Lift Him Up

Giving snuff to a child? That didn't sound like the Bible-thumper who preached good parenthood on "Train Your Child."

But, then, a lot of things didn't make sense in the Washington Phillips story I was pursuing. For instance, how could someone's mental faculties deteriorate so quickly, so noticeably in 1929 Texas, that he could record eight masterfully played and sung tracks in a single day and then be sent to an asylum eight months later? I returned from my first visit to Freestone County without finding a single person who knew Wash Phillips, the son of Houston and Emma, as the singer who recorded a few 78s.

Three days later I would find what I hadn't been looking for: evidence that Washington Phillips, the gospel pioneer, was not the one who died in Austin on the last day of 1938. While looking over my notes one Monday night, I saw that I hadn't yet talked to Wilbur Titus' cousin Virgil Keeton, who used to sing in a gospel quartet. Since he's also related on the Phillips side, he could be a good source.

"Oh, yeah, I knew Wash Phillips, the gospel singer," Keeton said, after I apologized for calling so late. "He lived in Simsboro with his mother, my Aunt Nancy. He used to play this harp-like instrument that he made himself. Sang like a bird, man." Born in 1920, Keeton said he first saw Phillips perform in the mid-'30s. "He gave one of his 78s to the Titus family, and it eventually passed on to us," Keeton said, starting the chorus of "Lift Him Up That's All." Virgil and his wife, Jewell, said they last remember seeing Phillips a couple of years after they married in 1946.

At the Freestone County Clerk's Office the next day, I searched death records from the late '40s until I came up on the date September 20, 1954, and saw the name George Washington Phillips. According to the death certificate, he was born on January 11, 1880, which made him 11 years older than the crazy Wash Phillips. Just as Virgil had said, Phillips' mother's name was Nancy (Cooper). His father's name was Tim Phillips.

Next stop was the Keetons' house, where Virgil had just returned from his weekly cancer treatment in Temple. He demonstrated, with a thumb-plucking motion, how Phillips played the strings on his instrument. Shown a picture of a dolceola, Keeton said, "No, that's not it."

Flewellen recalls that "Cousin Wash" used to play her family's piano with great skill, but none of the other witnesses I interviewed described Phillips playing anything besides a stringed instrument. Nell Blakely, who grew up in Simsboro near Phillips' 30-acre spread, said he played "a homemade banjo that he laid down flat."

Even with this new evidence, some Wash-heads maintain that only a dolceola could make the heavenly accompaniment found on Phillips' recordings. "When it comes to trusting eyewitnesses or my ear, I'll stick with the dolceola [theory] until there's proof," said Memphis musician Rick Field. Producer Jim Dickinson, who played a dolceola on Cooder's soundtrack to Crossroads, is similarly adamant. "That's a dolceola on those Phillips records," he said, describing the keyboard-activated hammer action he hears in a few places. "I'm 100 percent sure."

Is it possible that Phillips played a dolceola in the '20s, but then lost it or broke it and switched to a "harp-like" instrument in the '30s? But what about the 1927 photo of Phillips holding two zithers, which look like autoharps and are played in a manner consistent with Keeton's recollection?

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Phillips was what they called a "jackleg" preacher, one who received the calling to spread the word but hadn't been ordained. "He didn't have a church, so he'd kinda roam the town looking for someplace to preach," said former Simsboro resident Doris Foreman Nealy.

He belonged to the Pleasant Hill Trinity Baptist Church in Simsboro, but also preached and performed at the "sanctified" St. Paul Church of God in Christ. "His singing really fit in with that crowd," said May Nella Palmore, 82, of Teague. "He had such a strong, powerful voice." The Keetons said they last saw him doing the devotion at St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Teague. "I am born to preach the gospel," ol' Wash used to say, "and I sure do love my job."

That Phillips was well-versed in the varying beliefs and customs of different churches is evident in "Denomination Blues," his most famous song via covers by Sister Rosetta Thorpe (who renamed it "That's All") and Ry Cooder. Coyly denouncing hypocrisy in organized religion, Phillips mocks six different black denominations before launching into the verse: "You can go to college, you can go to school/But if you ain't got Jesus, you a educated fool."

The lyrical bitterness, perhaps born from too many Sundays waiting to be called, while preachers with an eye on the collection plate hogged the pulpit, didn't seem to apply to a musical career that never took off. "He knew he had talent," Keeton said. "But he was just ol' Wash Phillips, you know? Don't nobody get famous from Teague."

He was known more for his mule cart, from which he sold homemade ribbon cane syrup, than for a handful of records that gave him a blip of recognition many decades ago.