Precious Lord

At Whit's End, Trey Calhoun wanders in looking for a quiet place to think and finds Mr. Whittaker programming new characters into his remarkable gallery, a room of paintings that move and talk. Trey admits he is worried about the future: he has overheard his parents fretting about the kind of world he and Cooper will grow up in, and everything seems to be changing fast. Whit offers two thoughts: "No matter how bad things get, God will always be good," and every generation has faced challenges of its own. Since Whit is adding influential musicians to the gallery, and music is one of Trey's things, he loads Trey's favorites, jazz and gospel. One portrait was painted by Whit's late wife Jenny after they heard the man in it sing at a church service in Chicago, shortly after their son Jerry was killed in the war. The painting introduces himself as Thomas Dorsey, and when Whit mentions Trey's worries, Thomas suggests that when big questions hit, it helps to go back to the beginning. Growing up, he says, "I felt like my life was a song with no tune" - and Trey admits he feels the same way.

Thomas's story unfolds in scenes from his boyhood. His father is a traveling preacher and his mother teaches him piano, but preaching pays almost nothing, and one day a man arrives with terrible news: the bank has called in the loan on their home. The family's only option is to move into a rundown shack on the back of the property and farm the land for the bank, which means Thomas's father must give up preaching. His father insists that God always provides and that trusting Him even when it is hard is called faith, but from that day on, young Thomas quietly holds the loss against God.

Farming does not suit the family, so they move to Atlanta for a fresh start, where money is still so tight that supper is a rutabaga in watery broth. Thomas quits school to carry water and soda pop at the 81 Theatre, a vaudeville house, and there his life changes. The singer Mamie Smith tips him a quarter, learns he walks fifteen miles for piano lessons, and points him to the house pianist, Mr. Ed Butler, who starts teaching him for real. Thomas picks things up so fast that Butler laughs that the lesson was "duck soup" for him, and Thomas announces he plans to learn from everyone and become famous. Mamie decides such a musician needs a better name, and he becomes Georgia Tom.

Thomas does get good - piano, accordion, guitar, violin - but his path drifts far from church. As a young teenager he plays rowdy house parties where the alcohol flows, and when police raid one, he escapes out a window and spends weeks dreading a knock at the door that never comes. Whit observes that fear thrives on a guilty conscience, but neither fear nor guilt changes Thomas. He keeps playing clubs, works at a steel mill, and wastes his money on foolish living, chasing happiness that never arrives. Eventually he falls apart completely - broke, joyless, and lost - and crawls home to his parents. His father drags him out of bed at noon and tells him he is clinging to a life bent on destroying him, that God made him with more talent than anyone he has ever known, and that he needs to go back to his beginnings - not to music, but to knowing and loving the Lord as he did as a little boy. His mother adds that helping others, not playing clubs, is where joy and purpose are found.

Thomas ignores them. He moves to Chicago to become a big-name blues musician, records dozens of records, and starts making a real name for himself - yet the joy still is not there. Then one Saturday night, feeling low on his way to a gig, he passes a church convention and, for reasons he cannot explain, walks in. A singer named Brother Nix performs a song about knowing a great Savior with such power that Thomas is undone; he tells a new acquaintance, Theodore Fry, that he never knew church music could be so powerful, and confesses he has not been right for a very long time. That night, kneeling beside his bed, Thomas surrenders his heart to Jesus for the first time, realizing his childhood religion had only been repeating his parents' words without meaning them.

Soon he writes his first song for the Lord, music that stirs the soul while it preaches the gospel, unlike any sacred song Theodore has ever heard. The new style gets a name: gospel music, for the good news. Convinced this is what he was created to do, Thomas goes to quit his club job. The astonished owner warns, "You'll be begging for your job back before long, Georgia Tom." Thomas simply replies, "I just hope I'm in a forgiving mood when you do" - and walks away toward his new future, with the rest of his story still to come.