Oh yeah, one more thing:

These days, my quartet is working on two songs we've already "learned" but have had trouble with. The problem in both cases is that on the original recording, the lead singer adds extra beats on a line. This is fairly common in "live" singing that I hear, where the singer just gets into the feel of the line and holds it out extra beats (or throws in an aside.) In both of the songs we're working on, the lead singer sings a line with more words in it than you can easily keep within the beat of the song, unless you sing them like a speed reader. If it's just a lead singer and an accompanist, the accompanist can vamp a few extra beats and let the lead singer take whatever extra time that he or she feels to express the meaning of the song. When you're singing harmony, and the lead decides to sing one line longer than the number of beats the harmony singers are doing, everyone trips all over everyone else. This seems to be a quality of black gospel more than any other type of singing that I'm familiar with.

We're trying to resolve the problem by, in one case, shortning the line with the extra beats so that it fits with the harmonies, and in the other case where it's just my guitar backing the lead, my trying to "vamp" until the lead gets around to finishing the line.

Sometimes, I envy that chunka chunka of Maybelle Carter's guitar..

Jerry