Clarence often smiled to himself as he played the trombone at the tabernacle. While Paul, along with his gospel campaign, was taking Chicago by storm, the approach he was using was not that much different from what Clarence had experienced growing up in the Salvation Army. And as he had done at Moody Church, Clarence loved to lay his instrument aside after the music was over and listen to Paul’s inspired and dynamic preaching. He was amazed by the way Paul seemed to throw himself physically and emotionally into every sermon he preached. Paul was usually so drenched from perspiration at the end of each service that he had to take a shower.
While the ministry of the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle was proving to be very effective, Paul Rader was not a man to rest on his laurels. On June 12, 1922, he asked Clarence and the other members of the quartet to stay behind after the evening service. As they waited for the tabernacle to empty and for Paul to appear, the quartet members discussed the next week’s program, though Clarence was certain that they were all wondering why Paul had asked them to stay late.
Finally Paul arrived, still sweating from delivering his sermon, and the five men got chairs and huddled together near the front of the building. The janitor came by to rake the sawdust, but Paul asked him to start at the back so that they could have some privacy.
Once they were all seated, Paul came straight to the point. “God has brought a wonderful opportunity to us, boys!” he began. “Finally we are going to get to fight Satan in his own territory—the air!”
Clarence’s mind raced, but he could not imagine what Paul meant. He glanced at his three friends, who looked just as baffled.
Paul chuckled. “Mayor Thompson called on me this afternoon and asked if we could provide some musicians for the new radio station that is starting in Chicago. What do you think?”
Clarence did not know what to think. He had read about radio, but he had not actually heard one himself. Radios were mainly in the hands of ham radio operators and were used to pass messages along, but he had read that some men were trying to broadcast radio programs so that anyone could pick them up if they had a receiver.
Paul talked on over Clarence’s thoughts. “The Bible tells us that Satan has dominion over the air, but we are about to launch an assault on his work. We’ll take our gospel songs right into the homes, the hotels, the saloons—everywhere there is a receiver—and we’ll proclaim the good news to men and women who would never think of setting foot in a church.”
Paul’s enthusiasm was contagious, and within a few minutes he had convinced the four young men that this was a wonderful new opportunity for spreading the gospel. However, once news got around that Paul Rader and the Tabernacle Quartet were about to go on the radio, many Christians became upset.
“How could God possibly bless this newfangled fad?” they asked. “Radio is a toy that’s not going to last, so why waste the Lord’s money on such a foolish venture?” And, “Who does it reach anyway? Does the average family have a receiver in their living room, and are they ever likely to buy one? Of course not!”
Still, Paul was confident that radio had a future. And so with the quartet’s approval, he signed them up to deliver their first radio broadcast. The broadcast was scheduled for a week later on Saturday, June 17, 1922.
A blustery wind blew in across Lake Michigan as Paul Rader and the Tabernacle Quartet climbed to the roof of City Hall in downtown Chicago, where the studio of the fledgling radio station WHT was located. Clarence had expected something grand, and he was surprised to discover that the studio was in fact a small booth constructed of bare pine boards. It didn’t even have a roof. An engineer ushered them into the booth and pointed them to a small hole cut into one of the walls. “Point your instruments toward that hole, and when we say play, you play,” he instructed.
The members of the quartet took out their instruments, faced the wall with the hole, and waited for the instruction to play. Several minutes later someone pushed what appeared to be the mouthpiece from a telephone through the hole, and the engineer said, “Play.”
Clarence pressed the trombone to his lips and blew for all he was worth. With the wind whistling around them and the noise of traffic filtering up from the street below, Clarence wondered how anyone listening to the radio would be able to hear what they were playing, but he played heartily anyway. After they had played several rousing gospel tunes, Paul stepped forward, and facing the hole in the wall as the quartet had, he began to preach. When he was done preaching, the quartet played one more tune, and the broadcast was over.
As he climbed down from the roof of City Hall, Clarence wondered whether their playing and Paul’s preaching had actually been heard by anyone in Chicago. He did not have to wait long to find out. Back at the tabernacle office, the telephone was ringing off the hook with listeners wanting to know when Paul was going to preach on the air again and making musical requests for the quartet to play on the next broadcast.
The response of the radio audience startled Clarence, but Paul reacted with the confidence of someone who had expected it all along. As the weeks went by, the new radio ministry grew at a startling rate. Soon the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle was broadcasting on the radio each Sunday for fourteen hours straight as well as daily from 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM on the newly formed Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).
Clarence loved everything about this new way of reaching out with the gospel, and soon he found himself promoted to the position of program director. His days were hectic as he lined up piano duets, brass quartets, soloists, and preachers to fill in the many hours of radio broadcasting each week. Since there was no way to record any of the programming in advance and play it back at a later time, all of the musicians and speakers had to be in front of the microphone at broadcast time.
Despite his duties as program director and member of the Tabernacle Quartet, Clarence managed to find the time to continue pursuing Katherine Welty, who was now studying at Nyack Bible Training College in New York state. Whenever it was possible, he would catch a train to New York and surprise Katherine after class. Gradually, as the two of them continued to see each other, Katherine’s father began to warm to the idea of Clarence’s marrying his daughter.
Sensing this change, Clarence decided one night to propose to Katherine. Much to his relief, nineteen-year-old Katherine agreed to be his bride. Clarence could hardly wait for their wedding day to roll around.
Chapter 4
“Go South—with Radio”
After a short engagement, just long enough to plan a simple wedding, Clarence Jones and Katherine Welty were married at the Welty home in Lima, Ohio, on August 2, 1924. Clarence’s family, along with Clarence’s two closest friends, Lance Latham and Richard Oliver Jr., made the trek to Lima to attend the marriage ceremony. Lance played the piano, and Richard served as best man, while Paul Rader conducted the ceremony.
During the ceremony Clarence tried not to worry, but inside he was a little nervous, not because he was marrying Katherine but because he had no spare cash and no plans for his honeymoon. When he had prayed about the situation, he had felt a peace that God would take care of everything. He just wished he had known a little more about how God was going to take care of it before the wedding service started.
In fact, Clarence was so absorbed in thinking about the dilemma that he failed to notice that the young ringbearer had dropped the ring and Richard was now down on his knees searching for it. To cover the action going on at the altar, Paul had launched into a long prayer, praying not only for Clarence and Katherine but also for just about everyone else he knew around the world. At the same time that Clarence was coming to the conclusion that Paul’s prayer was better suited to a missionary prayer meeting than a wedding service, he felt a tap on his ankle. Startled, he looked down to see Richard motioning for him to lift his foot. Clarence obliged, and there was the missing ring right under his shoe. With the ring in hand, Paul quickly brought his prayer to a close and continued with the rest of the service.
During the wedding reception that followed, Clarence was still fretting about the uncertainty of the honeymoon destination, when Paul motioned to him. Clarence walked across the room to Paul, who quickly pressed a wad of cash into his hand. “This is for you to go to Baltimore. Take a couple of days for a honeymoon, then set up tent meetings for us there,” he told Clarence.
Clarence was relieved and was finally able to enjoy the rest of the wedding reception. When it was over, the newlyweds set off for Baltimore in a borrowed car.
Clarence and Katherine enjoyed a wonderful weekend together. Then Clarence got down to the business of finding a suitable central site on which to erect the 150 x 60 foot tent and began rallying people to attend the upcoming campaign. Once a site was secured and the tent put up, Paul arrived from Chicago to conduct what turned out to be some of the largest Christian services ever held in Baltimore. During the campaign many people were challenged to accept the gospel message.
From Baltimore, Clarence and Katherine drove on to Atlantic City, where once again Clarence set up a meeting place and a schedule for Paul to come and preach. When those meetings were finally over, Clarence and Katherine made their way to Chicago to set up home together. Clarence was soon hard at work again as program director for the radio broadcasts and playing once more in the Tabernacle Quartet.
Paul was continually pushing Clarence and the radio team to be more creative, often putting them on the spot to see what they could come up with. One night, as he was preaching a sermon on the Walls of Jericho, he would stop, point to Clarence, and expect him and the quartet to come up with the appropriate sound effect. The members of the quartet found themselves blowing fanfares on their instruments and stomping in unison to simulate the sound of marching. On one occasion Clarence even found himself drawing a violin bow across a handsaw to simulate the sound of rushing wind. At first it seemed a little tacky to Clarence, but to his surprise, when it was all put together on radio, somehow the sound effects seemed to engage the listener more.
The musicians were also encouraged to write new songs for the various shows, and Clarence rose to the occasion, contributing thirty of his own songs. Some of the songs became the most requested tunes played on the air. There were times on a radio broadcast when Clarence not only had written the music but also introduced it to the audience, played the trombone as it was being performed, and led the orchestra.
The amount of coordination for the radio broadcasts was enormous, and soon Clarence had to hire twenty-five telephone operators to handle all of the calls the programs generated.
Many of the listeners to the radio broadcasts joined the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle, and the five thousand seats in the sanctuary were soon filled to capacity for each service. Fifty musicians played in the orchestra each Sunday, and a three-hundred-member choir sang for the congregation. As one of the largest churches in the United States, the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle experienced a constant push to pioneer other new areas of ministry besides radio. Paul Rader had a vision to organize boys’ and girls’ clubs, much like Scouts but with a Christian emphasis. Once again he turned to Clarence to lead the new work.
Clarence gladly accepted this new challenge, though he resigned himself to getting less sleep, since he still had the tabernacle’s radio ministry to run. He invited his old friends Richard and Lance, along with Virginia Highfield, to help him with the boys’ and girls’ clubs, and soon the four of them were hard at work designing the new program. News about what they were doing spread quickly, and soon thousands of boys and girls between the ages of eight and fifteen were meeting each Saturday afternoon at the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle.
