The Two-Winged Preacher from New Orleans
Brad dreamed a song we had not previously heard. Searching the lyrics in Google, we discovered that it was a song called “Two Wings” written and performed by a man named Elder Utah Smith, an African American preacher, guitarist, and singer. Smith had a church from the 1940s-60s not that far from where we now live in New Orleans. He wore a pair of wide wings as he performed, calling himself a “two-winged preacher.”
Tulane University scholar Lynn Abbott wrote a book about him entitled, I Got Two Wings: Incidents and Anecdotes of The Two-Winged Preacher and Electric Guitar Evangelist Elder Utah Smith. He was born in poverty in Shreveport, Louisiana, raised by his grandmother, and did not go past grade school. The wings and inspiration for his theme song came from a parishioner’s dream. New Orleans famed musician, Ernie K-Doe, someone Brad met one night years ago in K-Doe’s home, remembered those church services: “Someone hooked Smith up to an invisible cable connected to a system of pulleys and lifted him up into the air. He appeared to fly back and forth across the church and didn’t miss a lick!”
Paul Exkano, a quartet singer interviewed by Abbott for her book, said this of Rev. Smith:
Utah Smith had that guitar…and had a big old tent there on Calliope Street. Boy, that’s where all the people came. We sang there every night. And we had a time! That’s where the happenings were. What you talking about! Old Utah would get out there with that guitar…And he used to sing…his theme song, “I Want Two Wings.” Boy, you talk about rocking!”
Smith’s church lasted until 1965. Named “A Two-Winged Temple in the Sky,” it was a converted warehouse that could hold 1,200 people. Elder Smith was also a traveling sanctified or “holiness” evangelist who caught the attention of The New York Times and was even invited to perform at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The story of this concert is found on a post by James Kerr to a YouTube recording of Utah Smith:
My adopted Grandmother was the American painter, Loren MacIver from NYC. She and a couple of wealthy patrons of the new MOMA had a great idea in the early 1940s to do concerts at MOMA, called “Coffee Concerts.” Loren, Louise Craine, and Dorothy Miller bopped around NYC finding new talent to present to New York’s Cultural Community. Included in these concerts were Billie Holiday, the magnificent opera singer, Marian Anderson, and Rev. Utah Smith! Loren told me in the 80s that she and Louise went to see Smith on 14th St and wanted to take him to lunch after his performance. Smith would not take off his huge wings as they walked the streets of New York and they proudly strolled into a West Village restaurant with Rev. Smith . . . huge white wings and all!
Elder Smith was briefly mentioned in a 1982 review of the musical Your Arms Too Short to Box With God:
You ought to have seen the Rev. Utah Smith come to your town with his circus tent. Opening up the program with his theme song “I’ve Got Two Wings,” with the sleeves of his robe practically touching the floor, this 250-pound man would run down the center aisle, arms spread-out, and jump 10 feet in the air, backed-up by a 100-voice choir.
His album, “I Got Two Wings,” has been recently re-released and described as “thunderous.” Doug Schulkind, host of “Give the Drummer Some” on WFMU-FM (wfmu.org) says of him:
Long derided in some pulpits as a tool of the Devil, the electric guitar was nothing short of a sanctified soul-saving device in the clutches of evangelist Elder Utah Smith. He spent a lifetime conjuring ecstatic sounds in the service of Holy Ghost revivals across the nation, but Smith, buried in an unmarked grave in 1965, has largely been forgotten.
DJ Young Methuseleh writes of Smith:
With a church to run and a tour schedule to keep, Rev. Utah only cut three commercial recordings, all using his signature sound of rollicking-guitar-meets-freight-train-vocals-meets-congregational-hand-claps…If there ever was a showman/shaman for…Lynn Abbott to write about, Rev. Utah Smith is it.
Today a tombstone has been added to Smith’s grave site in Shreveport, Louisiana:
Because Brad dreamed his song, we are excited to now welcome the Reverend Utah Smith and his two wings to our mystical advisory board along with gospel composer Lucie E. Campbell, singer J. Robert Bradley, Jr., 18th century English hymn writer Joseph Hart, Cole Porter, Beethoven, and many others (those stories are told in our book, Climbing the Rope to God).
Elder Utah Smith knew how to turn a prayer-song wheel. Listen to him fly:
-The Keeneys, February 5, 2019