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This piece has a long history.  Back in the fall of 2004, I was asked to look at writing a piece based on Psalm 146 that would be used during Advent.  Here is the New Revised Edition’s translation:

1 Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! 2 I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long. 3 Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. 4 When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.

5 Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, 6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; 7 who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; 8 the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. 9 The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. 10 The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord!

“Praise the Lord” is the translation of the Hebrew word “Hallelujah”.  There are a few versions that use “Hallelujah”, but the majority use “Praise the Lord.”  This translation dates back to the original King James Version and is a fine example of the poetry that those translators added to their work.   (They added a bunch of other stuff, but that is another story.)  When I first read it, it sounded like an old Southern Spiritual.  I could hear a church full of Baptists singing and clapping their hands.  Here is the way that initial rendering looked:

Verse 1

Praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord!  Oh my soul!

I’ll praise the Lord, as long as I live.

I’ll sing praises to my God all my days.

Don’t trust in kings and queens,

Don’t trust in mortal men,

Place your trust in the Lord

Place your hope in the Lord

Praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord!  Oh my soul!

Verse 2

Praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord!  Oh my soul!

I’ll praise the Lord who made heav’n and earth.

I’ll praise the Lord who made all that’s in them.

Who keeps faith forever,

Who gives sight to the blind

Justice for the oppressed,

Gives food to the hungry,

Praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord!  Oh my soul!

Verse 3

Praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord!  Oh my soul!

The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.

The Lord tears down the ways of the wicked.

The Lord loves the righteous,

Watches over strangers

Who will reign forever,

For all generations,

Praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord!  Oh my soul!

Alas, that piece was never used.  I suppose the idea of Lutherans singing like Southern Baptists during Advent wasn’t going to fly.  Plus in hindsight, it seems very forced.  As in, I forced the psalm into the song structure, whether it wanted to fit or not.  So it sat in my files of song ideas for over two years.  Luckily I had transcribed the music onto sheet music, so I had the melody recorded.

Then in June of this year when I started considering the “write a piece of music every two weeks” idea, I went back through my old song files and found “Psalm 146.”  Step one would be a version of the lyric.  Since I wrote that piece in 2004, I have been through the psalms about three or four times.  It is interesting to note that the “Praise the Lord” phrase appears in several psalms, namely 104 => 106, 111 => 113, 135, and 146 => 150.  The psalmists have a host of reasons to “Praise the Lord.”  I decided to draw ideas from any of those psalms and anything else that gave me reason to “Praise the Lord.” 

So one lunchtime in late June while on my daily walk, I started writing down some reasons that would inspire someone to praise the Lord.  I also came up with a different song structure.  This time around it would have a traditional chorus, and the verses would be call and response.  Each line of verse would begin “Praise the Lord” and then there would be a response.   The responses took on a 5-5-7-5-5-7 metric syllable structure. 

This is definitely a crafted song.  Some of the lines came easy, but there are probably forty lines that were discarded.  The rhyming scheme isn’t consistent.  In the first verse I has lines 1 & 2 and 4 & 5 rhyming.  In the other two, I have 3 & 6 rhyming.  In the last verse I also matched 4 & 5.  A great deal of the time spent on the lyric was on the rhyme patterns.  In the end I decided that some rhyming was necessary, but the ideas were more important.  Here is the finished product:

CHORUS:

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!

Place your trust in the Lord

Your faith and hope in the Lord

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!

Verse 1

Praise the Lord! Praise His holy name

Praise the Lord! And His glorious reign

Praise the Lord! Rules the heavens and the earth

Praise the Lord! For His mighty deeds

Praise the Lord! Provides our ev’ry need

Praise the Lord! Raise your voice in thanks and praise

Verse 2

Praise the Lord! Lifts the lowly up

Praise the Lord! Heals the broken hearts

Praise the Lord! Casts the wicked to the ground.

Praise the Lord! Let us sing for joy

Praise the Lord! Sing for all that’s good

Praise the Lord! And the blessings that abound

Verse 3

Praise the Lord! Dance and praise His name

Praise the Lord! Lift your voice in song

Praise the Lord! All God’s children bow to their King

Praise the Lord! He sent us His Son

Praise the Lord! Jesus, the chosen one

Praise the Lord! Through Him death has lost its sting

Here is an MP3 of the piece.  I have overdubbed voice and guitar.

 Praise the Lord!  (link is fixed)

Once again thanks for taking the time to read my blog. 

God bless,

Tom Whalen

Copyright © 2007 Thomas B. Whalen

Earlier this summer, I received an e-mail from my Naval Academy class regarding my approaching 25^th reunion.  Cheryl and I attended our 20^th and it was a blast.  Whether we were going to make it to the 25^th was another story since we were already going back east to see my father.  At the end of the e-mail was a plea from Donna Esposito Sengelaub for help with the memorial service that we have some time during the weekend.   I remembered the service in 2002 and it was well done. 

Looking through the list, I saw that my company mate, Bill Hughes had been left off.  Bill was killed in June 2005 when an ATV he was using to work on his farm rolled over onto him in freak accident.  I sent Donna an e-mail so she could up date her list.  The list of names really struck me.  Here were my classmates that are gone forever.  I saw my friend Rich Dempsey who was killed in an F-14 accident.  Rick and I were on Youngster Cruise together.  I remember going to his parents’ house on a weekend away from the ship.  His father was the commander of the submarine there in San Diego and he took Rick and me down to Tijuana for an afternoon. 

Then there was Jeff Ohl.  Jeff was this big jolly guy who I got to know during flight school.  He was buds with John Foley, Tim McDonnell and Pat Greene who I shared a house with in Pensacola, therefore, I was his friend as well.  I remember his method of greeting you. “Mmmmmuuuuuuuuuuugggggggggg!!!”   He always referred to everyone as “mug” as well.  It wasn’t “Hey Tom,” or “Hey Tim.”  It was always “Mmmmuuuuggggg!” in this deep resonant voice.  Jeff contracted cancer not long after we started flight school and he passed away in September 1983. 

Bill Hughes was one of the nicest guys you would ever want to meet.  He came to the Academy after two years of junior college so he was a bit savvier about the world and about academics than the rest of us.  My roommate Wayne Gluf always called him “the Professor” because you could always go to him for help with most subjects.  I was honored to be in his and Amey’s wedding.  The last time I saw him, I was passing through Norfolk on my way to a new duty station.  Bill and Amey had me over for a barbeque at their apartment.  He had steak cooking down to a science.  During that visit, he also corrected my golf swing.  Whenever I pick up a golf club, I always think of Bill and his advice.

 

So with thoughts of those and other classmates, I composed this piece. 

Some we lost to cancer  

Some we lost at sea       

Some we lost, flying high, above on silvered wings  

Some were lost in accidents 

Some just disappeared 

Some were lost in the madness war and combat bring

 

So bow your head and say a prayer

For those we’ve left behind

Remember joy and laughter shared

And how our lives entwined

They were our friends, our pals, our mates,

Their names now are enshrined

Give thanks for the time we spent

With those we’ve left behind

 

Some of them were parents

Some were gone too fast

Some of them, changed the world, some never got the chance

And so we cast our minds back

To happy times we shared

Give thanks for their fellowship that left our lives enhanced

 

Here is an mp3 of the song:       For Those We’ve Left Behind

Thanks for reading my blog.

God bless,

Tom Whalen

Copyright © 2007 Thomas B. Whalen

I have three pieces I’m presently working on: A Christmas song,  “For Those We’ve Left Behind”, and a song of comfort loosely based on the events surrounding my father’s death.  Unfortunately, I don’t like where any of them are going at the moment.  So I pulled out a piece I wrote last summer. 

When they first announced the calendar for my 25^th class reunion, one of the items was music by my good friend Ward Carroll.  I offered to sit in with him and to provide some original music.  He didn’t like the idea of pulling a band together from across the country and then playing music no one would be familiar with.  Between the time I made the suggestion and the time Ward came back vetoing the idea, I came up with three pieces: “Vous Shoes”, “The Class that Jack Built”, and this one.

It is loosely based off a piece I came up with when I was deployed to the Persian Gulf during the summer of 1992.  I was in Independence (CV-62) and I was the V-2 Division Officer and a Catapult and Arresting Gear Officer.  I had it easy compared to a lot of my shipmates, but it was pretty difficult.  We regularly worked 16 -18 hour days, stood 5-minute alerts, and would have non-stop cycles for 12 hours in a row.  The worst was the 5 minute alerts.  We had to be able to launch a pair of fighters in five minutes or less.  In order to accomplish that, the catapult and the fighter had to be manned and ready at all times.  The pilots would rotate in the cockpit every half hour or so, it wasn’t so easy for the catapult crews.  Most of the time you could find them sprawled in the catwalks that surrounded the flight deck trying to get any kind of sleep they could.  If you could sleep, then you had time to think.  For those of us with family, your thoughts often turned to them. 

The air temperature was regularly above 100 degrees.  Add on the radiant heat that came off the flight deck and some jet engine exhaust and you had the making of heat stoke.  It was hands down the hardest job I ever had in the Navy, but it was also the most rewarding.  The other thing that I had to deal with as an officer, is that I had to constantly present a positive attitude. Which was pretty tough when faced with all the things we had to do. If you didn’t, you could guarantee that you would have a morale issue - that last thing you wanted.

This song is based on a 12 bar blues variation.  The variation is at the very end when I play I-I7-IV-iv-V to close out the cycle.  Forgive my white guy take on the blues, but perhaps some day with a real feel for the blues can do something with it.

Oh, one last thing since we’re talking navy stuff:  GO NAVY! BEAT ARMY!

I’m sittin’ on this ship
A long, long way from home
I work from dawn to dawn
And yet it never seems enough
I got the blues
The haze gray, underway blues
I gotta work it out
I gotta find a way
I got the bluesI think about my kids
I think about my wife
I think about the things they’ll do
Without me in their life
I got the blues
The haze gray, underway blues
I gotta work it out
I gotta find a way
I got the blues

We’ve sailed a million miles
Gonna sail a million more
It seems like a million days
Since my feet stood on the shore
I got the blues
The haze gray, underway blues
I’m gonna work it out
I’m gonna find a way
I got the blues

When I’m old and gray
I’ll look back with pride
On all the things that’s thrown at me
And took it all in stride
I got the blues
The haze gray, underway blues
I’m gonna work it out
I’m gonna find a way
I got the blues

Here is an mp3 of the song:

Haze Gray Underway Blues

God bless,

Tom Whalen

Copyright © Thomas B. Whalen, 2007