Interesting that many of the pulp hymnals are now out of print on Amazon.com...not sure if this is due to preparations for the coming changes or if the publishers just don't care about being available to the public.
When I first began playing the organ in a Catholic Church, all those years ago, I was saddled with Glory and Praise. I was led to believe by a well meaning cantor, who had no use for anything, with a few exceptions written before 1970; that Glory and Praise was the norm. Glad I've learned otherwise. Glory and Praise in my opinion "was" the worse of the worse.
"G&P improved dramatically when OCP took it over."
Oh, is that what happened? When and from whom? I take it the bright red plastic covers were the earlier publisher? I came across a hardbound copy recently and at a glance thought, hey, this isn't as bad as when we used it in "Faith Formation" (I wasn't the only one in the class who was a little embarrassed for the teachers who were promoting its contents to the "kids.")
Sometime well before my tenure, a former organist talked the then pastor into buying Glory & Praise. This was the same guy who turned off the organ while holding chords letting them die away, etc. Clearly, he didn't understand pipe organs. An older black lady in the choir who could get away with such, said to him, "You are not any good. You need to leave." She is a delightful lady nearing 80 who sparkles with mischief, and I still kid her about that today. I never saw the red G&P, only the - as best I remember - blue or blue/green ones. They were eventually deposited in the dumpster with great fanfare and ceremony. Why pass them along and contaminate worship elsewhere?
Well, if you got choir versions of these, you can give these to a local school to teach sightreading and solfege to choir students. I don't know, it seems like such a great waste to dump even those which belong in the waste can anyway. At least, put them into a paper recycle bin. Or you can donate them to a local library....to show them what was then and what is now.:)
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