HARVEST -- Track 1&2: "The Field"/"No Word Was Heard"

By way of INTRODUCTION, "Harvest" is the theme album Mark Seamons and I put together back in 1977 (more on that later). But first (since these are the first two songs from the album), let me give you some background on me -- the Morphis half of the duo. If you’re over 65 and lived in the Greater L.A. area in the 1970s, you might have run into me playing in one of two bands that I performed with back then.
The Justus Brothers was a 3-man cover band made up of Dan Whitley on guitar, Nick Peper on keyboards and keyboard bass, and me on drums. We all sang and had a special “routine” that we did that was laced with comedy along with our music.
We recorded a couple of albums and co-wrote and starred in a “Mormon Musical” entitled “Open Any Door”, produced in 1972 and put on in a half-dozen venues throughout the following years. Our little band was well-known to young Latter-Day Saint audiences all around L.A., Southern Cal, and we even toured in northern California a few times.
Well, after playing a summer gig at Magic Mountain in 1975, we figured we were headed for the big time and managed to wrangle an audition with one of the night clubs in Las Vegas. We chartered a small plane, packed enough of our gear to make that audition happen, and flew out to show them our stuff. Well, they hired us as one of their lounge acts, to start shortly after the new year.
However, trouble was brewing between Dan and Nick and, after the NewYear’s Eve gig (1975), Dan confronted Nick and fired him - Yikes! What was going to happen to the Justus Brothers? That leads me to introduce you to the replacement Dan found to keep our little band alive.
Dan picked me up one Friday evening when we should have had a gig but didn’t. We drove to a restaurant in West Covina where he wanted me to see a keyboard player that he thought would be the perfect replacement.
Mark Seamons was an amazing keyboard player. As a blind musician, he had honed his craft to a point of perfection - perfect pitch; able to hear something once and duplicate it; a very pleasant singing voice; everything we needed except a sense of humor. That singular deficiency ended up being our downfall in Vegas as we churned out the cover songs but had no real on-stage chemistry. After only a few nights, the club manager came to us and told us to finish out the first week - that we were being fired! That was the “shot” that I needed to realize that we were trying to make the glass slipper fit the wrong foot! Mark and I talked it over and we decided to leave Dan and become a duo. Morphis & Seamons was born.
Morphis & Seamons started out playing in restaurant lounges five and six nights a week while we worked on songwriting. Like most songwriters, most of our efforts found their way into notebooks and (back in that day) on cassette tapes, never to be performed for the public. We did get asked to appear on the “Dinah!” television show in 1977 playing one of our originals - something we thought might launch our recording careers. We were picked up by American Variety Records and formed into a six-man group strangely named “100% Whole Wheat” which produced two albums that had mild success (mostly overseas).
Shortly after that, Mark and I broke away from that group and decided to produce a religious album to use our music to bear our testimonies. “Harvest” is the result of a collaboration with a benefactor, John Wabl, who bravely financed the album and a limited tour in Southern California. MORE ON THIS in the description for the NEXT CUT of the album.
Meanwhile, let me explain that these first two songs, "The Field/No Word Was Heard" were designed to depict the creation of the world (the "field") with all its chaos -- good and evil competing -- culminating with the coming of the Savior and His crucifixion, followed after by the complete withdrawal of God's word upon the earth (the Dark Ages).
“The Field” - Instrumental
“No Word Was Heard”
Mark Seamons -- keyboards and vocal
Bob Morphis -- percussion
Jon Woodhead -- guitar
Jac Redford -- strings
Recorded at Sierra Pacific Studios, Studio City, CA
Engineered by Bob Apperson and Patrick McDonald
LYRICS:
No word was heard, the heavens fell still
And all the truth and love and light
That cried and bowed and died to save - and died to save
No word was heard, His hand withdrawn
That man might chance to find, though blind
The mind and time to pay - and time to pay
What precious gift by man least understood
To live again, our hearts were stirred
The power to lift, the life He left for good
But left to men, no word was heard - no word was heard
No word was heard, while men who had known
The Savior’s precious power denied
With lies and compromise, the heart to pray - the heart to pray
No word was hear, so men of greed
Reclaiming for themselves the right
Each line and point define the way - define the way
SPECIAL THANKS to Nick Peper for remastering this LP and for his continued friendship down through the years.