The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life Archives – Anita Garner

A New Story!

The author, Nita Faye Jones 1950s

“Her father was a Pentecostal minister who never told a lie in his life. Until he did. And it was so big, it stayed with the family forever.”

“The Only Lie” is my first appearance in Salvation South, a fascinating online magazine celebrating all things Southern, the people, the music, food, culture, stories, poetry and more. I’m pleased to be one of the writers featured there.

My new story is available to read online now and it’s free. It’s from my book in progress. “Musical Houses” (working title) is a collection of stories and essays. It follows many of the characters from the book, “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life”and introduces new ones. Many are part of the musical migration from the Deep South to Southern California in the 1950s.

Here’s a direct link to “The Only Lie.” https://www.salvationsouth.com/the-only-lie-anita-garner/

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Christmas, 2023

I haven’t sent Christmas cards in a while, though I love receiving yours and your newsletters and pictures. I hold memories close and this is a time for being in touch.

Until recently I lived in Mill Valley, California in a cottage surrounded by redwoods and fog. I loved every minute of it. Daughter, Cathleen and the grand, Caedan Ray lived in Woodland Hills. We commuted to visit from Northern to Southern California, reverse and repeat. Things change. I’m older. My immediate family is tiny. We decided to merge. Less time on I-5 and more time together. Sacramento is home base now. We lived here decades ago when Cath was little. In our neighborhood, it seems every time a home sells, the new occupants are San Francisco commuters.

An actor friend, mentioning a TV show or movie he’s in, prefaces it with “SSP” (Shameless Self Promotion) which is the only way we’ll know the what and the where, and I still don’t know a better way to update what I’m doing except with a bit of SSP. It’s been a while, so in case I haven’t mentioned it, I finally finished the book I was writing. It’s “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” published by University of Alabama Press. Sold everywhere. Updates will follow at www.anitagarner.com.

Libraries have always been the goal. I hope these stories about Southern musical pioneers, my parents among them, will always be available. Once in a while I need to drop in at a library to make sure it’s really happened. Friends sent this picture from Boston Public Library, one of the most beautiful libraries I’ve ever seen. Daddy and Mother are walking in some high cotton in this music section with Marvin Gaye and Judy Garland.

Many scenes in the book were previewed in theatre performances in Los Angeles years ago, when we put The Joneses, their family and other music makers onstage. Talented directors, actors, singers, musicians and audiences added the magic, bringing the stories to life.

The Joneses’ 1950s recording sessions have since been restored as “Fern Jones The Glory Road” released by music label, Numero Group. They re-mastered the album Mother recorded in Nashville for Dot Records and also preserved vintage tracks with both Daddy and Mother for downloading from an earlier album. Songs Mother wrote are featured today in movies and TV shows all over the world and their music is sold everywhere.

Director, Greg North Zerkle (https://gregorynorthactor.com) and I are headed back to theatres. We’re putting together a new play-with-music, this time, based on the book. Full circle. Stories-stage-book-stage. Rewrites are underway. Greg commutes between NYC and L.A and we work on the phone while he travels around, doing what he does, acting, singing, dancing, directing and what-all. When I hand over this version, he’ll search for a stage, maybe New York, maybe Los Angeles, and we’ll follow “The Glory Road” where it takes us.

On to the holidays. At Thanksgiving, the girls and I cooked every traditional Southern dish, the way we do every year, exactly the way Gramma K did it. For Christmas we decided on fireplace, lasagna, movie and dessert. I hope you enjoy the season exactly the way you choose.

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Click picture to visit my website

Outside Again

By Anita Garner

Happy people in Blithedale Canyon,
Mill Valley, CA

Finally some of us are seeing each other in person again. It’s been so long. It wasn’t just two years of not gathering, it was also a lot of booking then un-booking during our mutual commitment to staying safe.

I was invited to attend an in-person luncheon last week to discuss my book. If you’re new to this protracted book release story all you need to know is that “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” was released last year into the pandemic. All book tour plans changed, not just for me but for all authors. Some were cancelled, others switched to zoom appearances.

High praise for this gadget I’m in love with. It’s been zoom-ing with me for a while and now it goes traveling too. I spotted it during a CBS-TV interview with Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny a while back when they recounted their (remote) co-authoring of a new book. I load songs onto tablet or phone to demonstrate music. Last week’s hostess has Alexa so all she needed was a list of the songs I would play. Alexa had all but one and my trusty iPad carried that one.

This tablet/phone holder swivels,
raises and lowers and has a weighted bottom
(you should pardon the expression.)

We planned to gather in Marin County on a beautiful Spring day. After not going out much for a while I was a bit behind in the wardrobe department. This trip was a good reason to make the annual transfer. My closet was still stocked with flannel shirts while Spring had crept in again. I put flannel into storage and brought out floral prints.

We were invited to Marilyn’s home to share potluck lunch on her beautiful deck in the trees. Potluck lunch. Friends. Trees. Those things can make me smile for days.

Elaine shuttled some of us up the hill in her snappy electric Tesla. Tricia surprised us with an old fashioned raisin pie baked in honor of Sister Fern’s pies featured in The Glory Road. I’d like to stress here that in-person pie is much more fun than virtual pie. It was delicious.

Another happy combination: Platters of good food and thoughtful conversations. The group was ready with questions and those who hadn’t yet read the book knew its themes and shared personal observations. We talked about the South and music and food and religion and family.

As we introduced ourselves around the tables we were invited to state one thing for which we’re grateful. Jan offered a toast for the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson which was happening as we gathered.

Any writer would be honored to be among this group of good souls and open hearts and while I remain happy to zoom everywhere, connecting in person is a gift I’m moving up near the top of my gratitude list.

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If your group would like to book a Glory Road discussion, there’s a contact form at my website. www.anitagarner.com.

“The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” is available wherever books are sold. My publisher, University of Alabama Press, offers a discount for groups or ask your local library to order copies in advance for your group in hardcover, eBook and audiobook.

Have you heard? Our kids don’t want our stuff.

By Anita Garner

I’ve read several columns lately reminding seniors to pare down, don’t leave it all for our heirs to do. Lots of reminders about this from AARP. I did pare down some after each parent passed but you wouldn’t think so to look at the number of boxes I still have.

Mother kept everything, not as a hoarder but as a person who knew what she had and why. She labeled and neatly cataloged containers. Did I mention there was SO MUCH stuff? I’ve already been through several rounds of decision making about what to keep, what to sell and what to donate.

Thank goodness her songs are preserved so our family can continue sharing the music she wrote and recorded. Her scrapbooks have also been a valuable resource for me as a writer. The fact that Fern Jones was an organized keeper of things turned out to be important for future generations. We have professional help with her music (“Fern Jones: The Glory Road”) and song publishing and now there’s a book (“The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” from University of Alabama Press, available wherever you buy books) which shares stories and photos from her archives, all because she was a faithful and detailed keeper of things.

The photo up top is of two small things I choose to keep nearby, representing both the happy and sad. The pink bowl is from her 1950s collection. I kept only this one piece. The little brass apple is a bell – a very loud one. In her home in Palm Springs, when ALS confined her to a bedroom down a long hall, for a while she was still able to ring for us. She often rang to get one of us to put pictures of Daddy on a chest within her view. She liked to rotate her favorite pictures of him.

My daughter, Cathleen Fern, has the piano her grandmother played. Fern was crazy for pink and Cath had the piano painted. This is an old spinet, the kind that isn’t appreciating in value but provides plenty of memories at home. We also keep her guitar in view. It’s not the best guitar Mother and Daddy owned but it’s the one she played late at night while writing her songs or to comfort herself when she couldn’t sleep. When my brother and I were very young and her playing woke us in the night, she’d let us stay up if we’d sing her favorite ballads.

My latest decision is to take no position about what’s left, letting my daughter choose the next disposition of Jones memorabilia after I’m gone. There’s still a box filled with Daddy’s Bibles. His briefcase, which was his preacher’s traveling chapel, is here with sermon notes still inside. We have old photos and souvenirs from years of touring the Deep South and some of Mother’s correspondence in her fancy handwriting that I’ve read but then couldn’t throw away. Her songs-in-progress are noted in old composition books. Who could get rid of those?

I rationalize this pause in downsizing based on the fact that I have only one child and she’s an organizer and thus potentially better equipped, a generation removed from the Reverend Ray and Sister Fern Jones show.

My book is in one of my favorite magazines this month.

By Anita Garner

My gospel-singing family appears in the March, 2022 issue of Reminisce Extra magazine. I’m thrilled. My parents, Sister Fern and Brother Ray Jones, would be thrilled too. This excerpt from my book, “The Glory Road: a Gospel Gypsy Life” continues a years-long relationship with the company that publishes this magazine.

It’s from a chapter about Johnny Cash recording
a song Mother wrote.

Our family read every issue of Readers Digest until the pages were soft as tissue then we passed them along to others. Readers Digest is owned today by Trusted Media Brands, a company that also owns several other magazines. Years ago I received a gift subscription to one of their publications, “Taste Of Home” magazine, fell in love with it, saw an ad for “Reminisce” and subscribed. Every other month, it’s “Reminisce Extra.” Which brings us to today, when my advance copy arrived with a story from my new book inside.

Thanks to Trusted Media Brands’ Mary-Liz Shaw, my publisher, University of Alabama Press and UAP Marketing Director, Clint Kimberling for putting this together.

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Anita Garner’s Website

Zooming The Hard Way

By Anita Garner

My new book released a few months ago and at the same time a series of personal events happened alongside the universal one, the pandemic. For a while appearances that were meant to be in person looked fine until cancellations began again for the second time. I’ll be talking about “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” from the corner where my computer resides.

It’s time to revive still-workable parts of the plan. Zoom it is. I’m a Baby Zoomer (sorry) but even I know what needs to be done before the connection is made. I do it but then I change it.

My friend, Karin is the opposite. She also knows what needs to be done, knows what time to do it, has her routine down and is always butt-in-the-chair on time, smiling and looking great. She’s a heavyweight in her field who never leaves things to chance. Preparing for a discussion with a board of directors about a new contract, you can bet she’s done her research on the organization before all the faces click into place on her screen. Then there’s her personal ritual she describes this way:

“Hair fluffed up. Makeup on. Outfit of the day in favorite colors, spritz of Chanel. Go!”

Here’s me getting ready: Change out of plaid flannel shirt or a faded tee shirt from long ago into something that looks like a grown-up might wear it, something with buttons. Spritz water on the cowlick that recently arrived to change what was meant to be a new hairstyle but now must be adjusted because of that piece that sticks up in front. Move the monitor. Move it back. Become fixated on the background that’s showing. Get up and move the chotchkes on the bookshelves. Now engrossed in re-arranging the entire shelf. Back to the chair by the desk by the window. The light has changed. Change position again.

The call is delayed, leaving time to look at the background again, not so much for the sake of the people on the other side of Zoomland but because it’s the first time I’ve seen the room like this. Some of it I like but most things would look better on a different shelf. Mental notes about putting this over there and that over here.

Back in my seat just before the new start time. Lessons have been learned about Zoom backgrounds but now my family is moving into a new home where I’ll assess and re-assess the view I wish to present on the next call. Admit I will never be as good at this as Karin.

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I’m ready for potluck.

By Anita Garner

The tall lady on the left is the pastor’s wife, my mother,
Sister Fern Jones.

When we’re ready to gather again, a potluck is worth gathering for. Potluck meals are the best reason for church basements, community centers and multi-purpose rooms everywhere to exist. Any space that’ll hold rows and rows of folding tables covered with makeshift tablecloths is instantly inviting. And over there, along that wall, more rows of tables laden with the best food in the world brought by home cooks.

Growing up in the Deep South, bouncing back and forth on tour with our gospel singing family then settling down briefly while Daddy pastored a church, potlucks were the highlights of every stop for my brother and me. Daddy was a great natural cook. Mother, who didn’t bother with preparing day to day food, was a superb baker during her middle of the night creative sessions but both our parents were as excited as Leslie Ray and I were to meet local cooks.

Churchpeople brought their specialties. Washtubs were filled with sweet tea or lemonade. Tables like the one in the photo above featured all kinds of desserts. Kids swarmed while cooks soaked up praise for their best recipes.

In New England, where every picturesque town seems to have one or more equally picturesque churches, I heard about bean nights. Though they started in the basements and social halls connected to churches, they weren’t intended only for church-goers. They were also important fund raisers. Anyone could buy a ticket and eat their fill (two sittings per night) of beans and franks, salads and breads and, of course, desserts.

The New York Times ran a story featuring
community potluck nights. This is their photo.

That picture looks like many church basements I’ve visited since leaving my parents’ traveling ministry. The churches Daddy was in charge of were either small or in the process of being built. Growing a congregation was his specialty so we didn’t always have social spaces inside. Our potlucks became “Dinner On The Grounds,” providing opportunities for kids to run around from table to table asking for samples. Ambrosia for me. Fried chicken and deviled eggs for Leslie Ray..

Potlucks were already perfect the way they were decades ago and they don’t need much changing, though many churches I’ve attended now have big sparkly kitchens. I’m still a fan of crepe paper streamers if you’ve got them and if you can get able bodied volunteers to drape them. An old piano in the corner where anybody can play, and there’s always someone who can.

The best part then and now is joining the people around the buffet lines carrying our plates to our tables and stopping to ask, “Who made this?” then seeking out the cook to get the recipe. There’s a good chance you’ll see multiples of that casserole at the next gathering and every casserole dish will be carried home empty by a satisfied cook.

I can’t wait for the next time we’ll be standing around talking about how good these beans are.

One more for the road. Potluck pies.

“Let’s see where it lays.” Three strong women assert their right to wail.

By Anita Garner

Mahalia Jackson, Born 1911, New Orleans, Louisiana
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Born 1915, Cotton Plant, Arkansas
Fern Jones, Born 1923, El Dorado, Arkansas

These three women have much in common. The one pictured with a fan, bottom right, is my mother. Each of them, not far apart in age and born into poor families, sang church music in ways it hadn’t been heard before and took a lot of criticism for it. They moved obstacles to make things happen by force of talent and conviction, strong will, and once in a while a skillfully applied dab of charm.

I’ve recently watched profiles of two of them. “Robin Roberts Presents Mahalia” and from PBS, “American Masters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Godmother Of Rock and Roll.” Observing them at work brought familiar memories. Though I never met two of those ground-breaking women, our family heard much from mother about Mahalia and Sister Rosetta and we witnessed the one we were raised with displaying her own spine of steel, standing firm about every detail of her dream.

All three of them knew exactly what they wanted. Where did they get the gumption? The surety? The belief that the way they heard a song was the way a song was meant to sound, before anyone else sang like them? Each of them faced a combination of challenging circumstances: Poverty. Segregation. A recording industry that released only specific styles. Radio stations that didn’t play their kind of music. Fern moved straight out of honky-tonks in the Deep South into marriage with a poor country preacher and still she held onto her style until congregations eventually embraced the way she sang songs about Jesus

Fern didn’t sound like a white woman singing church music. She sounded like a Black artist and her gospel was infused with something about to become rockabilly or rock and roll, whatever the world would name it next.

Mother moved circumstances around to get every situation as close to what she envisioned as possible, all of this with no money and no connections. My brother and I watched her chatting with musicians, asking them to change something they were playing. No detail escaped her. Before letting loose with a song, she conferred with announcers and radio hosts and MCs about the exact introduction she preferred.

This display of willpower from a person with no power still surprises, but maybe it shouldn’t. Looking back at gatherings where our family was preparing to sing, I remember many times a musician would play something new, a changed tempo or a nice little run he’d thought up and Fern, employing both looks and charm, would place a hand on an arm, lean in a bit and compliment the player, then pause and say something like this,

“I like it. But let’s just try it this way first and see where it lays.”

“See where it lays” was Fern’s version of “Bless your heart, but we’ll be doing it my way.” She was committed to singing a song the way she said it “came to her.” Through the years she absorbed licks from other talented performers, of course she did, but they were always going to come out sounding like Fern.

Mahalia, Rosetta and Fern sang some of the same songs, “Precious Lord,” “Strange Things Happening” and “Didn’t It Rain.” Mother said after her Nashville recording sessions in the 50s, her record company president wanted the first single from the album to be one of the spirituals recorded earlier by Mahalia and Rosetta. Mother reminded him they had an agreement that her first release would be an original, one of the songs she wrote. As a result of their battle, nothing was released. The album was shelved in the late 50s and she fought the rest of her life to regain her masters. She won. We have them. Numero Group now handles all her music.

Here are these three women singing their versions of “Didn’t It Rain.” Rosetta takes out after it on guitar. Mahalia just flat lays it out for us, her way. Sister Fern’s having a great time with Hank Garland on guitar and Floyd Cramer on piano.

“Didn’t It Rain” – Rosetta

“Didn’t It Rain” – Mahalia

“Didn’t It Rain” – Fern

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New book available everywhere: “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life”

Planes, Trains And Automobiles

By Anita Garner

New book. New tour. We’ll get there.

We just clicked “live” on the new website built to introduce my book, “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life.” It’s less than three weeks til release date. I hope you’ll check out anitagarner.com and let me know what you think. If you read this blog regularly you already know bits of the story, but there’s more over there now and we’ll keep adding. Thanks to Steve Bradford and Authors Guild for their help.

I’m vaccinated and ready to travel if the good Lord’s willing and the crick don’t rise. I’ve been planning a trip from California to the east coast this fall to combine book appearances and visits with friends in New England. Rent a car in Boston and ramble around for a few days. I had in mind taking the train one way and then flying home. I pictured me in a little roomette on Amtrak with lots of magazines and coffee and snacks and waving out the window at places I used to live and working when I feel like it. It could be a leisurely and productive and celebratory kind of journey all in one.

Then I learned from Amtrak that wifi isn’t consistent on the train. They make that clear. I like my work and with all the connections I need to pursue, wifi is necessary.

My relatives were all train people. Gramma K migrated from the Deep South to Southern California making several trips by train before enlisting all her Southern relatives to drive cars and trucks in caravans to move her belongings. She never hired a moving van. We were the van. Every fall, she trained back from Glendale, CA to Arkansas to be with her kinfolks during leaf season. Arkansas trees are spectacular and worth the trip. She came off the train at Union Station in L.A. every time with a list of names and addresses and phone numbers from people she met onboard.

Mother never flew either, even when it would have been expeditious to do so. We moved to California when she signed a recording contract, then the record company sent her back to Nashville to record with the backup singers and musicians they’d selected. They said get here as soon as you can. She said, sure, I’ll be right there – on the train. Later she went out on a tour but got homesick for Daddy, quit part of the way through and cried all the way home – on the train.

Here I sit with my hopes for making this book launch/friend visiting trip, but no set plan for travel yet. No sense buying a super-saver airline ticket months in advance if the savings will disappear due to travel insurance and change fees.

I’ll get there in person one way or the other. Meanwhile there are virtual appearances to plan, which is how most books have been launched recently. Mother was an early adopter of innovation (except for airline travel.) She’d have been the first to understand my wifi dilemma.

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California Spring Break, 1950s Style

By Anita Garner

My brother, Leslie Ray, and I were the new kids in school all our lives. We’d enroll, stay a short while, then hit the road to tour the gospel circuit with our parents, sending homework back in the mail. At every new school, I’d stand in front of the class while the teacher introduced Nita Faye Jones, just moved here from…fill in the blank.

In California, 1957 I was new again but this time shouldn’t be as hard since Leslie Ray had been there a year already, living with Gramma K because he and Mother couldn’t occupy the same house without eruptions. Similar dispositions, Daddy said.

Mother signed a record contract and we headed out west. This time it wasn’t just a new school. This time the language was also unfamiliar. Nobody else drawled. The clothes were different. Even tougher to understand was California culture, where teens seemed to have so much control. No yessum and yessir. These kids were in possession of more than just spending money. They were confident. By the time I arrived, Leslie, who was already tall and good looking to start with, had shed his Southern accent, was a big man on campus and evidently expert at assimilation.

Observe the ritual of Senior Spring Break, 1957. The talk in the halls among seniors was, “Are you going to Bal?” That would be Balboa Island (also Newport) where groups of seniors piled into rented houses for a full week of drinking and tanning all day, partying all night, and capped it off at the end of the week by bleaching their hair blonde to prove, on returning to class, that they’d really been to Bal.

Leslie Ray and I were both redheads with fair skin. Not meant for tanning. Not safe on California beaches. In the Deep South, tanning wasn’t done on purpose. It happened because of work. We saw tans in churches and in the crowds at revivals and Singings, hard-working tans with shirt-sleeve marks.

Tanning for a redhead happens only through a lengthy process, if at all, and often involves a couple of trips to the ER on the way. Both of us had over-sunned more than once and paid the price. It must have taken Leslie a long time to build up that color a little bit at a time, but he did it. The very thing we’d avoided in the South was his Southern California Senior Spring Break badge of honor. Of course he bleached his hair. He had to prove he was at Bal.

I was invited over to Balboa just for the day if I could find someone with a driver’s license and a car to get me there. I lied to my parents about where I was going. Leslie’s friends treated me like a mascot as long as I didn’t cramp their style or tell stories later. For my day at Bal, I didn’t even pack what we then called suntan lotion. I packed a hat.

Leslie Ray and Nita Faye Jones. Senior Spring Break, 1957

I never tanned until self-tanning lotion became manageable years later, and then I applied it mostly for events. But I bleached as soon as I got out of high school, blonder and blonder for several years. I think the bleaching part made me half-assimilated and you can shorten that last word if you want to.

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