Today is the birthday of the great John Newton (1725–1807), the English Anglican clergyman who once served as a sailor in the Royal Navy and later as the captain of slave ships.
Eventually he was “saved” and he became ordained as an evangelical Anglican cleric, serving Olney, Buckinghamshire for two decades. He opposed the slave trade, allying with William Wilberforce, leader of the Parliamentary campaign to abolish it. He lived to see the British passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.
He is perhaps most famous for writing hymns, including the ever-popular Amazing Grace and Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken. Let’s all take a moment.
I actually own military pipe and drum albums and listen to them straight through. Maybe that’s why I like traditional instrumental country and bluegrass also. It’s based mostly on Scots / Irish Appalachian folk music, from the same heritage as the military tattoo.