Small town churches, shape-note song books and Ross Greenlee - Stories for my grandchildren

 Recently,  Richard Beck, author and professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University wrote  on his blog “Experimental Theology”  about the history of shape-notes and the song books that were so influential in the history of the Churches of Christ. It's an interesting read, and you can find it here.

In his blog, Richard said, “I grew up with shape-notes.” I did too. In Breckenridge Texas, which means I have to talk about Ross Greenlee.

Ross Greenlee was the song leader in the church where I grew up. He was a barber by trade, and I guess the Barber Shop Quartet tradition was a big part of Ross' life; he loved to sing. And every Wednesday night he instructed the high school class in the best tradition of  A Capella singing.

This was the era of all day singing and dinner on the ground, and sometimes there was just singing and no dinner in some nearby community. We sang songs out of the “Great Songs of the Church” song book (song book – not a hymnal), in four part harmony using shape notes.

If it was a new song, we didn’t sing the words at first, rather we sang the name of the note. For example, if we were learning “We Praise Thee O God” we would sing, “so do do do do; do re me me me me; do me so so so la so me me re re re.”  With each part singing different note names, it was often rather calamitous, but we learned to sing every song that song leader knew.

And of course all the boys took turns leading songs, working on that song-leader-hand motion (quickly learning that 4-4 time was the easiest to lead) and when the elders weren’t listening we even had some mixed quartets from time to time.

I don’t know how long Ross taught that class. From before I was in high school till the time my son was in high school at least. I made a trip home for a retirement celebration for Ross when Rob was a Freshman.

And there is a side note about Ross. If you were ever asked to lead singing, you didn’t have to pick out your songs. All you needed to do was pick up a song book in the auditorium – almost any song book - and in the fly-leaf you would find a selection of song numbers that Ross had penciled in at some time or another. Three songs, one for after the prayer, one for the invitation and the final song.