Pat Wright & Her Total Experience Choir -- Imagine Aretha Franklin As A Den Mother

CUTLINE: WRIGHT'S SON AND ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, PATRICK, LEADS THE CHOIR IN A PERFORMANCE AT THE SEARS DEPARTMENT STORE NEAR DOWNTOWN SEATTLE, ONE OF UP TO 300 PERFORMANCES BY THE GROUP EACH YEAR. ON THIS NIGHT, THE GROUP SANG IN THE DRAPERY SECTION, ACROSS FROM THE LINENS.

CUTLINE: TO RE-ENERGIZE WILTING LIMBS, WRIGHT LEADS THE 35-MEMBER CHOIR IN A SESSION OF ``GOSPEL AEROBICS'' DURING THE LAST HALF-HOUR OF REHEARSAL.

CUTLINE: FAR LEFT - REHEARSALS SOMETIMES RUN LATE INTO THE NIGHT AND MOST MEMBERS HAVE SCHOOL IN THE MORNING. HERE DANIKA HOLIDAY STEALS A NAP WHILE HER FRIEND, KYESHA HODGES, LOOKS ON.

CUTLINE: MIDDLE - LISA CALLOWAY FOUND REBIRTH IN THE CHOIR AND CLINGS TO THE GROUP LIKE FAMILY. ``I MET PAT WHEN I WAS 3. NOW I CALL HER MOM,'' CALLOWAY SAYS. ``NO ONE INFLUENCES ME MORE THAN HER.'' TO CALLOWAY'S LEFT IS TONI KING.

CUTLINE: LEFT - CHOIR MEMBERS SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE INGRAHAM HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM JOIN IN A LOOSE SING-ALONG BEFORE A PERFORMANCE. IN THE FRONT ROW, FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, ARE SHANTA HIBBITT, DECEMBER HOLIDAY, LULU STRANGE AND LORI UDOVICH.

CUTLINE: RIGHT - FROM A BALCONY, WRIGHT WATCHES HER CHOIR REHEARSE BELOW. ``AT FIRST IT WASN'T MY INTENTION TO MOTHER ALL OF THESE CHILDREN,'' SHE SAYS. ``I HAD NO INTENTION OF LOVING THEM ALL LIKE I DO.''

CUTLINE: BELOW - ONE CHOIR MEMBER TELLS THIS STORY: ``PAT SANG DURING THE SERVICE. SHE TORE THE WHOLE PLACE UP. PEOPLE WERE CRYING AND

PRAISING THE LORD. YOU COULD REALLY SEE HER TALENT SHINE THROUGH . . . AFTERWARD, I WENT TO GO FIND HER . . . AND THERE SHE WAS, UP TO HER ELBOWS IN SOAP AND WATER, WASHING POTS AND PANS. . . . THAT'S PAT.''

CUTLINE: WRIGHT IS BACKSTAGE AT INGRAHAM HIGH SCHOOL, WHERE THE CHOIR IS SINGING ON A SUNDAY NIGHT. HER VOICE IS HOARSE FROM A CONCERT THE NIGHT BEFORE. SHE HOPES ``THE CHILDREN'S VOICES WILL CARRY TONIGHT'S SHOW.''

The whole picture started to change for me after watching the waiter boogie. He was an older guy, kind of stiff at first, with a face that looked exactly like I felt: worn out, resigned, maybe even a little tortured.

In other words, a typical holiday-season face.

You could tell he probably hadn't shaken his booty in years. And yet there he was, moving to the beat. I mean, he didn't turn into Paula Abdul or anything. They were little things: a subtle bounce in his step, a sneaky little slide between tables, an inconspicuous jig on the way to the kitchen.

Once in a while, he would glance up at the stage, where the music was coming from. Seattle's Total Experience Gospel Choir, celebrating its 17th anniversary this month, was rehearsing, filling the room with foot-stomping, soul-flying, hand-clap-clap-clapping song. Pat Wright, the choir's founder and director, was at the piano singing lead, her four-octave voice set free in blissful rhapsody. Her voice was strong. It made your heart thump.

Pat: We-e-e-ll blessed are the pure at heart for they go . . .

Choir: Sweeping through the city!

Pat: And blessed are the peacemakers for they go . . .

Choir: Sweeping through the city!

Pat: And blessed are the meek and humble for they go . . .

Choir: Sweeping through the city!

Pat: And we'll go . . .

Choir: Swe-e-e-e-e-ping through the city (clap, clap, clap-clap). Where our Captain has gone befo-o-o-o-re! We'll sit down! On the banks! Of the river! I won't be back! I won't be back! I won't be back!

No more.

No more.

No more.

A-a-a-a-a-men?

``Amen!'' someone in the back of the ballroom answered. The choir was in the Pan Pacific Hotel in Vancouver, B.C., preparing for a benefit concert later that evening, and was sending wave after jubilant wave of black gospel out the doors into the main lobby. The music was distinct: a blues rhythm, a confluence of baritones and altos and sopranos in surging harmonies, then a lead singer whose song rode the waves like a surfer. It's one-third discipline and two-thirds wild abandon. A labor of faith and a product of passion is

black gospel.

As the rehearsal went on, more people became infected. Hotel workers rocked their heads, snapped their fingers between tasks. Onlookers tapped their feet - not always with the beat, but close enough. I caught myself drumming my notepad. For a moment, my holiday blues lifted and I forgot that I had only X number of shopping days left to buy about 4,000 presents.

I hadn't expected that.

My interest in the choir at that moment went beyond the ``brochure'' facts. I already knew that Total Experience was the oldest and best known of the 110 or so black gospel

choirs in Seattle and was still the only youth-oriented black gospel choir in the region, and that it had won all kinds of awards, including Top Gospel Group from the Northwest Area Music Association.

These were nice. But I wondered how a group so young - most are under 18 and the youngest is 5 - could sing with such triumph in their voices. The kind that leaps out and possesses the very bones of an audience.

I understood better after talking to Lisa Calloway. She is 20 and sings in the second row. She joined the choir as an eighth-grader. For a couple of years she dropped out of the group, fell in with a bad crowd in Seattle's Central Area, where she grew up. She ran with kids who called themselves Bloods. As each fell from gunshot or knife wounds or went to prison - they're mostly all behind bars now, she says - she had nowhere to go but the choir.

``One night I got so scared. I had tears in my eyes. I called Pat. She said, `Come and see me.' And I've been with her ever since.''

Many of the choir members come from broken families, many are poor, some still teeter on the edge of the wild life. But like Calloway, they sing with triumph because each day they stay on the straight path is a victory, a testimony to their faith in God. Every member is an active churchgoer. They sing with triumph because they know all too well life on the other end.

So let us rejoice!

I won't be back! I won't be back! I won't be back!

No more. No more. No more.

In the next few days I would learn that, for the 35 members, Total Experience is more family than choir. They are brothers and sisters before they are baritones and altos. And the ``mother'' of them all, the anchor, the glue, the

heart and soul of the group, was that smallish, cherubic woman at the piano whose entire life vibrates like the chorus of one of her own gospel songs.

Pat Wright has smooth, light-brown skin and short hair pulled back over her forehead. She wears plastic red-rimmed glasses. She has motherly eyes - the kind that see right through a skimpy excuse. Her movements while performing are graceful and dignified, even while her voice stirs up a storm.

It was hard to pin her down that day in Vancouver. Everything was rush, rush, rush - like her life in general during the holidays. The group typically performs three to four times a week, and up to 300 times a year. That means a lot of running around, and she does most of the running.

On the bus ride early that morning, she was responsible for handing out snacks, defrosting the windshield (with a

napkin every half-hour), collecting garbage and rallying groggy spirits. Somehow, with help from her 20-year-old son Patrick, who leads the choir, she also managed to teach a new song.

I had to settle for bits and pieces of conversation during the four-hour ride. It took until almost Everett to learn that

she is 46, was born in east Texas cotton country, where her father was a Baptist minister and her mother a missionary. She started singing at 3 and playing the piano at 14.

By the time we reached Mount Vernon, I had learned that she came to Seattle in 1964 and over the years has worked as a music teacher, bank teller, investment counselor and school secretary. Her husband Ben, with whom she has been twice separated and is currently reconciled, is a teacher and coach at Franklin High School. Patrick is their only child.

During a break in Bellingham, I found out she spends at least 10 hours a week with the choir - all on her own time. She doesn't get a penny for it. In fact, a hefty chunk of her personal earnings over the years has gone toward keeping the choir afloat and helping individual members in crisis.

A new pair of shoes here, a bus ticket to L.A. there. They add up.

The choir's standard fee is $350 a gig - often barely enough to pay for expenses. Just one tire on their eight-tire touring bus, an old 1960s Gillig, costs $400. ``One tire!'' Wright says, her face crinkled. That gives you an idea. To cover other expenses, members pay monthly membership dues of $16, which will be raised to $17 - a dollar for each year of the choir's existence.

Wright is the group's business manager and agent. ``It all happens through me,'' she said matter-of-factly and maybe a little wearily. ``I run the show.''

The choir performs just about anywhere: schools, churches, restaurants, hotels, parks, prisons and so on. Its repertoire of 300 songs is traditional gospel with some secular. But make no mistake, the group delivers a singularly religious message, often conducting concerts like church services, with Wright as choir director and worship leader.

At a sparsely attended performance one recent night at Ingraham High School, she opened the evening with, ``Well, we didn't pack the place tonight, but we'll pack it with the Holy Spirit!''

The general consensus about Wright seems to be that what you see is what she is: a woman who loves music and young people, and who will do anything she can to serve them both - in the name of God.

She lives and dies gospel. She has arranged for son Patrick to sing ``Then My Living Shall Not Be In Vain'' at her death. ``It isn't going to be a funeral, it's going to be a musical,'' she has said.

Yet she is anything but a bland, wilting picture of saintliness. Her manner can be stern (when she's lecturing), downright silly (when she's relaxed), jubilant and raucous (when she's singing). Imagine Aretha Franklin as a den mother.

Even those whom she has crossed, and they are not few, still respect her. One such person, Sharon Chiles, quit the choir recently and pulled her 4-year-old son out, too, after exchanging words with Wright during a rehearsal.

``I'm a grown woman with two children who pays her own rent, and Pat was chastising me like a child,'' Chiles said later. ``I know she's `The Mother.' I wasn't questioning her authority. But when she's around it's like no one else can have an opinion.''

After having said that, Chiles went on to say that she still loves her former choir leader - ``It's impossible not to . . . she's a caring person'' - and plans to enroll her son back in the group when he's a little older.

Wright admits to a certain bullheadedness. When asked to describe herself, three words she listed were opinionated, stubborn and dogmatic, among other things. ``When I decide something's going to happen, it takes almost an act of God to stop it.'' She said this with a smile, but her eyes were serious.

Part of the reason the choir moved from its original home church, Mount Zion Baptist in the Central Area, and again from Prince of Peace Baptist in the South End, was because of disagreements between Wright and the pastors. Disagreements over musical content, instrumentation and such. Some conservative churches view the choir's lively performance style as being ``too worldly.''

But the Bible does say to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, and for Wright that means singing with mind, body and soul, and if drums and electric guitars help in the cause, hallelujah! She will not compromise the praise that surges from inside her.

Being headstrong, though, isn't what she's most known for. Nearly everyone in the choir has a Pat story. Here's a typical one:

Lori Brown, one of the 10 adults in the group, said she met Wright one evening months ago at Bright and Morning Star Baptist downtown, the choir's current home base. ``Pat sang during the service. She tore the whole place up. People were crying and praising the Lord. You could really see her talent shine through. There was a dinner after the service. Afterward, I went to go find her to say good-bye and someone told me she was in the basement. So I went down and there she was, up to her elbows in soap and water, washing pots and pans.

``I remember that now and I just think, `That's Pat.' ''

The choir was just finishing learning a new song as the bus pulled past the Vancouver, B.C., city limits. They would rehearse it several more times in one of the cloistered meeting rooms at the hotel. Part of the song went like this:

Here I stand on my journey. At the closing of the day. I'm hungry and so tired. I've been beat up by the rain. Why don't you give me shelter? All I need is a resting place. I was promised, promised so long ago.

Stop, do not go on.

Stop, do not go on.

Stop, do not go on.

More than any thing else, Wright is known by her ``children'' as someone who stopped and didn't go on. They seem to sense that it would have been the easiest thing in the world for her 17 years ago to just keep on walking by.

In the beginning, Wright did it for a paycheck.

The Seattle school district hired her

in 1970 to lead a black gospel choir at Franklin High School, then at Roosevelt. When a school levy failed in 1973, her position was dropped, but she couldn't bring herself to drop the groups. Instead she combined the choirs, found a church that would serve as a home base, and the Total Experience Gospel Choir was born.

``At first it wasn't my intention to mother all of these children. I had no intention of loving them all like I do,'' Wright said. ``But they needed the choir. For some, it was all they had. I can't stand to see children hurting.''

During the early years, all the members were young African Americans. Today, there are several Caucasians, and about a third are adults. Membership has gone from a riotous 108 in the early years to a sane 35.

``The choir has gotten smaller as I've gotten older,'' Wright says, explaining with a chuckle that she no longer has the energy to mother a hundred. Every one of her former singers, though - she estimates there are more than 500 and many, she points out proudly, have gone on to college and successful careers - remains an honorary member.

The past 17 years have been crazy, dreamlike, joyous, full of movement and song, like an extended music video. They've performed in 38 states (including Hawaii), Canada, Nicaragua and the Bahamas. They've shared the stage with the likes of Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, the Wynans and Sweet Honey in the Rock.

There were some low times, too. Like the few times they were cheated out of their fee because no contract was signed. Wright does business mostly on an honor system. A person's word, she says, should be good enough.

Like the trip to Africa that never happened. She had planned it for last December. The group needed $70,000, but collected only half that after months of nonstop fund-raising and performing. Wright and the choir were exhausted and crushed. ``I couldn't sell the concept to Seattle,'' she said forlornly. The money went to buy the Gillig tour bus, which they desperately needed.

Mostly, though, the years have been fulfilling.

``I'm not by any means financially secure. I probably have less than a thousand dollars to my name at age 46,'' she said. ``But I dare say that I'm happier than most . . . When I pass on, I won't have money for anybody, but every now and then my children may hear a song that might remind them of me. That's my legacy.''

Wright plans to run the choir until 1993, making it an even 20 years. After that, who knows. She talks whimsically of launching her own career as a black gospel soloist. ``That would keep me busy for the next 20!'' Meanwhile, it will be business as usual. Faces in the choir will come and go.

The criterion for membership has remained the same all these years. Anyone can join as long as you're serious about it. You don't even have to sing well. There are no auditions. Students are required to keep their grades up and their discipline records clean. You must attend 80 percent of the rehearsals.

The rehearsals every Tuesday night at Bright and Morning Star are like mini-revivals, complete with a Pat Wright lecture/sermon about the need for prayer or good study habits. A prayer is said before and after. Mostly, though, the rehearsals are just fun. Time to frolic with brothers and sisters. Time to sing praises at the top of your lungs!

Seventeen-year-old Gena Brooks, a Franklin High School senior, who along with her younger sister Tanisha have been in the choir since the day they could squeak out their first do re me, used to break down crying when she'd have to miss a rehearsal. ``Singing makes me feel good.''

Gena was easy to pick out that day in Vancouver. As concert time approached, the choir began rehearsals in the ballroom where the performance would take place. The little ones sang in the front row. The basses and baritones lined up in back. Gena was the one at the end of the second row who moved a lot. I mean, moved. She sang with her whole body: elbows, shoulders, neck, head, knees, feet. Every cell in her body joined in the song.

It was after watching her that I started noticing reactions. That's when I saw the beaten-down waiter, and I witnessed over a stretch of three or four songs how his jaded veneer melted before my eyes, how the whole room transformed - nothing dramatic, just more snapping fingers and tapping toes.

The soul of black gospel surges with the rhythms of Africa. And something about its birth in the cotton and tobacco fields of this country, its origin coming out of toil, gives it a certain power and relish that forces a response.

I'm free, praise the Lord, I'm free!

No more am I bound, nor chains holding me

My soul is resting, just another blessing

Praise the Lord, hallelujah, I'm free!

After rehearsing all afternoon, the choir left to get dressed. Ticket-holders began filing into the ballroom around 6:30. A few thousand people would be seated at the start of the show. The concert was to benefit a child-finders association, so it was not a typical gathering and many would be experiencing live black gospel for the first time.

It was a black-tie, stiff-leather-shoes crowd. I looked around and saw dozens of faces that sagged, from holiday blues or Life in General or whatever. There was a young couple at my table, dressed very nicely but from the neck up looked as if they were due for a long vacation in some quiet place. One gentleman a few tables down sat as straight-up and wooden as the totem poles in the lobby. He did not have a happy face, either. Farther down, closer to the stage, was a gathering that looked like a Monday-morning corporate meeting.

Outside the ballroom, the Total Experience Gospel Choir was in uniform, garbed in their traditional red and black, ready to burst onto the stage. I made it a point to watch each one of those saggy faces in the audience over the course of the evening. It would be interesting to see the changes.

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HEAR THEM SING

The Total Experience Gospel

choir performs live on radio every fourth Sunday of the month. Tune in to KFOX-AM, 1250, from 10:30 a.m. to noon. The group's upcoming schedule:

TODAY

17th Anniversary Christmas Concert, Bright and Morning Star Baptist Church, 1900 Boren, Seattle, 3:30 p.m.

DEC. 28-30

``The Amen Corner,'' a musical play at Bright and Morning Star Church, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday. $10 at the door.

JAN. 4-6

``The Amen Corner,'' Bright and Morning Star Church, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday.

JAN. 13

Martin Luther King Celebration at First United Methodist Church, downtown Seattle at Fifth and Marion, 7 p.m.

JAN. 27

Fund-raising concert, Bright and Morning Star broadcast ministry, Bright and Morning Star Church, 4 p.m.

FEB. 16

Performance at Eastshore Unitarian Church, 12700 S.E. 32nd St. in Bellevue, 7:30 p.m.

FEB. 17

Festival Sundiata at the Seattle Center House, 1:30 p.m.

FEB. 22

Performance at Meany Theater, University of Washington, 7:30 p.m.