Back on her way: music propels new career

Jackie Whitaker pulled her Honda into the dark driveway. Without ever checking the watch underneath her sleeve, she knew it would be hours before she could finally rest.

As she opened the trunk to retrieve her guitar, her daughter, Gamston, suddenly appeared in the driveway. The 12-year-old couldn't contain her excitement.

"You're such a celebrity," she said.

Whitaker let go of a big laugh, lifted her guitar from the back of her Honda and walked with her daughter back across the pavement and into the warmth of the family's kitchen.

Gamston returned to her schoolwork, while Jackie eased down a flight of stairs into the basement, where members of her band were setting up. It was Wednesday night, time for JWhit & the Boys to practice for their next gig.

For years, the 38-year-old housewife and mother thought she'd never find music again, at least not the way Grandpa Patton had taught her. He was her inspiration --- in music and in life.

Life and family overtook her for a period, pushing aside the music and Grandpa Patton. It looked like it would always be that way, until Whitaker rediscovered her dream.

Down in the basement, she walked through a tangle of electrical cords and grabbed her guitar from a stand near the keyboard.

"You guys ready?" Childhood melodies

Growing up in Greenville, S.C., Jackie spent most of her days with Grandpa Patton.

Her mother took her to school, but it was Patton, a retired millworker, who brought her home in his old station wagon.

Once a week, he'd take her to piano lessons. Even when she was old enough to walk from school, he'd post himself at the top of the hill and wait for her. He'd take her book bag and walk her hand in hand the rest of the way home.

A dinner of crowder peas, corn bread, hamburger steak and sweet tea that Patton made himself would be waiting. Together, they'd put the dishes away, and then Patton would replay the old country gospel songs he and his band rehearsed during the day. In between, Jackie and Grandpa passed each other silly notes.

"Dear Jackie, how 'bout we make some music." They laughed.

When they were done goofing around, Jackie would get his guitar out of the corner of the room, or the harmonica, and prompt him to play the songs she loved: "Frankie & Johnnie," "Do Lord" and "Amazing Grace." Grandpa Patton would sing the first verse. Jackie would take the second. It went that way for hours.

It amazed her how his old, feeble fingers would move with ease on the guitar strings. Even as a 5-year-old, she could tell he'd spent a lot of time playing the guitar. "Your turn," he'd say when he was finished.

Jackie tried to play, but she couldn't. The strings always hurt her fingers. Even when Grandpa Patton would show her where to put her fingers, it felt awkward. They'd put the guitar up until the next day, when they'd repeat the routine again. Jackie never minded. The way she saw it, this was just God's way of taking care of her. Under Grandpa Patton's watch, she always felt safe and secure. It didn't matter that she couldn't play. All that mattered was their love for each other. And music.

After high school, Jackie majored in English at Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C. She never thought she was good enough for music. Playing the guitar, the piano was more a memory than anything else. Then, near the end of her freshman year in 1986, Jackie stumbled upon a group of musicians playing for the Student Christian Association. She liked the sound. She wanted to play, too. That summer, she asked her grandfather, then in his 80s, to teach her the guitar. He bought her her first instrument --- a Yamaha --- at a pawnshop.

Two or three times a week, Jackie drove the three miles to Grandpa Patton's home to practice. He taught her chords, then songs to go with the chords she knew. While Jackie played, Grandpa Patton proudly watched. At the end of each two-hour session, he'd check his watch. They'd done enough. Family life takes over

Three years later, in 1989, Jackie graduated. She married Greg Whitaker, a man she'd met during her sophomore year. By December that year, Jackie was pregnant. That's when her life changed, when the music ended.

Her family had split up when she was just 4 years old, and she needed only to remember the hole left in her to get her priorities straight.

She knew what it was like coming home only to find your mother at work. It wasn't going to be like that with her family, which moved to Atlanta in 1996. "My dream was to have the big family that I watched fall apart, that I never got to experience,'' she said. Every day was planned around her four children --- John, 15, Gamston, 12, James, 9, and Harriet Grace, 5.

Except for a few minutes a day to keep her sanity, she gave up the piano. When she rose in the morning, she got the kids out of bed and ready for school. She washed the laundry. She cooked dinner. She cleaned. She shuttled them from soccer to baseball to basketball to football to piano lessons. On Sunday, she taught their Bible class at Northbrook United Methodist Church in Roswell. "I loved it," she said. "All of it." Rediscovering song

The days went by, the music still buried in Whitaker. But in 2001, the church ran an ad for a pianist, and a friend encouraged her to apply.

Northbrook's minister of music, Kendall Jones, gladly offered her the job. It was a small part, playing for the rehearsals, but music took hold of Jackie all over again. She began thinking what it might be like to head the ministry. Around that time, her musical life erupted, like a cymbal crash: The children's music director had quit, creating a bigger opening for Whitaker.

She had never directed a children's choir, but she had a long list of ideas. She applied, as did several elementary school teachers.

"We were looking for not just technical experience but heart, a passion for singing for and about God," said Jones, who hired Whitaker.

The following year, Whitaker was ready to take the music ministry to "blow the roof off" status. She developed a curriculum. In an effort to link the past to the present, Whitaker exposed the children to the old hymns, who wrote them and why. She encouraged them to play instruments. She got busy writing songs. She wrote her first musical, "The Christmas Project." She started playing in Northbrook's praise band. The piano. The synthesizers. The guitar the way her grandfather had taught her. She gave the choir a name, Joyful Noise, and a theme, from Psalm 100, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands."

"God just got behind the whole thing," she said. "There was a lot of excitement." 'JWhit' emerges

Not even Whitaker expected her music to blossom as it did. It was as if music had reclaimed her, rather than the other way around.

"Doors just kind of kept opening up," said Jones. "I call them a series of God incidences."

In the summer of 2004, he asked her to play a few of the songs she'd written for the congregation. At the end of the first rehearsal, band member Mark Breuker handed her a copy of the recording. "JWhit & the Boys," he wrote on the outside of the CD. A band was born.

Four weeks later, Jackie and the boys were asked to perform again. They played "In the Shadow of Your Wings," "Back on My Way" and "Just Three Chords," all written by Whitaker.

On Dec. 5, 2004, Jackie sang the title hit to plug her first musical for the congregation. The church turned out that evening. They loved the plot and the music, especially "Merry Christmas to All."

Four days later, with $2,000 of her own money, Jackie recorded "Merry Christmas to All" at Tree Sound Studios in Norcross.

The following Sunday, she gave away 500 copies at church. "It was never about money," she said. "We just wanted to get the song out."

At lunch that day, as she searched for money to pay for cookies for her children, Jackie found a check folded in her wallet: $2,000 from a church member, a thank-you for the song.

"That's how quick God returned it to me," she said.

She took copies of the CD to a few local radio stations. The song played on the airwaves --- on WWEV in Atlanta and WORG in Orangeburg, S.C. --- for the remainder of the season.

It inspired her to do more. In March, she founded Jackie Whitaker Music, and in June, JWhit & the Boys recorded its first CD, "Back on My Way," a compilation of Christian and crossover music.

"It was magical," she said. 'Underneath my sleeve'

When she steps to the mike, she looks more like a starry-eyed teenager than a mother of four.

But singing, Jackie becomes a little girl again. Singing, she feels Grandpa Patton looking down on her.

Put it, slip it underneath my sleeve

No one knows it's there but me

A piece of my history.

The lyrics came to her en route to Grandpa Patton's funeral in 2003, her mind full of memories of the two of them back in Greenville and the watch he had passed on to her shortly before his death at age 92.

It wasn't all that expensive and it looked really worn, but it never failed to keep the time, to remind Patton when to get her from school or to piano practice.

So far, it hadn't failed Jackie, either. She felt confident, like she could do anything. That's why she almost always puts it on when playing her music --- even during rehearsals.

This Wednesday night was no different. Down in the basement, Jackie and the boys --- Breuker on acoustic guitar and vocals, Robert Casey on drums, Allen Storey on bass and Jeff Lamb on electric guitar and mandolin --- finish a good night's practice. It was a good run of some of their favorites, including "Grandpa's Watch."

One by one, the boys headed home. Jackie Whitaker headed upstairs. She pulled Grandpa Patton's watch --- a gold Bulova --- from underneath her left shirt sleeve and laid it on the bedroom dresser.

"We did it again," she thought to herself.

Copyright 2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution