Organist Gerald Carper and his view from the organ bench

Somewhere between all the verses in the Baptist hymn book and the first few notes of another wedding processional, Gerald Carper believes he has a book in him.

He hasn’t started writing his memoirs. His fingers have been busy playing the organ for the past 62 years. 

Last year marked his 50th year as an organist at three Macon churches — Ingleside Baptist, Bloomfield Methodist and Highland Hills Baptist.

That’s a lot of “Amazing Grace” on holy, holy, holy Sunday mornings.

“I need to write these stories down before I forget them,’’ he said. “I have two working titles. The first is ‘There’s No Business Like Church Business.’ The other is ‘The View from the Organ Bench.’’’

Carper is 76 and has played the organ at Highland Hills for exactly half his life. He teaches piano lessons at his Ingleside home, goes for morning walks around the neighborhood and faithfully peruses the weekly bulletins from other churches to see what hymns are making joyful noises across the city.

He had ulna surgery on his left arm last month and returned on cue two weeks later. He took his familiar seat at the German-made Moller pipe organ, which was installed when the sanctuary was built at the Shirley Hills church in 1967.

“I never married, so music has been my life,’’ he said. “I have never lost that drive for playing the organ, and that’s why I’m still here. But I also want to know when it’s time to stop. I don’t want to be that old man up there trying to play.’’

If he turns back the clock, he can hear the old piano in the dining room at his family’s restaurant in Tifton.

He learned to play on that piano, his fingers moving up and down the ebony and ivory. 

Carper was the oldest of Sidney and Antoinette Carper’s four sons. They owned the Alpine Restaurant near the intersection of Highways 41 and 82 in Tifton. Their home was next door to the restaurant.

When he was a child, Carper woke up from his nap one afternoon to find the piano in the living room. His parents had purchased a new one for the restaurant and had the old piano moved to the house.

“I remember being upset that there was no piano bench,’’ Carper said. “So our maid got me a kitchen chair. I played by ear until I started taking lessons. I played that piano all the way through high school.’’

His mother died when he was 11, a few years after he began taking piano lessons from his third-grade teacher. He would sometimes skip Sunday school at the First United Methodist to watch the church organist practice the hymns she would play during the service.

In junior high, he took advanced piano lessons from a woman who lived across the street from the school. He also began learning to play the organ from a college student when she was home for the summers.

“It was extremely difficult getting my hands and feet to work together,’’ he said. “She didn’t have a lot of teaching experience, and I think she wanted me to go faster than I could. By the next summer, I had learned to coordinate my hands and feet, and I began to work on playing hymns.’’

Carper was only 14 when the music committee at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Tifton approached him about being their organist. The pay was $5 a week. The congregation was small. There was no choir. He was not old enough to drive himself to church.

He played for the Christmas Eve service five months before he graduated from high school. That night was an affirmation that music would be his life’s calling.

He was accepted into the music program at Shorter College in Rome. But three weeks before classes started, his father suffered a massive heart attack, and Carper returned to Tifton to help his family care for him.

He had to enroll at nearby Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. While he had no aspirations of becoming a farmer, the seeds were being planted for his future in music.

He asked St. Anne’s if he could have his old job back. He took classes in music theory and began taking organ lessons from the organist at First Baptist Church in Tifton.

When First Baptist later asked him to serve as its interim organist, he walked a block down the street and got a pay raise to $25 a week.

He received his Bachelor of Music degree from Georgia Southern, where he continued his growth under the tutelage of Lavinia Floyd.

“She was like a mother,’’ he said. “She was very good to me.’’

Carper earned his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia. He purchased his first car and was hired as acting director of the music department at Middle Georgia College in Cochran.

While attending an organ recital workshop at Mercer University in 1974, he asked one of his UGA classmates, Chris Hornsby, if he knew of any music opportunities in Macon. Hornsby and Ernest Penley owned Baldwin Piano and Organ on Riverside Drive, which later became Georgia Music.

“Well, there’s a church out here with a pipe organ and no one to play it,’’ Hornsby told him.

That church was Ingleside Baptist, now one of the largest in Macon. Carper was there for 12 years. He offered private piano lessons at his home, served as a part-time instructor at Macon Junior College (now Middle Georgia State) and taught weekly classes as an adjunct professor at UGA.

He left Ingleside and served as the organist at Bloomfield Methodist for one year before finding a permanent home in the choir loft at Highland Hills in 1987.

“Highland Hills is a church with a historically strong emphasis on good music,’’ he said. “I’ve been here longer than anybody.’’

Carper keeps notes on every wedding — when and where it was held and what music was played. A woman recently reintroduced herself to Carper at a funeral and told him that he had played for her wedding 46 years ago.

He has participated in the organ concerts at Mulberry Street United Methodist during the Cherry Blossom Festival. He serves as treasurer of the Macon chapter of the  American Guild of Organists.

He often reflects on his role in the ministry.

“I don’t walk in thinking I have all this power, but the organist has more power than anybody in the church,’’ he said “There may be a music director, but they’re listening to you.’’

Gerald Carper’s Favorite Hymns

• Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven — “It’s a triumphant hymn. I can play it and build the organ to full sound.’’
• Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee — “I love the words. They’re introspective.’’
• The First Noel — “It tells the whole Christmas story.”
• Christ the Lord is Risen Today — “A wonderful hymn. The resurrection.’’