tent. It was more than discouraging to visit the site of a meeting the morning after a severe storm and find the tent blown down, and the ground a quagmire.
But I shouldn't elaborate on the normal difficulties. Reverend and Mrs. Bruffett were more than kind to me, and I found myself enjoying the people who invited us into their homes. I found that playing the piano brought the extra dividends of automatic friendships, of doors opening to bring experiences which were gratifying in every way. (And I found myself liking this kind of goings-on!)
The Lord did bless our work, and souls were brought to Christ—a miracle which never ceases to thrill me. I am sure that God was preparing me for my future work in music and evangelism.
I kept on with my music lessons and my practicing. I did not take lessons consistently through the years, but I was to have two more fine teachers—Mrs. Blanche Johnson, of Beverly Hills, who was a tiny person with a great heart, and who spared no effort to inspire me to progress deeper into the more difficult music; and Miss Edith Knox, of Los Angeles, who was herself a concert pianist, and a pupil of Siloti (former pupil of Liszt) at the Julliard School of Music. With both of these teachers
Page 23
I pursued the study of the classics.
By this time I was familiar with almost all of the great composers. In addition to my work in Bach, I now enjoyed the Beethoven sonatas, and almost all of the works of Chopin. I also became familiar with the works of Mozart, who is another of my favorites. I have mastered some of the works of the modern school, but with the possible exception of Prokofiev, they do not hold the appeal for me that I find in the great classics.
If you lived next door to me, you might be surprised to hear me practicing, not so much on the hymns and gospel songs, as on the classics. When I am working out a new hymn arrangement, of course, I spend a good deal of time practicing that particular number; but I have found that if I spend sufficient time on the great classics, the hymns just come naturally.
I believe that when you improvise, what you are producing is the sum total of what you have learned. For instance, after a service for which I had played, a lady came up to me and said, "I know you must have practiced a lot of Bach—I could hear it in your playing." Counterpoint is a large part of great music, and can best be learned from the master of counterpoint, Johann Sebastian Bach.
When I was about seventeen we began attending the Paul Rader Tabernacle in Los Angeles. Dr. Rader had a great work in Chicago, and had decided to open a work on the West Coast. He sent his associate, Dr. William B. Hogg, to take charge of the tabernacle in Los Angeles, and it was a tremendously successful work.
They were looking for a pianist, and the business
Page 24
manager asked me to drop in to his office and talk to him. I'll never forget that experience! His first words to me were, "Well, Rudy, what's the cheapest you can work for?" How do you answer a question like that? Actually, we needed the money. (My father, who was a carpenter, was out of work a good deal of the time.) These were the depression years, and every little bit helped.
At any rate, I began playing at the Paul Rader Tabernacle, and I loved the work. I enjoyed, especially, playing the fine concert grand piano which graced the platform—my first grand piano!
In addition to playing for the congregation, my duties at the tabernacle involved accompanying soloists, duets, trios, quartets, and of course, the choir. The art of accompanying is a difficult and complex one. There are differing theories as to the correct role of the accompanist. Some singers, for instance, believe that the accompanist should be heard only faintly in the background. Others believe that the soloist and the accompanist should be a team, and that the accompanist should complete, and complement, the soloist's effort.
I can remember occasions when I would be accompanying a singer, and the singer would make a mistake. What would happen? Well, the soloist would turn and give me a withering glance, as if to say, "It's your fault. You threw me off!"
By this time in my career, I had learned to transpose rather easily from one key to another. This ability is an indispensable one to an accompanist, but it did not always save the day for me. I recall one lady soprano who had a nerve-wracking tendency to go sharp on her high notes. I tried playing louder, so she would hear the
Page 25
note better, but this didn't seem to help. Finally I decided upon a rather drastic solution. The next time she went sharp, I would simply transpose the music up a half step, and voila, we would be in the same key! Sure enough, the next time she sang, she went a full half-step sharp on a high note, and I immediately went into the key a half-step higher. However, when she heard the piano change keys, she realized she had sharped, and dropped back into the original key! You can imagine where that left me!
Many of the friendships formed at the Paul Rader Tabernacle have been lasting ones. I became acquainted with the A.E. Mitchell family, all of whom, as far as I know, are either missionaries or ministers. I received a note from Mrs. Mitchell at Christmastime in which she said, "Hubert and Rachel are having a rich ministry in Indonesia. David and Helen are in India, Jean and Kaare in Iran, Murray and Esther in Ethiopia, and Marietta and Joe in India. All of the family are out of the USA except Bryant."
The Mitchells were very close to Dr. Paul Rader, and occupied an important place in the Paul Rader Tabernacle. Hubert Mitchell, Paul Fleming, George Griesinger and several other young men invited me to private prayer meetings, where we all knelt together and, one by one, offered ourselves and our lives to the Lord's service.
God has seen fit to use all of us. Hubert is well known as an outstanding missionary both in foreign lands and in the United States, particularly in Chicago in the ministry of working with Christian businessmen and where he also did door-to-door evangelism. Paul Fleming
Page 26
served the foreign mission field, and established the New Tribes Mission in Chico, California, dedicated to train families for missionary service—a much needed effort. He died in a plane crash several years ago, serving his mission and his Lord. George Griesinger has been faithfully holding services in the Los Angeles County jails Sunday after Sunday. The Lord has blessed my own ministry as pianist-at-large these many years. What a rich fellowship these gentlemen and I will hold in heaven some day, as we gather around the throne to talk about the glories into which the Lord has led us!
Among other aspects of the tabernacle ministry was the radio program. This was a new and interesting world for me, and was to become a tremendously important factor in my life. We had a daytime program over a local radio station, and I found that I especially enjoyed the challenge presented by radio. In those days, practically every program was live. Nowadays, with most of our programs taped, if someone makes a mistake, or strikes a false note, or is just not satisfied with his performance, he simply does it over again. But in those days, everything went on the air: mistakes, boners, wrong notes—everything!
Hubert Mitchell played the accordion and sang, and other singers from the tabernacle also participated on the program, which lasted for a half hour. The station organist assisted in the accompanying and, of course, I presided at the piano.
Dr. William Hogg was the speaker on the program, and I should say that he made an indelible impression upon my life. His messages had a simplicity about them that made them unforgettable. He was a master at telling
Page 27
stories, but it was not just the stories he told—it was the way he told them. There was humor, and there was pathos in his messages—but underlying all of his preaching was a love of the Word of God, and a faithfulness to its teachings. His manner caught on like wildfire in the Southland, and people in the Christian world began to love him like everyone loved Will Rogers in those days.
Dr. Hogg was to become a spiritual father to me. He enjoyed my hymn arrangements, and never missed an opportunity of saying, "He does right well . . . for a country boy." Because of his rising popularity and his generosity in sharing the limelight, he was as much responsible as anyone for bringing the musical part of evangelism—and my own particular contribution—to the attention of the public. He also observed the serious study I gave to my Bible, and later, when he moved into his own work, he would put me in charge of the young people. One day he was to say, "Rudy, I think you should become an ordained minister, and I know I can arrange it. If you will preach a sermon to that great overflow crowd in the tent, we'll take a vote of the congregation, and through the authority the Lord has vested in me, I can give you the Sacrament of Ordination."
The very next Sunday, he made the announcement that I was going to preach. On the spur of the moment he turned to me, and said, "Rudy, what do you think you will preach about?" I had been doing some studying on the Parables. Without hesitation, I said, "The Prodigal Son."
"How do you like that!" Dr. Hogg ejaculated in his
Page 28
warm way. "You don't have to tell this boy to prepare a sermon. He has one all ready for the occasion! He's an up-and-coming-young man, I can tell you!" But that was to be in my future, the culmination of a long and happy relationship with a very great man.
Dr. Paul Rader came out to the West Coast and began presenting his "Back Home Hour" on Sunday nights, a program which had become well known in the Midwest. This program was a full hour, and went on (live, of course!) from ten until eleven on Sunday nights. This, after a full day of services at the tabernacle, was a fatiguing experience, to say the least. This, too, was the beginning of an impossible Sunday schedule which would persist throughout my adult lifetime.
