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Bret Hartman/CBSAlthough some felt Ledisi should have been the one singing “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” during the Selma tribute at Sunday’s Grammy Awards — Ledisi cut the song for the movie soundtrack — it turns out that Beyonce has her own personal connection to the gospel standard.
“First time I heard ‘Precious Lord’ I was a kid and my mother sang it to me, and my mother played me Mahalia Jackson’s version,” Beyonce says in a behind-the-scenes Grammy rehearsal clip posted on YouTube. “She sang the song with her eyes closed, and she was a vessel, and it was like God speaking using her body to speak and to heal.”
Queen Bey adds that the song has deep roots to her family’s involvement with Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.
“My grandparents marched with Dr. King and my father was part of the generation of black men that attended an all-white school and my father has grown up with a lot of trauma from those experiences,” Beyonce says. “I feel like now I can sing for his pain, I can sing for my grandparents’ pain, I can sing for some of the families that have lost their sons.”
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