T. L. Barrett

Thomas Lee Barrett, Jr. (born January 13, 1944),[1][2] better known professionally as Pastor T.L. Barrett and Rev. T.L. Barrett, is an American Pentecostal preacher and gospel musician. Barrett is a preacher on Chicago's South Side who released gospel albums in the 1970s; as a musician, he was largely unknown outside of Chicago until a resurgence in interest in his music occurred in the 2010s.

Biography

Barrett was born in the Queens borough of New York City,[1] but his family moved to Chicago when he was young. Barrett's father was a gospel musician who was involved with the music at a church run by Barrett's aunt. He attended Wendell Phillips High School, where he was expelled.[3] His father died when Barrett was 16, and he then moved to Queens, New York, where he lived with his uncle and took a job at Flushing Hospital extracting glands from cadavers.[3] At 17 he was arrested for failing to pay child support to a 37-year-old who bore his child.[3] In New York, he worked as a shoeshiner and played piano at parties and at venues such as the Waldorf Astoria and the Village Gate.[4] Eventually, he decided to become a preacher, returning to Chicago and starting his own youth-focused ministry.

His career as a pastor began in 1966.[4] He was pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, in the Washington Park neighborhood of Chicago in the 1970s. After a theological disagreement with the elders of the Mt. Zion church, he left to form his own ministry, the Life Center COGIC church, in the same neighborhood.[3]

Barrett was charged in 1989 with orchestrating a pyramid scheme, by encouraging his congregants to donate to a series of economic development fundraisers which yielded over two million dollars in total.[4] The financial viability of the plan was judged by a court to be infeasible, and Barrett was ordered to place his church's title in receivership as a result.[4] He was ordered to repay 1.2 million dollars by 1998, which he did successfully.[4]

In 1998, the Illinois House of Representatives honored Barrett for contributions to civic life in Chicago.[4] The city of Chicago named a portion of Garfield Boulevard, close to his Mt. Zion church location, in Barrett's honor.[3] In 2007, Barrett's youngest daughter, Kleo, was murdered by an ex-boyfriend.[5]

Musical career

In the 1970s, Barrett's congregation included many noteworthy Chicago-area musicians, such as Maurice White and Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind and Fire, Donny Hathaway, and Phil Cohran.[4] Barrett, recording as Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir, released the album Like a Ship (Without a Sail) in 1971. The Youth for Christ Choir, led by Barrett, was an approximately 40-member ensemble of children ages 12 to 19, which grew out of his Tuesday night weekly choir meetings.[3] The album featured instrumental contributions from Phil Upchurch, Gene Barge, Charles Pittman, and Richard Evans (of Rotary Connection).[6] It was reissued by Light in the Attic Records in 2010 to critical acclaim[6][7][8] and praise from musicians such as Jim James and Colin Greenwood.[4] Barrett also released several further albums of music over the course of the 1970s, as well as discs of sermons; he also recorded as Rev. T.L. Barrett.

In 2016, Kanye West sampled the song "Father I Stretch My Hands", from Barrett's 1976 album Do Not Pass Me By, in the song "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1" from the album The Life of Pablo.[3]

In 2016, Barrett's music was used in an Under Armour commercial directed by Harmony Korine and on the soundtrack to the film Barry.[3] and in the 2017 Almeida Theatre (London) production of Martin Crimp's "The Treatment".

In 2019, Barrett's song "Nobody Knows", from the 1971 album 'Like a Ship (Without a Sail)', was used in an AT&T commercial titled "Roll Up Your Sleeves". It was also used in a trailer to Corpus Christi.

Also in 2019, English musician Richard Ashcroft covered live the song 'Like a Ship (Without a Sail)' and released it as a streaming single (labeled as 'Just Like A Ship'). The song was covered during a live session at the Chris Evans Breakfast Show.

The following year, Barrett's recording of 'Like a Ship (Without a Sail)' was featured in the Netflix documentary, Crip Camp.

The song "Nobody Knows", from the 1971 album 'Like a Ship (Without a Sail)', has been sampled numerous times. These include:

  • rapper Copywrite's song "Trouble" from the album "Choose your own adventure: Murderland".[9]
  • DJ Khaled's album, Grateful
  • an AT&T commercial titled "Roll Up Your Sleeves". It was also used in a trailer to Corpus Christi.
  • Season One, Episode 1 of Amazon's TV show, "Hunters".
  • the finale of Season 3 of the action/superhero series Black Lightning.

Discography
Albums
  • Like a Ship... (Without a Sail) (Mt. Zion Gospel Productions TL-8126, 1971)
  • Vol. II; Do Not Pass Me By (Universal Awareness, ca. 1973) (Note: the "Vol. II" refers to this LP's status as a sequel to the prior "Like A Ship" LP, and not to the Gospel Roots LP of the same name, which would be released approximately three years later)
  • I Found the Answer (Gospel Truth GTS-2718, 1973)
  • Do Not Pass Me By (Gospel Roots GR-5002, 1976)
  • Roots (Gospel Roots GR-5009, 1977)
Sermons released on LP
  • Please Don't Squeeze the Charmine
  • John M. Smith (Or Do You Say Smythe?)
  • If I Should Wake Before I Die
  • It Tastes So Good
  • How Would You Like to Have a Nice Hawaiian Punch?
  • Dry Bones in the Valley
gollark: I *tested* BlahOS, and found that it was bad.
gollark: You are the only one to have mentioned the age of BlahOS.
gollark: BlahOS is not bad for its age, merely because it is bad.
gollark: No.
gollark: ... and?

References
  1. "New York, New York, Birth Index, 1910-1965 [database on-line]". Ancestry.com. 2017. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
  2. "U.S. Public Records Index, 1950-1993, Volume 1 [database on-line]". Ancestry.com. 2010. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
  3. Meet the Least Likely Link Between Kanye West and Barack Obama. Vanity Fair, December 14, 2016.
  4. Without A Sail: The Complicated Legacy Of Pastor T. L. Barrett. The Quietus, September 16, 2016.
  5. Missing deputy found dead. Chicago Tribune, April 3, 2007.
  6. Review of Like a Ship. Allmusic
  7. Egon's 5 Favorite Reissues Of 2010. NPR, December 21, 2010.
  8. Pastor T.L. Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir's "Like a Ship". The Stranger, August 4, 2010.
  9. https://www.whosampled.com/Copywrite/Trouble/
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