Walking by a bookstore in the airport this week, I noticed that a famed musician, Booker T. Jones, released a book.
Booker T. was instrumental in Memphis soul music and Stax Records in the ’60s and ’70s. He played on or produced an incredible number of hits and excellent songs. His jam piece, Green Onions, is his most well-known song of his own.
Stardust
He produced Willie Nelsons Stardust, a record that has been a companion to me for about 20 years. We were both born in April 1978, so we are pretty much twins. I adore this album and never tire of listening to it.
I picked up the book and flicked to the pages about Stardust. Booker T. and Willie were neighbors in Malibu and forged a friendship playing tunes from the American songbook, from memory, and loved many of the same songs.
So they decided to make an album. Over ten days, they recorded in Emmylou Harris’s house, with a mobile recording truck in the drive. I think I got that detail about Emmylou’s house, right.
The album was a Number One record on the Country Charts. Booker T. Jones was the first African American producer of a hit record in Country Music.
Willie Nelson was always seen as an outlaw who shook up country music. But for Booker T., he was a different kind of outlaw. They had both been “kicked out” by the establishment, and now their fortunes had turned around. Willie was a champion for his friend, and propelled him to riches!
Allies and Accomplices
Another Willie, Willie Jackson, writes about race and the difference between an ally and an accomplice.
An ally is supportive of those that are marginalized, but an accomplice has sacrificed to stand in solidarity by those held back by systems of injustice.
By no means do I have this figured out, I am more caught up in my own selfish nonsense and know I can do more. But I first came to see it when I was the beneficiary of the service of an accomplice. It was a whole band of them.
I had been volunteering with a leadership development ministry at Angola Prison in Lousiana for several years. Our team of white folks from the suburbs and the prison is predominantly African American and minorities. There is a leadership board of inmate pastors that are some of the righteous men I know.
One trip to Angola Prison is was in the midst of legal trouble that shook me to my core and rocked the foundation I was building my family on. I was seeking US Citizenship after being married to an American for 16 years and having two kids. Instead, I ended up in deportation proceedings and being told I received my Green Card illegally.
The magnitude of the issue far outweighed the mistake I made on my part. It seemed crazy that such a small thing could have such enormous consequences.
It was a group of men that understood how brutal the whole situation was, who helped me process it all and come to a place of peace and acceptance of the hardship amid the ridiculousness of it all.
It was men who had so little cared the most for me. On the day of one of the hearings, I was freaking out. I received emails from a couple of these men saying that they were fasting and praying until I received a favorable decision.
On one afternoon down at the prison, they came around me and prayed for me for what seemed to be a couple of hours. However long it was, I didn’t want it to end.
It was like they reset the foundation that had been shaken, or dug a deeper foundation that could withstand more significant tremors and support a more massive structure.
Through tears, I told them how much their support meant to me, how I didn’t deserve their outpouring of love and asked why did they care about me so much?
A man replied:
“What is happening to you is happening to us, because we are connected to each other.”
I don’t fully grasp it, but I pray one day I will. At the time, it was so profound that I pulled out a blank note card, wrote it down, and stuck it in the back of my bible.
That simple statement reverberates around my soul.
We are all in this together.
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Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Philippians 2:4