A Running Diary of “The Devil’s In the Phonebooth Dialing 911”

Here’s as good a candidate as any for the title of “Quintessential Southern Gospel Song.” Its title? The metaphysical conceit, “The Devil’s In the Phone Booth Dialing 911.”

Here’s a running diary of this QSGS….

0:00	I first heard this song in my pastor’s garage which doubled as our church ca. 1994 with a Mississippi-based evangelist named Danny Bishop rocking the mic. Bishop’s ministry was largely music based, and his singing and piano-playing skills trumped his abilities as a minister. To wit, I don’t remember a single subject for one of his sermons, but I’ve never forgotten this song. Bishop had a great voice, and one of his paradoxes was that  he was sort of short, stocky white dude with walrus hands who sounded like Billy “Fifth Beatle” Preston.
0:03	This song features what Britt and I like to call “pianey,” a honky-tonk-esque tickling of the ivories. Bishop was himself a piano man, but his “performance” of this song raises some retrospective questions for me. Bishop played a pre-recorded or “canned” track of this song that he then sang too, BUT he would inevitably play his own piano OVER THE TOP of the track. If he was using this Walt Mills track, I wonder what kind of “pianey” he could have added that wasn’t already there.
0:05	Quintessential Southern Gospel Song Trait #1: Starting with the chorus. The extended metaphor of the devil being in a phone booth is too good to wait for an entire verse to get to. Sincere question: who exactly is the devil calling? That is, when the devil finds himself in trouble, who is his emergency contact?
0:10	I wonder if this song’s powerful metaphor would be diluted today by the fact that cell phones have largely made the phone booth obsolescent. On a related note, my dad used to sing this hymn called “The Royal Telephone” that offered an extended analogy between making a call ca. 1952 and praying. As interpreted by my father, the song retained power despite its datedness even in 1988. In 2015, however, the song seems like a fossil almost akin to singing about a bicycle built for two where the riders are you and Jesus.
0:15	“Loading up the spiritual gun.” This is certainly a reason to consult emergency help. What are the bullets in said gun?
0:28	The cold stop at the end of the chorus is a solid QSGS Trait #2. For a song of this tempo, you know you’ve hit a cold stop if you can say the words “Cha cha cha” in the gap between the final word of the chorus and the beginning of the verse.
0:34	The verse features some classic Southern Gospel guitar fills. Note: distortion is out of bounds for any song like this, but the guitar’s tone is heavily filtered. Back to the Mississippi minister who introduced me to this song. One of the reasons that Danny Bishop liked coming to our church is that for a congregation our size (no more than 30 when he first came), we had a disproportionately great set of musicians. Our pastor, in particular, was the best guitarist I’ve ever heard on a church worship team. While Bishop would lean heavily on canned tracks for the music part of his ministry, he came to play more and more songs with our musicians when he made return visits.
0:46	“The key to the kingdom are the secrets to success to loose the Holy Ghost and the Son.” First, we’re reeling at this point from the metaphors-upon-metaphors that Mr. Walt Mills is dishing out. We’re loading guns. We’re turning tables. Now we’re…unlocking doors? Maybe the “keys to the kingdom” unlock the gun safe of prayer? Second, this line sounds suspiciously trinitarian, which would have been a no-no for a oneness believers like Bishop and the members of our church. What could it mean to “loose the Son”?
0:51	QSGS Trait #3: if you’ve got any kind of title worth its salt, you have to drop it as the last line of your verses.
1:02	Check out the Walt Mills photo at the 1:02 mark of the video. That is some quintessential preacher hair (if you’re feeling southern, pronounce that last word “haaaarrrr” like you’re Andy Griffith, and if you’re feeling frisky, use the phrase “right powerful” as an adjective in the same sentence).
1:15	It’s time for your mid-song “pianey” break.
1:25	“What in hell do you want?” What in hell do you want, indeed… I vaguely remember being scandalized by this line when I first heard it. It’s up there with Christian Heavy Metal icons Stryper declaring, “To Hell With the Devil” on their 1986 Grammy-nominated album of the same name.
1:49	QSGS Trait #4: Classic background vocals chiming in with “Phonebooth.” There was at least one service where Danny Bishop played this song to the congregation AFTER service was over, and we may or may not have been instructed to contribute these “phonebooths” to the proceedings.
2:18	QSGS Trait #5: the requisite rave-up section at the end where the drums can roll, the piano can vamp, and the whole musical frisson hints at the possibility that the spirit might just move and the song would keep right on going. Another Bishop fave was a canned version of “I’ll Fly Away” that inevitably featured him ending the song then running it back with the last verse and a final chorus. I don’t think we ever got two back-to-back performances of “Devil’s In the Phonebooth” but if any song in the evangelist’s repertoire could have “turned the tables” it would have been this one.