Mustang Sally Comes to Church

The guitarists on the worship team, Tim and Terry, are 70's rock-and-rollers, like me, but they also have a real interest in the blues. Sometimes at practice, we'll just jam with a blues progression. It's fun, and you can do all kinds of things instrumentally.

A couple weeks ago, in a moment of whimsy, I downloaded a bunch of versions of "Mustang Sally" from the iTunes store. Probably ten versions. Then I burned them all onto CDs and gave them to Tim and Terry. Just for their listening pleasure. The next week at practice, Terry was playing some cords, and I immediately recognized "Mustang Sally." Before long, we were all jamming to that particular cord progression.

Last Thursday at practice, we were batting around various ideas. I suggested that one of them rewrite the words of "Mustang Sally" to give the song a Christian slant. Both Tim and Terry are very talented at doing stuff like that (in addition to writing original music). Then yesterday, as we prepared to practice in preparation for the first church service, Terry told me he had written new words to "Mustang Sally." In the place where you sing the title words, he now had "I found Jesus." He worked in a verse telling about his salvation experience.

Then Tim arrived. He said he had written a Christian version of "Mustang Sally," too. He, too, used the words "I found Jesus."

We're gonna have to do BOTH versions one of these days, maybe as a prelude or offertory. We're gonna jam the blues, and it's gonna be a blast. And people will love it. I'm delighted that we can get away with stuff like this at Anchor. At most churches, Mustang Sally would be barred at the door.

Posted on February 13, 2006 10:13 PM|

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