Pastor T.L. Barrett’s Gospel

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Pastor Teo Barrett's been known on Chicago's South Side as a religious and community leader for fifty years, but it wasn't until recently that people started to uncover Barrett's trove of gospel music. In the nineteen seventies, Barrett began making recordings of the music performed in his church. These were sermons he turned into songs that sat around for years until rappers started sampling them in the last decade, people like Kanye West, Ti, DJ Khalin, Alicia Keys. His song Nobody Knows was even used in a popular Nike commercialist Steph Curry a couple of years ago. All this recent attention on aster TiO Barrett has culminated in a new box set from the Numero group called I Should Wear a Crown, thirty nine tracks of his songs and sermons throughout the years. You'll notice in my conversation with TiO Barrett that he's a pastor through and through. He can't help but breach, and in this episode you'll hear a lot of his trademark aphorisms. You'll also hear about his distant relation to the Reverend Ceo Franklin, and of course his daughter, the great Arita Franklin. Pastor Barrett and I also talk about how he went from a high school dropout to a community leader, plus what it was like for him to have his music discovered so publicly after decades. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondtin. Here's my conversation with Pastor TiO Barrett. We should start from the beginning. You have such a rich, fascinating history and the fact that you grew up between Queens in Chicago. Can you tell me a little bit about Queens and Chicago when you were growing up. Yes, I was born in Jamaica, Queens and that was in nineteen forty four. So in nineteen fifty one, my father had a leading to come to Chicago, where we had relatives of his sisters and his brother, and so we moved to Chicago and that's where he started his ministry. Moved into them Otobie Welles projects, and that's where I grew up and we stayed there until just before my father's passing, and I was sixteen years of age. It wasn't a very pleasant period in my life because all of a sudden I was thrust into the mainstream of fending for myself. But I had no kind of financial cushion to fall back on. So when he passed away shortly after that, I was dismissed from the window Phillips High School. And I had barely gotten into high school on a summer school program. And the last thing that the guidance counselor told me as I was leaving out, she said, oh, one more thing, Talbert, come back over here. But she shook her well manecute finger in my face and said, I just want you to know you will never ever amount to anything. Well that really set me on a road for discovery for my recovering. My sister lived at fifty seventh in Indiana. My parents weren't home and my sister was home, so that was the only place I could go, And so I went to my sister's house. But I made a deal with God. Let's say, God, if you come out of that sky and just get right into my eye, let me have a very personal relationship with you and let me discover the power of you from inside. I want you to be personal with me. I promised God two things that I would keep my body clean, no drugs, no alcoholic beverages, and I would work to make my mind keen. Since they wouldn't educate me, I'd educate myself. So I walked from thirty ninth in Indiana to fifty seventh in Indiana. Well fast forward to today, I am sitting in a million dollar plus edifice that I in my congregation erected in nineteen eighty two. But guess where it sits. Justin It sits on the corner of fifty fifth in Indiana, which means I walked across this street when I was sixteen years old with an ache in my heart, but the determination in my soul that what that lady said about me, her negative prognostication, would not become a positive fact to me. Today I owned this corner. My name is on the street sign for six blocks from fifty fifth and Lafayette, which is where my old church was to fifty five in Indiana. It's called T. L. Barrett Boulevard. So after my father died, I went back to New York and that's where I got my education. I went to the New York State Board of Regents after cramming studying, then they gave me my high school deployment. But then I came back to Chicago because I wanted to find that lady and make her aware of how wrong she was. Did you ever come across that guidance counselor again? You know what? For years I was on the radio, and for years I would send her invitations to come to my church because I had a seat reserved for her. I invited her to come to my home because I had a guest room reserved for her. But I found out from some others that she did hear me, but she was too ashamed to come forward, so I never heard from her again. What was the reason you were kicked out of school? Because I was delinquent. I didn't understand then that my creativity was causing my anxiety. But I didn't understand it then, and I would never do anything that was negatively nefarious. In study hall, I would get my trio and we'd go behind the curtains in the assembly and we would started playing music and have the whole assembly rocking. And I get suspended for things like that. So now the reason why I'm telling you all of this is to show you that some of my music was born out of that pathos that I lived through. I felt like I was like a ship without a sale, and that's a pitiful thing, because ships have cargo, valuable cargo. I felt that I had some valuable cargo that could make an impressive contribution to the building of a greater society. But I didn't have a sale. But I found myself. So the song says, but I know we can make it. I know we can take it, and no matter what burdens are on us, I know we can shake it because we are like ships. Don't ever forget that You're like a ship. You have cargo, you have valuable cargo. And then when I thought about being like a ship without a sail, just like a sheep without shame, just like a sheep, we same. And I know, but I know we can make I know we can't take care. I know we can take it, take cad. I know we could shake it, sad man. So that began my message to the young people. I drew young people to my ministry in that little church on a one way street going north called Lifiat Avenue, and every Tuesday night, young people would come from everywhere, and then celebrity started hearing about those young people. People like Donnie Hathaway found his way there one night, and then Earthwind and Fire, Philip Bailey, who's the lead singer, Andrew Warfolk who's a horn player, and Larry Dunn who's a drummer. They all came over there that night, and the message that they heard touched their hearts, and the young people that they saw, that amalgamation of message and meaningful ministry touched their hearts. I became the spiritual counselor to Earth Wind and Fire. So before sixteen, would you say you grew up were you spiritual or were you a believer? Did you grew up going to church? My father was a minister. My father was a preacher. I already had a strong moral compass embedded within me. You know, your dad was a minister. There was like an attention or an anxiety that you were feeling, And it's almost feels like there was a tension maybe between your sort of church religious life, in her spiritual life, and between maybe music, which maybe felt like a more of a worldly poll. I'm just curious where that anxiety was coming from. Where you feel your creativity also came from. It was born out of frustration, you see, I almost turned against the church. You see, I never even graduated from grammar school. They would keep us in church almost every night. I'm past midnight, and I would be sleeping in school the next day, and I remember my teacher said, why are you sleeping? I said, because I was at church last night. And then when I would tell my father and the church members, they would say, well, those people are they don't know God, and Jesus is coming back any day now, and you'll be ready to go to heaven. And well, as you know, Jesus didn't come back. I got left back. So I had to fight back and and I said, God, I'm not going to teach that kind of theology because it doesn't inspire you. If you're going to church and you're hearing that any day now Jesus is going to come back and take us all the way, then why would you struggle with math and and algebra. So when I found out that I was being left back, then I begin to fight back and I and I just it came out in a lot of negative ways, and they just put me out of most of the schools on the South side of Chicago. But it wasn't until that lady told me that I would never amount to nothing and that's when the shock of that reality that I'm out here by myself hit me and that I'm gonna have to seek my own relationship with God. And I did. We'll call new thought theology. It's not about a God in the sky, It's about a God in your eye, just like I'm talking to you right now, I'm talking to God. Why not? Why do I say that? Because man is the only creature that God created, not living. So I teach people to do unto others, not as you would have others to do unto you, but do unto others that you would do unto God. Not all living things have the presence and the energy of God in them, But the human beings are the represent tours of God. See, every time I get a chance to meet another human being, that's my chance to represent God to them. And that's why I have to treat you like you are a celebrity, even if I don't know your name. So if man and woman are representurs of God, that's right. Is music with music, with art with dance, They're all kinds of ways. And the beautiful part about life is God does not discriminate on who that breath, that creative breath of God is bequeathed too. That's why in our church we don't judge anyone now anything that is perverse, yes, but we do not sit in the seat of judgment against anyone. I like that. We'll be right back with more from Pastor til Barrett. After a quick break, we're back with Pastor til Barrett to take it back to childhood and music. Yeah, what were you listening to? I mean, you're growing up in two hotbeds of just beautiful Black American music between New York City and Chicago and the forties, fifties and sixties. What are you taking in? Man? My father was a guitar player and he had a group called the Southern Wonders, a gospel singing group, and then he formed us once he had us, my brother and my sister myself into a group of singers called the Barrett Singers. So we grew up listening to and you won't know anything about these groups like the Swan Silver Tones. Come on, that's where Bridge Over Trouble of Water comes from. Okay, do you remember, Yeah, Sam Cook and the Soul Stirs. We grew up listening to them. We would travel the circuit with pop Staples and the Staples singers. Wow. Yeah, Mavis and I and the Staples we were We were very tight when you were a kid. Yeah, Pop. Staples and my father were very close, and the Staples and the Barrats. Whatever you saw the Staples singers, you usually saw the Barretts singers until they went totally pop. Then they took off like rockets. My father stayed with the church and that genre, so I was inspired by that music but also had an ear for jazz. I became a jazz pianist. I got a gig at the Waldorf Astoria when I was seventeen years old. I would play every New Year's Eve. There was this group that would hire me to play. I was mixing the two, preaching the gospel and you know, trying to play jazz music at the same time. And it wasn't until I became a pastor that I was able to merge the two. And my favorite pianist was Eryl Ghanner. I didn't know about Errol Ghanner, but people would tell me, said, you remind me of erl Ghanner with a syncopated left hand. Well, first of all, I didn't know what syncopatient was. I thought I said, there's nothing wrong with my hand. That said old. I thought they were saying I had a crippled hand or something, but it was the rhythmic pattern that he would keep with his left hand. I know one of my albums, I think it's like a ship. I do a piano solo that's call Blessed Quietness and it's kind of a parent there. So, Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner very very strong influences on my music. Can you can you show us what it means to play like Karma like Errol Garner? Okay, there was a song you used to play. It's an old song called what are you gonna do? You're undecided? Now what are you gonna do? Here? Got don who? And what's going on that left hand? What's like? What? What? What is uh? Is that? I don't know? That's I mean, it just came. That's where I started playing, and they told me that that was erl Donna stun. Then I started listening to him. That's it. I don't know how so is that what should be playing at the Waldorf Historia as well? That sort of thing? Yeah, well, it was all secular music at the wall doorf because you know, people celebrating the New Year's Eve, and they wanted to hear things like, look at me as a kitten clinging to apply. I can't understand. I get misty, holding your hand? WHOA my word? And then violins begin to play. Might be the sound of yar hello this mute ar? I get misty. The more union you know, play songs like that, gorgeous, gorgeous? How did you start playing piano? Jealousy. My brother had a godmother named Honey Wade, and she loved my brother so much because he was a pretty boy. They called him pretty boy George, and she sent him to music school. But I wasn't very attractive, so nobody would send me music school. My mother and father couldn't afford to. So I would try to mimic my brother, and I would try to play the piano. I couldn't make any harmony, just mashing the key, and you couldn't tell me I wasn't jamming and I had rhythm, and that's how it would sound. So my brother got tired of that and he said, Junior. He called me Junior. He said, look, if you want to make harmonies, so you're not making any harmony. So if you want to make harmony, you gotta spread your fingers out and leave a space in between. Then I heard the harmony. And when I heard the harmony, then I put the rhythm to it. That's how it came out. Oh man, We'll be right back in a moment with more of my conversation with Pastor Tlberrett. We're back with the rest of my conversation with Pastor Tlbert. Is it true you have a distant relation to Reverend cl. Franklin and Areta Franklin. Yes. My daddy told me that he and Reverend Franklin were cousins, and he told me, he said that if you ever get a chance to meet him, mentioned my name. And so one day I was traveling with either Anez Andrews or the Caravans was one of those groups I was traveling with, and they were on the same program with Reverend C. L. Franklin in Brooklyn, New York. So after the performances were over, I got a chance to go up to him. I said, Reverend Franklin, I'm TL Barrett from Chicago. And my father told me that if I ever met you, to tell you that he is Tom Barrett. He said, Tom Barrett and he said the town from Mississippi. He said, yeah, he said, asked my cousin man, I said, well, I'm his son. He embraced me, invited me to come to Detroit and preach at his church. I invited him to come and preach at my church in Chicago, and he came, and I went to Detroit and preach at his church, and he loved me so much. His mother jumped on my back while I was preaching. She was so she was full of the Holy Spirit, and we were about to establish a tremendous family relationship. He was going to bring me into meeting with Rita. But shortly after I pre sat his church, there was a break in at his house and he was shot, and he stayed in a coma for six or eight months and never recovered. So I never was able to make that wreck connection with me and Aretha. She had heard about me, but you know, she traveled so much that we never got a chance to connect. She was a wreath by that point, right, Oh, yeah, she was. She was a wreathing. What was the gospel circuit like at that time? It seems like the sixties was a very wonderful time for gospel music. There was a lot going on, very colorful time. I'm curious what that gospel circuit was like in the sixties. I didn't start making records until the mid seventies, but I was privileged to be with some of the gospel singers who were arcing at that time, such as James Cleveland and as Andrews Albertina Walker. So I was able to be around them, but I wasn't really part of that because I was just a young teenager. Then by the time you start making records in the seventies, is the goal only to make music for your congregation and congregations you might visit, or is the goal to bring the music toe a larger audience? Or I mean, is it is the goal musical? Is the goal religious in nature? Or spiritual in nature? The goal was to bring to fruition the promise that I made to those young people. I told them that you could become famous, some of you can become superstars, and you don't have to live within the strictors and the throes of the drug culture. You can be the representatus of God and still make it in that life. And we have some who who have been able to do that. So the goal wasn't necessarily only just to make us for the congregation. No, no, you're okay with success in the music business, larger music business. That was okay with you. And I'm just so grateful to God that my music caught the ear of Rob Severe and Numero Uno, because just to see some of those young people that trusted me, for them to have their children and their grandchildren sit down and listen to recordings that they were children singing on, It's just an awesome reward for me because I told them that this day would happen. I just didn't know when or how, but it is actually happening for people who don't know. You know, your records became very popular after they got re released much later in time. You never DIBt of the songs, your talent never. Wow, how did it feel all those years later? I mean forty years later, Numeral Group hit you up to rerelease your records, and you know, people start rediscovering your music from forty years ago. When when did you first learn that people were finally picking up on your records. I think it was when I received a call from Rob Severa. That's when I really realized that. And then they said, we want to do something with your music. I said, wow, They said, but we need to have you on the contract. So I think I signed a contract for one song. Then it became another album. Then I think I became just their artist. It seems like all those years ago you knew to have faith in your music, but it still must have been surprising, just out of the blue one day you get in this call no No. I have a theology philosophy that says true believers cannot be surprised. You live in expectation instead of agitation. Every time the phone rings, you're thinking, oh, this is the one. But just living in that amount of expectation and believe, is that ever disappointing? Of course it's disappointing man forty years believing something for forty years, of course it can be disappointing. But if you are a true believer, you keep believing. But see, the Bible says faith of that works is dead. So I teach our people pray like you believe it depends on God, but work like you believe it depends on you. That's how you get it to work. Because life is a joint investment adventure between you and God. Given your connections to people like Philip Bailey, Verdine White, Maurice White. You mentioned that Donny Hathaway. At some point it come through your congregation. You're in Chicago, you know where all this great R and B is happening. Did you ever think, well, maybe I won't make gospel music, maybe I'll make R and B. No, because I did not segregate or label my music. I just made music. I mean God's music. God's music is gospel, God's music is secular. Just like I wrote a song that says it goes like this, Oh, I want to be in love with you. Oh, I want to be in love with you. Oh I want to be in love with you. That's what the Lord said to me. Oh, I want to take you by your hand while you're living in this evil ladin. All you need to do is trust me. Now, that same song can be transposed into that's what my man said to me, or that's what my lady said to me. I want to be in love with you. It's the same message I said it long time ago. That's another song that I wrote. I said it a long time ago, said a long time ago, I love you. So now now that can be sung in a nightclub, or it can be sung in church. Because God did say a long time ago, I love you. I told my wife fifty six years ago. We've been married fifty three years. I sing that to her. I said it a long time ago. Then there's a part in the song saying and I am saying the same thing today, the same thing I said a long time ago. I'm saying the same thing today that I'll still make a way. It's not gospel, it's not secular. It's just music. It's God's music. That's one reason when my broadcast was so popular, because I played Earth Winding Fire on my gospel program. The music is very spiritual. Yes, I played keep your Head to the Sky. I played you a shining star. No matter who you are, God sent you here to sign right to see what you can truly be. That's gospel, man, Come on. That was bold enough to play it on my program. And that's why Earth Win and Fight. When they would be traveling, no matter where they were, they would call me early in the morning because they knew I would be playing their music and Donnie Hathaway's music and anybody else who had a message that would uplift mankind, How did you first get the idea to record? Like? Where did that come from? The desire to make a record? So to answer you a question about how did I start writing music? I'm looking around and seeing everybody else is writing and recording music, so I thought it would be good for me to record music too. So I went to Paul Serrano at Soronto Studios and said, man, I want to make some music. I want to make a record. He said, you got some music as a Yeah, he heard my music. He said, man, this is fantastic. So Paul Santo at P and S Studios record to us and we started shopping it around. Stax Records picked us up and signed me to a contract. And where did the songs on the first record come from? When you hadn't made a record yet, you get the idea, you go to the studio. I was just writing songs, and I just recorded some of those songs that I wrote. How long have those songs been around? Older than you are? I'm telling you these songs, either the ones that I wrote or rearranged. The ones that I rearranged have been around for millennia. But the ones that I wrote, I wrote them in the late sixties and early seventies with the goal of putting them on the record. Or was this just I was just writing? But then when I decided that I should record too, then I started selecting the songs that I wanted to go on the records. Wow, are you still writing songs today? Yes, when I feel like it, I write more. I write sermons and thoughts for the day, just things that make you think that's beautiful man. Yeah, so that's what I write now. I write sermons, I write thoughts for the day, and you can put some of those sermons to music. But that's my main focus is writing. I write right, right, right all the time. Do you put some of those thoughts to music. Yes? When's the last time you put something new you wrote down to music? When's the last time that happened. I think it was Sunday because I wrote the thought that says, let's think deeper before we sink deeper. So we're writing a song around that. Would you mind showing us how you might work one of your thoughts that you have, like think deeper before you sink deeper, how you might work that into some music. Okay, let's sing you better sink deeper before you sink deeper. You might be able to keeper if you think deeper, not make up weaker. It's up to you. Sink deeper before you sink deeper. Stuff like that. Oh man, that's wonderful. I discovered your music, like a lot of people, through the algorithm of streaming services like Spotify, So I got to your music fell in love with it right away. There was just something different in it that I hadn't heard in a lot of gospel music. I loved it this collection that Numeral Group put together that it was the first time I've heard you're preaching. Oh, it's the first time I've ever heard it, and I'm glad it's going to be on streaming now because it's really interesting and one of the sermons, how would you like to have a nice Hawaiian punch is the title of it. I mean, I was surprised by the fact that you were not afraid to be political, and really at the local level. I mean, you were talking about getting people that you should be registered to vote and hold politicians to account. And I'm curious, especially when I speak with older black folk who were around lived through the Civil rights movement and all that sort of thing. It feels like it must have been impossible not to be invested in politics. But rarely did I hear in that day sermons and be with that kind of politics, unless we're talking about doctor King. I suppose, well, you're seeing I had the good fortune to be considered unfortunate, not having either parent. Just being out here on my own at sixteen years of age, I had a chance to see what actually makes the world go around. I actually got a chance to see that politics plays a great part in the living conditions of our people. And the only thing that would change that would be political change. And so I challenge my people to don't just join the church, but join your civic organizations as well. I said, in order to be a member of life in the church, you have to have a voter registration card as well as a membership card, and you got to be an active voter. I do not want you to be a member of this church and whatever the wind blows your way, you're satisfied with join another church. I want people who actively participate in the building of their own communities. When we got ready to build our church, our people wanted to go out into the suburbs. Let's buy a church out there. I said, no, let's build our own church in the community, and we chose fifty fifth. In Indiana, this area was called the Whole, not who l E h l E Whole. It was the worst crime area in the city of Chicago. We built our church to look like a palace, and I call it the Palace in the midst of Malice. That's what we did in eighty two, and now in two and twenty one, it is the most enviable community to live in. People are coming back to the community. The Barack Obama Library is built in proximity to our community. This is one of the most enviable communities in the city of Chicago now because we stayed here, we built the Cleo Center here. Cleo is named after my daughter who was taken from us thirteen years ago by domestic violence in our own community. And her name was spelled with the kse. My wife's name is spelled with the sea, and so Cleo Stance will keep loving each other. That's what she would want us to do. And then my son led the community and building a residence, the Cleo Resident Building, the first totally green building in the city of Chicago. This community is a beautiful community now because somebody stayed, not just we stayed and we worked and we're still working to make this a better community. Man. That's great. Thank you so much, Pastor Barrett. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Thank you, Thanks a Pastor Teale Barrett for taking us to church today and sharing God's good word. You can check out a playlist of Teale Barrett's new box set at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our newed episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering health from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Miila bat Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad listening for four ninety nine am Mar. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast. That all Right, The Music for a kind of Beats. I'm Justin and Richmond