Detailing the fascinating career of Joe Evans, Follow Your Heart chronicles the nearly thirty years that he spent immersed in one of the most exciting times in African American music history. An alto saxophonist who between 1939 and 1965 performed with some of America's greatest musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Charlie Parker, Jay McShann, Andy Kirk, Billie Holiday, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lionel Hampton, and Ivory Joe Hunter, Evans warmly recounts his wide range of experience in the music industry. Readers follow Evans from Pensacola, Florida, where he first learned to play, to such exotic destinations as Tel Aviv and Paris, which he visited while on tour with Lionel Hampton. Evans also comments on popular New York City venues used for shaping and producing black music, such as the Apollo Theater, the Savoy, Minton's Playhouse, and the Rhythm Club. Revealing Evans as a master storyteller, Follow Your Heart describes his stints as a music executive, entrepreneur, and musician. Evans provides rich descriptions of jazz, swing, and rhythm and blues culture by highlighting his experiences promoting tracks to radio deejays under Ray Charles's Tangerine label and later writing, arranging, and producing hits for the Manhattans and the Pretenders. Leading numerous musical ventures that included a publishing company and several labels--Cee Jay Records (with Jack Rags), Revival, and Carnival Records--Evans remained active in the music industry even after he stopped performing regularly. As one of the few who enjoyed success as both performer and entrepreneur, he offers invaluable insight into race relations within the industry, the development of African American music and society from the 1920s to 1970s, and the music scene of the era.
The sermons in this book were preached during my second year of ministry at First Presbyterian Church of Marietta, Georgia. This great church, who nurtured me as a child and through adolescence, even supporting me through college and seminary, called me to be their Senior Pastor in the summer of 2017. This call came in the aftermath of division. After our denomination met and approved new standards of marriage equality in 2015, the nearly 200-year-old congregation split. Around 300 members broke ties with First Presbyterian Church to start a new church in a more conservative denomination of Presbyterians, ECO. The three years following this split and preceding my arrival were marked by a genuine determination to survive, great moments of healing, and courageous leadership. The sermons in this book stretch across 2018, one year in the life of this great congregation. This was a year when God moved the congregation beyond survival and healing to growth and celebration. These sermons were easy for me to write and preach because all around me, the Holy Spirit was alive and well, and the Gospel was not confined to the pages of Scripture, for the congregation of First Presbyterian Church was living it.
Daydreams is a collection of five short stories conceived and penned by Joe Evans. Each contains a degree of nostalgia, suspense and atonement. Subplots abound for intrigue and deception. They are written to arouse the reader's curiosity and to compel one to scurry to the end. Being short stories each can be read in one gulp, making them ideal for filling in times such as waiting for appointments, flying or just passing the time. Stump City is a story about a twelve-year old boy growing up in a small city during 1942. It relates to the things a boy in those days did for fun and adventure. Of course, there was the ever-present older bully.The Decoy tells the story of college-aged boys playing baseball in the low minors in the year 1946. It takes you inside the lives of young men trying to become professional ball players. You can actually see yourself being part of the team and pulling for victories.Oh, My God! has its setting in corporate America in the 1970s and describes the often-occurring saga of a co-worker undercutting his peers in order to please the boss. A bit of melodrama is blended in to keep the reader guessing.Helen and Harold are an older couple living in the early 1940s during the Great Depression and looking forward to retirement. A pair of dishonest scoundrels enters their lives to try to dupe them. The Letter "H" Man is another tale of corporate America with flashbacks to a previous time when the main characters were in college. The tale is interwoven with eerie suspense and a bit of retaliation.
In the late 1970s legendary pianist Bill Evans was at the peak of his career. He revolutionized the jazz trio (bass, piano, drums) by giving each part equal emphasis in what jazz historian Ted Gioia called a “telepathic level” of interplay. It was an ideal opportunity for a sideman, and after auditioning in 1978, Joe La Barbera was ecstatic when he was offered the drum chair, completing the trio with Evans and bassist Marc Johnson. In Times Remembered, La Barbera and co-author Charles Levin provide an intimate fly-on-the-wall peek into Evans’s life, critical recording sessions, and behind-the-scenes anecdotes of life on the road. Joe regales the trio’s magical connection, a group that quickly gelled to play music on the deepest and purest level imaginable. He also watches his dream gig disappear, a casualty of Evans’s historical drug abuse when the pianist dies in a New York hospital emergency room in 1980. But La Barbera tells this story with love and respect, free of judgment, showing Evans’s humanity and uncanny ability to transcend physical weakness and deliver first-rate performances at nearly every show.
The Summer of 2021 was a strange time, to say the least. Some were rushing to be vaccinated; others were determined not to be. While there was plenty of hope, joy, and excitement, I remember it as a time of division, anxiety, fear, illness, and death as cases of COVID-19 were rising again. Many resolved to live as though everything were back to normal. How would I shepherd this congregation through this once-in-a-century crisis? The pandemic upended our faith practices, transformed our approach to sacraments, and fundamentally altered what it meant to be "gathered" in God's presence. Everything had changed, and yet, our God had not changed. The Rev. Cassie Waits wondered if we might encourage the congregation to find hope in this tumultuous time. She proposed an eight-week sermon series on the "I AM" statements of Jesus. Eight times in the gospel of John, Jesus describes himself by saying, "I am..." This was good enough for me, but Cassie had more. She wanted us to "do something." I'm not really one for creative ideas in worship. I even wear the same shoes every Sunday. Switching out the laces every once in a while is variety enough for me! I trust Cassie, though, so we kicked her idea around with a few other wise church staff people (Mary Groves, especially), and a plan was born. Each Sunday would have a different-colored ribbon. On those ribbons, the congregation would write a response to the sermon: a prayer, a word, a challenge. Throughout the summer, the ribbons would be tied to a structure outside, built by Tim Hammond and Howard Swinford. The wind would blow through those ribbons, lifting our prayers to Almighty God. It was the most important sermon series I've ever been a part of. The sermons in this book are the sermons that we preached. Each sermon ends with a prayer and nudge to you to "do something" with them. You might find your own ribbons to write on, or you might write a letter to the person whom the sermon made you remember. Whatever you do, do something so that you be not "hearers of the word only, but doers" (James 1: 22)
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.