was the trauma in our home and what would
happen every time.
All we had for entertainment was Mama’s record
collection, her favorite singer was Mahalia
Jackson and she loved Vestal Goodman, so I
grew up with black and white gospel. When I
wanted to just escape from the pain and the
fear, Mama had a little stereo system with two
small speakers, and I would lay in the middle of
that and let gospel music play in my ears and I
would cry. I discovered that there is a presence
in gospel music that is not in any other form of
music. It connects you with the eternal, and it’s
a very spiritual thing that happens when gospel
music is played, and it glorifies God.
I would lay between those two speakers and
just cry and listen to songs, and it would take
me away. It would take me away from the
pain that was going on in our house, it would
take me away from the fear of all that was
photo by Erick Anderson
surrounding us, and that music was doing
something in me that nothing else could do, it
just moved way down deep in my soul. When
by the vocal on that. I was just a young kid at so Mama sent me home because church had things would get so rough as a young guy
the time listening to my Dad’s old records and I started and he wasn’t there. He was in the in that household, I would always retreat to
think I because a Russ Taff fan for life after that.” back room and he was singing in a way that music. Because music calmed me, music gave
I had never heard before, I didn’t know what me faith, music reassured me that somehow
In your bio you mentioned your early experiences drunk looked like, and it scared me because everything was going to be okay, and I carried
discovering music, nestled between a pair he wasn’t rational or sane, he was just singing that up until now.
of stereo speakers. Given the storied career this wild song where the pitch was everywhere. you’ve had and now with the movie and this I ran back down to the church and got Mama, And this record does the same thing, it glorifies
album, this is a benchmark moment for you. and when she walked in and saw him she just Jesus, and when I listen to it brings joy and it
Can you chart how music has bookended this collapsed saying, “Oh Joe, oh Joe, oh Joe, brings peace and trust. It brings trust that no
whole experience for you? what have you done?” matter what is going on, He will take care of
me.
[Russ] From a very early age music resonated And I found out that he was an alcoholic before inside of me. Growing up in trauma, with a he became a Christian, and had sobered up That started way back when I was a kid. I
father who was a Pentecostal preacher and for eight or nine years. The cycle had started couldn’t play sports, I tried, I was short and
also an alcoholic, one year you’re in church, again. He was a welder, so he got a piece of slow. But Mama taught me how to play guitar
and then you’re thrown out of that church swarf, which is what they call the metal that when I was eleven, and because it was such
because the pastor is drinking and can’t stop. flies off when you’re welding, he didn’t have a small church I would learn a song on my
Then he’d sober up and start preaching again. his goggles all the way down and a piece of acoustic, and there was always time for me to
The thing about the small church that I grew up that got in his eye, which was incredibly painful. sing. I would do that, and it became my routine
in, no one else wanted to pastor, it was about So the doctor gave him some pretty heavy for the next years, learning a song, then taking
twenty people and a lot of them were family. narcotics which started the cycle all over again, it to the church and singing it. Music would do
I remember being seven years old and Daddy so when the narcotics ran out he went right to me what nothing else could, not a sermon or
didn’t come to church, and he always would, back to alcohol because he could get that. That Sunday school class, but music could always
22
January 2019
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