Music Notes 7-26-26

This week we welcome back our wonderful band. We have an announcement regarding that –

our fabulous pianist, Jeff Colella, is releasing another album of jazz with legendary bassist Putter

Smith. Ironically, most people recognize Putter as one of the 2 assassins in the James Bond

movie Diamonds Are Forever. However, he is one of the most iconic bassists in the world, and

laid down the bass track on an endless list of hits like You’ve Got That Lovin’ Feelin’. Jeff, on

the other hand, was Lou Rawls’ pianist and conductor for 16 years and was music director for

Jack Jones before that. We’re honored to have him joining our crew of artists every month. The

album will be available August 21 st . We’ll keep you informed as more information becomes

available.

Sandi Patty was born in Oklahoma City to a musical family, her father being a church music

director and her mother being a church organist. Growing up in Phoenix and then San Diego,

she studied at San Diego State University and Anderson University in Indiana, where she studied

voice and conducting. In the late 70’s, while studying at Anderson, she began working as a

studio singer, recording, among other things, the iconic Juicy Fruit gum commercial. After

graduating, she began working with Bill Gaither and Singspiration! Records and built a huge

career in the Christian pop world. Throughout the 80’s she performed to sold out arenas,

stadiums and concert halls, averaging 200 concerts a year and getting the label of the ”highest

paid singer in Christian music”, averaging over $100,000 a performance. After a career setback

in the early 90’s, she rebuilt her career and began doing pop concerts with orchestras all over the

country. These days she has followed in the footsteps of Amy Grant and crossed over from

Christian music to pop music, especially Broadway. Shine Down was released on the album

From The Heart in 1984.

Show Me The Way is a song written by Dennis DeYoung, lead singer and keyboardist for the

band Styx. A devout Catholic, DeYoung wrote the song for his son Matthew as a pseudo-hymn

about keeping the faith “in a world so filled with hatred”. It was released on the album Edge of

the Century as the 2 nd single in December of 1990 and slowly climbed the charts until it reached

#3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it remained in the top 40 for 23 weeks, and #3 on the

Adult Contemporary chart, where it remained in the top 40 for 31 weeks. It was the band’s 4 th

and final top 5 single, and made Styx one of a handful of artists to have top 10 singles in 3

different decades (1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s).

Shine, Jesus, Shine was written by English composer Graham Kendrick in 1987. Originally

conceived as a 3-verse hymn, Kendrick came back to it after leaving it in a drawer for several

months and realized that it needed a chorus. In his words, “The phrase “shine, Jesus, shine”

came to mind. I think it was one of the quickest things I’ve ever written! Within 20 minutes or

half an hour I’d written the chorus, and the whole thing just needed a little bit of editing and

tidying up here and there. The chorus fell into place surprisingly naturally. But even then, it took

a while to mature. I’d written the verses at a different pace. So, the tempo of verse and chorus

seemed to pull against one another. It was only through use that it actually began to settle down.

As I worked on it with my band, an arrangement and a way of doing it took shape. Then it started

to feel like a complete song.” It began to appear in print in 1987 and in hymnals in 1989. It

arrived in the U.S in 1990 in The Baptist Hymnal and then later in our hymn book Glory To God.

It’s been recorded many times, by Kendrick himself and by numerous other artists.

Dan Schutte is one of the most renowned of the contemporary composers in the Catholic world

and is one of the founding members of the St. Louis Jesuits, who popularized a contemporary

style of church music set to sacred texts sung in English. This was a result of the Second Vatican

Council of the early 1960’s (also known as Vatican II), which revamped and reformed the

Catholic liturgy in an effort to bring it closer to the people (before that, the mass was sung in

Latin and the priest kept his back to the congregation throughout). He is based in San Francisco,

has written over 120 popular hymns and mass settings, and continues to be one of the most

influential figures in the world of contemporary Catholic liturgical music. His most famous

composition is Here I Am, Lord, based on texts from Isaiah and Samuel. Despite its Catholic

origins, it is found in most Protestant hymnals and has been translated into over 20 different

languages. In 2008, a survey conducted by the United Methodist Church found it to be 2 nd

favorite after Amazing Grace.