Singer-songwriter Paul Simon was listening to a box set of old American recordings one day. Amidst the songs, he found a Christmas sermon bearing the voice of Atlanta's Rev. J.M. Gates, a hugely popular preacher in the 1930s and '40s. That sermon stayed with Simon, who turned it into a song.
"It struck me, not only because it was an unusual for having a Christmas sermon because it's very dark. It's like a warning," Simon tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep. "There was a real rhythmic pulse to it ... it sounded so natural. I lived with that for a while, and then I thought, 'I could write a song called 'Getting Ready for Christmas Day,' and find a way of making verses that lead up to the sermon and then follow the sermon."
That song now leads Simon's new album, So Beautiful or So What. The sermon that inspired him warns of someone coming for your boy on Christmas Day.
"Everybody's thinking that Christmas is going to be a joyous occurrence, but what is also going on is that you may not even make it to Christmas Day," Simon says of the sermon he samples in the song. "Don't plan on this, because there are all kinds of dangers that surround Christmas day."
Simon takes those dangers that Gates references in his sermon and brings current events into the songwriting. The track references his nephew, who has been on multiple tours of duty to Iraq.
"We're living in a certain time, and we're aware of it. And that's part of what we're aware of, along with our own personal aches and pains," Simon says. "The dialogue between what's going on in the world and what's going on internally seems to be a natural thing — well, it's natural to me anyway, to have these thoughts."
Complete on: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/12/135319621/paul-simon-creating-something-so-beautiful?ft=1&f=1039
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