The Nathan Good Family may be best known for their sandwiches and cookies at Windmill Farm Bakery in Hupps Mill Plaza. But when they’re not cooking, they’re singing. And singing really well.
Nathan and Mildred Good, their six children and a pair of kids-in-law recorded a CD of their favorite sacred music last year and released it in the winter. Locally, it’s available at Windmill Farm. Elsewhere, it can be found in Mennonite book shops in Mennonite-concentrated cities like Harrisonburg or Lancaster, Pa.
The family’s Mennonite beliefs and lifestyle may be responsible – more so than genetics – for their crystalline a cappella tones and rich bass notes. Music is a significant aspect of Mennonite worship, and many Mennonite congregations eschew instruments in favor of the unadorned, unaccompanied human voice.
“Singing is referred to more than 250 times in the Bible, and the command to sing is given about 60 times,” the CD’s liner notes read. “Is there any other specific thing God asks of us in His Word more often?”
So Nathan Good reared his children – six in eight years, he points out – to sing from the time they could talk.
“Sometimes I would sing bass and sometimes I would sing tenor,” he said, as the little ones’ talent matured.
“Every child, all of us together, always,” said Good.
Then two of the children found spouses.
“You have to sing to get married to our children,” joked Good. Did he make the prospects audition?
He laughed more. “Birds of a feather flock together,” he answered. (A third has since married.)
People had been asking the Goods if they had recorded. No, they responded, but the Goods finally decided to make a lasting record of their beautiful, four-part harmonies.
The result is a CD of 17 songs – all religious but other than that having little in common. Some are old spirituals. One is a favorite hymn with a complex new arrangement by son Benjamin. One is by Mendelssohn. Two more are original compositions by South Boston musician Kenneth Cranford.
The late Cranford was not only a friend in musical circles, but the Goods babysat his daughter, now a teenager.
The CD was recorded at Halifax’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, where the family favored the acoustics. Son Benjamin did the recording and mixing.
Good is pleased with the product, but seems more pleased that his children – now ranging in age from 20 to 28 – still bother to sing with him.
“We give the Lord the glory and praise for it … for my wife and I to be so blessed with all of our children wanting to participate in something like this,” he said.
But Good’s work as a music instructor may not be over yet. There are already five grandchildren in the family.
“Yeah, they’ll be singers, too,” Good promised.