The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Free Gospel Hour shows were held at the Sisters Jazz Festival's Village Green and Comfort Inn stages at 10 a.m. Sunday morning.

Crowds of festival attendees and local worshipers flocked to the two venues to hear jazz-infused versions of classic hymns and other songs of faith.

The Chicago 6 played at Comfort Inn, while the Night Blooming Jazzmen performed at the Village Green.

It wasn't strictly a performance, since the audience members were handed song sheets and encouraged to join in. Band leader Chet Jaeger kept the service moving, interspersing musical numbers with his own brand of ecclesiastical humor.

"D'ya know what Adam told his son when he asked about Eden?" Jaeger asked the crowd. "There, boy, is where your mother ate us out of house and home!"

Jaeger then invited the audience to join them in a lively chorus of "Down by the Riverside" followed by the classic "Onward Christian Soldiers." After a brief monologue on the dangers of driving in Oregon with California license plates, Jaeger introduced the next song.

"We're going to play Amazing Grace," said Jaeger. "It has an Appalachian melody, but was written by John Newton many centuries ago. He was a British sea captain, slave trader, rum runner -- anything for a pound. Then he got caught in a terrible storm and promised the Lord that if He'd get him back to port safely, he would change his ways.

"God did get him back safely," he continued, "and Newton eventually became a minister. He wrote Amazing Grace and many other great hymns."

The band then burst into a most amazing rendition of a beloved hymn; New Orleans style, the Night Blooming Jazzmen breathed new life into the old classic. The crowd sang, building to the climax:

"When we've been there ten thousand years/Bright shining as the sun/We've no less days to sing His praise/Than when we first begun."