His Father’s Business - Issuu (2024)

by Melanie Hemry

Six-year-old Jesse Duplantis had business on his mind the day his daddy taught him to strum three chords on an old guitar. He bit his lip in concentration as he struggled to stretch his fingers across the strings. His parents, Paul and Velma, thought the guitar was just a childish diversion for the boy. Jesse knew better.

That guitar was his salvation. He knew it as surely as he knew his name was Jesse Duplantis. He knew it as well as he knew every rattletrap house his family had rented in the past six years of his life. He knew it as surely as he knew that chasing work from oil field to oil field around Louisiana wasn’t the life for him.

He wasn’t ashamed of that kind of work, or poverty. He just wanted a way out. His daddy handed it to him in the form of a guitar.

Most 6-year-olds don’t have a personal philosophy about being responsible for their own success. But then, Jesse Duplantis wasn’t like most 6-year-olds. He practiced the guitar until his fingers were raw and his arms quivered. While the other children played, Jesse practiced. He practiced in the house until the noise from his guitar and his brother’s trumpet compelled Velma to drive them both outdoors. He practiced on the porch. And when the other kids played in the nearby fields, Jesse played guitar.

Jesse started from three basic chords, and before long he was making music.

Music Was Business

He’d always expected to succeed, but Jesse was stunned when people walking by began throwing quarters to him. In a city famous for street musicians, Jesse was an unusual sight in New Orleans. Short for his age, he didn’t look big enough to hold a guitar— much less play one. The tinkling sound of coins hitting the sidewalk was all the motivation he needed. Soon, he began sneaking out of the house to play in the street.

Music wasn’t a hobby for Jesse. It was business.

By age 10, Jesse was more than just a cute kid with a guitar. The music that echoed from his street corner was good. People weren’t smiling and tossing quarters anymore. They stopped, listened and paid handsomely for the privilege.

When Jesse’s dad asked him to play his guitar in church, his response was simple and pointed: “What will they pay?” Jesse had business on his mind, and he had no interest at all in God.

His parents had dragged him to Catholic Mass for years. Then, when they had a personal experience with Jesus, they joined the First Baptist Church. After that, Jesse’s dad experienced the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and joined an Assemblies of God church. Jesse attended services because his parents insisted, but he never joined.

Churches and church people disgusted Jesse. They preached love, but slandered one another. They preached tolerance, but refused to let Black people join them. Jesse saw them as a bunch of sick, broke, bitter people.

Of all the churches he’d attended, Jesse respected the Catholic Church most. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a church split in a Catholic congregation. Still, he stepped into the confessional each week and lied like a dog to avoid penance.

Drugs and Drinking

He had reason to lie. By the time he was 11, Jesse was drinking regularly. He started with beer, moved to whiskey, and settled for vodka because his parents couldn’t smell it.

By age 14, he was a professional musician in every sense of the word. He brought the house down in clubs and strip joints on Bourbon Street, and rubbed shoulders with “persuasion people” in organized crime, entertaining in their clubs and on their yachts.

He carried gin to school in a thermos and drank all day, then took diet pills to stay awake. Jesse used marijuana, then graduated to speed, cocaine and a little PCP.

While his dad brought home $100 a week, Jesse was making $40,000 a year in cash.

Jesse Duplantis knew he was a success. He also knew something else—he had become an alcoholic.

He had fought his way out of poverty to success. But success would surely kill him.

“I auditioned for the choir when I was in the ninth grade,” Jesse recalled. “When the choir director heard me play the guitar, she assumed I knew how to read music, but I didn’t. I didn’t play notes on paper, I played notes in my head. If I heard a song, I could play it. She sat me down at the piano and showed me a few notes. By the end of the day, I had figured out the chord structure. Within six months, I was playing in piano bars.

“Whenever my friends and I ran out of money, I’d find a piano bar. I could make $250 in tips in an hour or two. You make your money by having a large repertoire of songs,” Jesse said. He knew over 3,000 songs. “My parents always told me that my musical ability was a gift from God,” Jesse recalled. “I rejected that idea. As far as I was concerned, it was my ability, my hard work and my success.”

Mrs. Hubley, the choir director, also taught Jesse to sing. When he did well on a solo performance during a concert his senior year, the director asked Jesse to play guitar.

Later, a man emerged from the audience to talk with the director, and offered to pay for Jesse to study at the Julliard School of Music in New York. The idea of learning to be a serious musician appealed to Jesse. But the money he could make playing rock music appealed even more. He turned down the offer.

After high school, Jesse devoted more time to playing nightclubs, lounges and dance halls. Soon afterward, he and a friend entered a talent contest where one of the prizes was to be the opening act for singer Anita Bryant. They performed a duet, and won.

Miss Bryant’s show was scheduled for the following year. Meanwhile, Jesse continued playing clubs in the evening, but with his days free that summer, he took a day job as a lifeguard.

He also had lots of time for girls.

His Future Bride

“I want you to see this girl I like,” Jesse’s friend, Matt, told him one day while at the pool. “She’s in the dressing room with her four sisters. I’ll point her out to you when they come out.”

A few minutes later, the Carrere sisters stepped from the dressing room, and Matt pointed to the third sister. “That’s her!” he said. “Her name is Cathy. What do you think?” “She’s too skinny,” Jesse said. Jesse did like Cathy’s sister, Deborah, though, and asked her out. They had dated occasionally, when Deborah told Jesse she had agreed to go steady with someone else.

“That’s OK, who else is around there?” Jesse asked during a telephone conversation.

“Cathy’s here,” Deborah answered.

“Put her on!”

“Cathy had just turned 16 when I asked her out,” Jesse recalled. “I usually tried to keep all girls away from my mother because she was likely to call them Jezebel or Delilah.

Once, Cathy and I were on a date when I realized I had forgotten my money. Back home, I introduced Cathy to my mother. Mama didn’t call her names, but she made me furious.” “She’s the one!” Jesse’s mother had said. “What are you talking about, Mama?” “She’s the one you’re gonna marry!” “I’m not going to marry the girl, Mama! I’m just dating her!” “I done heard from God!” “Will you stop it with the God stuff ?” She wouldn’t.

Jesse was 21, and Cathy was 17 when they married in 1970. Three days later, they packed their car to move to Dallas. Cathy’s mother, who wasn’t very fond of Jesse, followed her daughter outside to say goodbye. “Honey,” she said, “just remember, you can always leave that trash.”

“There was no love lost between Cathy’s mother and me in those days,” Jesse said. “Neither of us knew the Lord, and there wasn’t much we agreed on. She would have been surprised to know that I agreed with her about the difference between Cathy and me.

“As far as I was concerned, Cathy was pure and I was trash. I had no illusions about myself. Cathy was like a China doll to me—beautiful and good. I needed her because she was the opposite of who I had become,” Jesse recalled.

“I tried to live a divided life. I had my professional life, which included all the drugs and alcohol I could handle. But I tried to protect Cathy from that part of my life.

“She didn’t know I was an alcoholic or drug user when we married, but it didn’t take long for her to realize things weren’t what they seemed...I was drinking a fifth of whiskey a day.”

In spite of that, Jesse’s stage name, Jerry Jaxon, had become a common sight on marquees. The William Morrison Agency was booking him for shows all over the country. And his income jumped from $1300 to $13,000 a week.

Change on the Way

In Jesse’s eyes, he had it all. Then something happened that would change his life forever. On Oct. 25, 1971, Jesse’s daughter, Jodi, was born. Standing there looking at his beautiful, little girl, Jesse Duplantis, the man who was always comfortable performing before audiences of thousands, found himself breathless.

This is the first good thing I’ve ever done in my life, Jesse thought.

“I couldn’t understand Jesse’s insistence that we have Jodi dedicated to God,” Cathy remembers. “God had no place in our lives, and besides that, I’d never even heard of dedicating a baby. As Catholics, we baptized babies, but Jesse was insistent that we dedicate her to God.

“It was years before I understood that Jesse realized he was headed down a road of certain death. Since he knew he wouldn’t be around to help her, he wanted to find some way to give Jodi a chance in life.”

A year and a half later, while Jesse was doing a show in Minneapolis, Cathy was watching television in her hotel room when she came across a man named Billy Graham. The words he spoke about a God who loved the world so much He gave His Son, pierced her heart. At the close of the message, Cathy bowed her head and invited Jesus into her heart.

“I was very bold about the Lord,” Cathy remembers. “I talked to Jesse about God all the time, but he wasn’t interested. I witnessed to the whole band.

“I knew more every day that Jesse was in over his head where drugs were concerned. Even as a new believer, I understood that his only hope was Jesus. For the next year and a half, I prayed daily for Jesse’s salvation.”

On Sept. 4, 1974, Jesse was preparing for a show in Boston. While he got dressed, Cathy turned on the television to a Billy Graham crusade.

“Why don’t you watch this program?” Cathy asked. “I don’t want to hear Billy Graham!” Jesse said. Then the Holy Spirit spoke through Cathy to say the only thing guaranteed to get Jesse’s attention. “Well,” she said, “he pulls a bigger crowd than you do.” Jesse stopped, and stared at the television screen. “Look at that,” Cathy said as the camera panned the audience. “You don’t fill stadiums like that.”

Jesse sat down to hear what someone had to say about God that would fill a stadium. The message he heard cut through his criticism of churches. It cut through denominational differences. It boiled down to Jesse…Jesus…and eternity.

For the first time in his life, Jesse understood that he didn’t have to be good enough for God. Jesus already was.

A New Creature

Jesse locked himself in the bathroom and sobbed his repentance before his Savior. Moments later, he stepped out of that bathroom a new creature.

“The change in Jesse was so drastic that when he got to the show that night, the drummer asked what had happened to him,” Cathy recalled. “Before his salvation, Jesse used curse words like it was the king’s English. When he walked out of there, he never cursed again. He never drank again. He never took another drug.

“Those things were a part of his old man, and that man was simply gone,” she said.

“The next morning, he got us up and found a church to attend in Boston. He had just signed an $80,000 contract, and although he knew nothing about tithing, he gave the church $8,000 that morning simply because he loved God. From that day forward, no matter where we were, our family attended church whenever the doors were open.

“That day Jesse told his band he was quitting,” Cathy said. “He agreed to finish four months of contracts before ending his career in music. When he walked away from the business, Jesse sold all his instruments. He didn’t want them to pull him away from God.

“We moved back to the New Orleans area and Jesse took a job in the pipe office at Patterson Truck Line. He walked away from $13,000 a week and worked for $1.75 an hour, because he never wanted to love anything more than he loved Jesus.”

Two years later, Jesse went to work for Shell Oil Co. Over the years, he gave his testimony in churches.

Jesse, the Preacher

In 1976, Jesse preached his first sermon. He preached about Lazarus coming up out of the grave. He described how people are like Lazarus, wrapped in the trappings of religion. As Jesse spoke, twitters and chuckles echoed through the sanctuary. They must not be getting this, Jesse thought, preaching harder.

Finally, the whole congregation burst into laughter.

“I was furious,” Jesse remembers. “I couldn’t ever remember being madder than I was at that moment. When I didn’t think it could get any worse, I looked at Cathy for support and she was laughing! When we got in the car that night, I let her have it.” “But Jesse,” she said, “you were funny.” “I’m not a funny man! I was being serious!” He was being serious. Still, when Jesse preached, people laughed.

“I finally realized that the humor was a gift from God, just like being able to hear a song and play it,” Jesse said. “But I can’t make myself be funny. It only happens when I’m preaching the gospel. God does it in spite of me. I’m not a funny man.”

When Jesse accepted the call to full-time ministry in 1978, he committed never to ask anyone for a place to preach. The first year of his ministry, he preached 51 straight weeks. Since then, he has received thousands of invitations to preach.

“I didn’t know anything about the faith message when I started preaching,” Jesse said, “I just preached the Bible. Then, in 1978, I turned on the radio and heard these words for the first time: ‘Hello, I’m Kenneth Copeland.’ I sure did like what that man had to say.

“In 1980, the Lord gave me a vision and told me I would preach with Kenneth Copeland and Jerry Savelle. I never tried to make that happen. In fact, over time I forgot about it. Then, Jimmy Hester asked me to speak at the Full Gospel Motorcycle Rally. Kenneth and Jerry spoke there, too. We were on the platform while Jimmy prayed. I stood between Kenneth and Jerry. Each of them held one of my hands.

“The Lord interrupted me and said, I told you that you would preach with those two men. During that meeting, Kenneth asked me to pray about preaching at his convention. We’ve been together ever since.

“The Lord knit them in my heart and my life. Not only did I need a prophet of God to speak into my life, and a teacher to teach me, I also needed a friend. God gave me a true friend in Kenneth Copeland. These friendships God forged are refreshing because I am accepted exactly as I am.”

Although there is nothing ordinary about Jesse Duplantis, or his ministry, the most extraordinary event of all is easy to identify. It took place in 1988, in Room 105 of the Best Western Motel in Magnolia, Ark. It was there that Jesse was caught up to heaven for five hours.

During his miraculous visit, he spoke with Abraham. He met King David and the Apostle Paul. He talked to Jonah. But the purpose of his journey was a divine appointment at the Throne Room of God. There, he met with Jesus, who gave him a message for the Church. Jesse, go tell My people I’m coming. “Lord, they know that,” Jesse answered. Jesus’ voice became stern as He said, No, they don’t. You go tell them I’m coming.

In the years since, Jesse has done all he knows to carry out Jesus’ command. He’s taken that message around the world.

Some people think he should take more time off, that he should rest more. That’s difficult for Jesse to do because now, as in the beginning, he has business on his mind.

But it’s not his own business anymore. It’s his Father’s business. And that’s the most important business of all.

“God gave me a true friend in Kenneth Copeland.”