"Don't act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill and control you. Then you will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, making music to the Lord in our hearts."
     Ephesians 5:17-19 (The Open Bible, new living translation)

Bobby Lee Hatfield died November 5th.

The 'thang' that so many people think Eminem is, Bobby Lee Hatfield was, in a major way... Bobby Lee Hatfield was majorly righteous.

42 years ago, Bobby Lee, who was a VERY white guy (I kid you not, he was born in a town called Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. You don't get any whiter than being born in Wisconsin, let alone in a place called Beaver Dam) met up with another white guy called Bill Medley. What drew them together was music.

Bobby and Bill were in bands out in California and came together to forge a sound, hammered out of Gospel and early Rock that became their distinctive trademark. But they didn't look how they sounded, the soul underpinnings to their music, coupled to the emotional intensity they put into it, made one African-American audience member one evening, at a club gig, say out loud, 'That's Righteous, brothers.' The name Righteous Brothers stuck from then on in.

My favorite story about the style-racial disconnect in their sound happened shortly after they first gained fame from a hit single, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling." At no time in recorded history did two white guys give such meaning to the pain of lost love, in fact, at no time in recorded history did two white guys sound so Black. So much so that, sight unseen, an African-American social club in Mississippi hired them to play at their big yearly gathering, in a very segregated South.

Bobby and Bill, and their band The Paramours, walked out on stage to tumultuous applause that quickly dwindled to stunned silence... until they started to play. It took only one song to bend the long arc of the moral universe inexorably towards our better natures; as in one small community hall in Jim Crow Mississippi the equally inexorable power of music brought together Blacks and Whites, if only for a little while, in one night's semblance of the reality of Martin Luther King's dream.

For myself and the friends I grew up with at DeWitt Clinton High School, in The Bronx, the passionate intensity of the Righteous Brothers made the girls from the Mount St. Ursula Academy so much easier to fathom (in fact, so much easier period). In the ready acceptance of their sound, Bobby and Bill also indirectly made the reality of civil rights and Black America a little easier for White America to fathom.

For so many of us, they were balm for the harshness and cruelty of our world. 40 years ago when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and on the night of April 4th, 1968, when Martin Luther King was gunned down, days when innocence and hope was murdered in us all, kids like me listened in stunned silence, in the darkness of our rooms, to "(You're my) Soul and Inspiration" and wondered what ever would become of our dreams.

Our faith inspires us to make a joyful sound. But some music is just so much more joyful and inspiring than others. Trying not to 'sound' too trite, the music of the Righteous Brothers, a joyful Black sound coming from the unseen faces of two very White young men, represented to us back then, the power of love, the importance of not judging what someone may be capable of just by the inflection in their voice; subtle yet important lessons of faith that would otherwise have been lost in the angst of youth.

Martin Luther King once wrote that 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends inexorably towards justice.' As I look back more and more on the road I've traveled, seeking out the bend of that arc, I can't help but remember how their music made the journey so much more bearable. So much more understandable through the subtle subtext of love, inadvertently underpinned by a touch of racial tolerance; music that made the idea of 'Moral Justice' so much easier to comprehend. Thank you for that Bobby, it's been Righteous, brother.

(From "Unchained Melody
  " The Righteous Brothers.)

Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea,
to the open arms of the sea.
Lonely rivers sigh, "wait for me, wait for me,
I'll be coming home. Wait for me."
 
I need your love.
I need your love.
God, speed your love to me.
Amen

Contributed by Jose A.
Published Monday December 8, 2003
Week 2 of Liturgical Year C