c. 2003 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ For two hours every day for two months, Lafayette Carthon Jr. got down on his knees and prayed for God’s direction.

He was the music director for one of America’s hottest R&B singers, but Carthon worried that his God-given gift of music was leading him off the path of righteousness and onto one paved with dollar signs.

The twice-daily prayer sessions with 50 other members of Cleveland’s Emmanuel Pentecostal Church, coupled with a one-meal-a-day fast, centered him, Carthon said. That intense spiritual reflection prepared him for what he said was a vision sent by God: an invention that could make beautiful music in any church with any organ.

“When you walk into a church, you should hear an organ,” Carthon said. “It’s standard, just like the pews.”

The Cleveland native didn’t immediately start working on the invention because his job and his boss, R. Kelly, were waiting for him to return from vacation. So he put his vision aside and went back to touring with the notoriously raunchy artist, a job Carthon said made him question his career in the first place.

But Carthon was never satisfied enough with his accomplishments to stop working toward the next thing.

“He’s probably among the top four or five best students I have taught, and I’ve been teaching for 37 years,” said Bill Woods, who teaches at the Cleveland School of the Arts, where Carthon went to high school.

The summer after he graduated in 1988, Carthon realized, as beautiful as music was, and as much as he wanted to honor God, he had to eat. He started playing jazz with a band in two restaurants seven nights a week to pay bills. The gigs also made him a better keyboardist, he said. Robert Hubbard Jr., who’s been friends with Carthon since fifth grade, played drums with him that summer. “His talent was so overwhelming, it even overwhelmed him a little bit,” Hubbard said.

A turning point came one January night in 1990.

A weary Carthon arrived home to find a waiting message from Steve Ford, a friend and music director for the gospel group the Winans.

The two men were on the phone for just a few seconds when Ford asked, “Hey man, do you want to go on the road?”

“On the road with who?” Carthon said.

“With the Winans. Think about it,” Ford said.

“What’s there to think about it,” Carthon said, already thinking of how $1,000 a week would take care of the bills.

Ford says there has “never been another musician upon my first meeting that had the effect that Lafayette has had on me.” The two met by chance and did an jazz session at a church conference in Philadelphia. “After I started playing with him, I was like, OK, I have to start pulling out the reserves.’ He just blew me out of the water.”

Two months after the call, Carthon found himself onstage with the Winans, one of the hottest gospel groups of the early 1990s. For the next four years, he toured with them, until he was lured away from gospel by the charismatic Robert Kelly, known to his fans as R. Kelly.

That was 1994.

During the next six years, R. Kelly blasted to the top of the music charts with a string of No. 1 hits, including the mega-hit single “I Believe I Can Fly,” which won three Grammy Awards in 1998.

Carthon continued working in the Chicago studio during the week and flew to Cleveland every weekend to play the organ for Sunday worship. “I was getting calls all the time from people asking me if I knew of any musicians,” Carthon said of pastors who needed organists for weekly church services.

Before the vision he saw faded, Carthon decided to get to work on the Psalmist.

The Psalmist is a two-piece player that records and plays songs, which can be manipulated to any tempo, in any key. One unit sits on each of the organ’s two keyboards and plays the keys with electronic “fingers.” The top piece has 60 “fingers” that play the melodies and the chords. The bottom piece has 16 fingers that play a song’s bass.

Three years, three prototypes and countless door-to-door marketing efforts later, a handful of Cleveland churches rely on Carthon’s invention, the Psalmist, every week. The $10,000 unit comes with a 200-song CD, and more can be ordered. Carthon’s partner in the endeavor, QRS Music Technologies, said the Psalmist is the first effort to break into the church organ market. It can play on any standard organ, with 61 keys.

The Rev. Orma Beynum of First Cathedral Church in Cleveland bought the Psalmist because the church didn’t have a musician, and services were done a cappella. He sees value in the musical robot. “It’s reliable. I don’t have to pay it, and I don’t have to be disappointed” when it doesn’t show up.

Woods, Carthon’s mentor, said he is proud of the former prodigy.

“He’s a church musician. He’s not built for the road and traveling,” Woods said. “I’m glad he had that experience. Sometimes the road that’s painted gold is not the best road to take. It’s good to be famous, but it’s better to be happy.”

Carthon does not miss his life in pop music.

“That industry just makes me tired. My first call is ministry,” Carthon said. “It may sound crazy, but that’s a reality.”

DEA END HARRIS