There are a lot of people who know my “Indian name.” You see, back when we were little kids and got all caught up in “Squanto” and “Tonto,” we all gave each other these exotic nicknames on the playground that we figured we would more fittingly be called in the land of teepees and tomahawks.

I campaigned early for “Handsome Stallion” but, in the many years that followed, that didn’t quite work out so, instead, I have morphed into the mighty and noble brave, “Howsyourarm.” You’d be amazed how many people call me that and, just recently, I had four different people use that greeting when they saw me.

Obviously the trials I have had with my arm are well known among my friends and the quick answer is I haven’t had a surgery in the past nine months, the longest respite since 1990. But as I laughed at being called “Howsyourarm” so often on the way home last night, my “theme song” came up on my iPod.

You see, back when days were long, the infections seemed endless, and sleep wouldn’t come, one method I used to escape “The Black Dog” (depression) would be to listen to a special song and I hope that when I die, the small crowd at the funeral will take time to sing “Precious Lord.”

The version I love is a cut that resulted from one night at The Grand Ole Opry when the legendary blind singer, Ronnie Milsap, electrified the crowd with his version of the Southern gospel hymn. I bet I have listened to it over 1,000 times and just the first verse will give you a clue as to why it means so much to a guy with a battered arm.

Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand,
I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m lone,
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light,
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.

Well, that’s “big medicine for me, even today. It’s also a big thing for me to know it was Dr. Martin Luther King’s favorite hymn, too. Not long ago, I got an inspirational email that gave the origin of the song, claiming it was written by Tommy Dorsey. But that’s misleading.

Yes, it was written by Thomas A. Dorsey, a black guy who was a blues pianist who went by the moniker "Georgia Tom” before he got religious and became “the father of black gospel music.” On the other hand, the more famous Tommy Dorsey, a white band leader who once teamed up quite historically with “Ol’ Blue Eyes” had nothing to do with it.

It seems that back in the 1930s, “Georgia Tom” was traveling around the country, playing the blues and living on Chicago’s Southside. Some nights he’d play for revivals and, on one certain morning, he kissed his pregnant wife goodbye for a big tent gathering in St. Louis. He wanted to stay but she was asleep and, in the last month of pregnancy, they needed the money.

After he had stirred the crowd just so, he finally got back-stage and was handed a Western Union telegram that read, “Your wife just died.” Sure enough, a baby boy had been born – and would die the next day as a further jolt – thus Tom Dorsey was immersed in enormous grief, spending those first days hunched over alone in his dark apartment.

“For days I closeted myself. I felt that God had done me an injustice,” he would later tell a writer for Guidepost magazine. “I didn’t want to serve Him anymore or write gospel songs. I just wanted to go back to that jazz world I once knew so well.”

Finally a friend got him to take his solitude and his grief somewhere else – to get away from so many memories in that apartment – and Tom found himself sitting late one afternoon at a neighborhood music college, this after all the students had gone home. And there was a piano.

“It was quiet; the late evening sun crept through the curtained windows. I sat down at the piano, and my hands began to browse over the keys.  Something happened to me then. I felt at peace. I felt as though I could reach out and touch God. I found myself playing a melody, and, once it got into my head, the words just seemed to fall into place.”

When the darkness appears and the night draws near,
And the day is past and gone,
At the river I stand, guide my feet, hold my hand,
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home,

Precious Lord, take my hand Lead me on, let me stand.