Henry Slaughter Gospel Course Taught Me Praise and Worship

I'm asked from time to time how I am able to play music from charts and pages without complete music transcription of bass or treble parts. I tell them "Henry Slaughter taught me praise and worship"

Really!  The Henry Slaughter gospel course was a season of my piano training that helped me improve my "Hymn playing" by seeing chord structure and adding to hymns (embellishing) them with different accompaniment than just the choral structure.

So, I learned to recognized chords and their inversions.  This led to a more relaxed piano playing style and when praise and worship came along some years later, I was ready to read charts because "Henry Slaughter taught me praise and worship"

I still have these books in my library--some 30 years later!

What musical influences are you still using in your life?