Sex, drugs, and Satan: Don J. Black's 1980s Mormon talk tapes

The "Satanic panic" of the 1980s produced a number of Christian spoken-word recordings, usually distributed on cassette tape, that warned about the dangers of Satanic rock music and Satanic infiltration in our daily lives, but Christian evangelicals weren't the only ones who produced these kinds of cassettes. Mormon educator, inspirational speaker, and psychotherapist Don J. Black released similar youth-oriented tapes in the mid '80s to alert Mormon kids to the dangers of Satan, drugs, alcohol, and sex.

Don J. Black

Black's tapes were released by Covenant Recordings, an imprint that offered cassettes, LPs, and CDs to the Mormon audience from the 1970s-2000s. The label was acquired by the Mormon bookstore chain Seagull Book in the 1980s and appears to have ceased operations when a competing chain, Deseret Books, acquired Seagull.

If you're not a Mormon, you might not be aware that an entirely separate Mormon entertainment industry exists. To non-Mormons, the bookstores of Salt Lake City, Utah, can seem like a parallel universe of completely unfamiliar English-language books, music, and movies.

That said, these Don J. Black recordings are atypical fare even within that sphere and seem pretty edgy in comparison to the feel-good family orientation of most Mormon media. Most of Covenant's releases were inspirational and/or historical and did not aggressively do "battle with Satan" headfirst the way that Black did on these cassettes. It would be easy to mistake these for evangelical Christian titles if you ran across them in a thrift shop.

Hand to Hand Combat with Satan (1984)

This cassette focuses on drug use, appearing a couple of years after the "Just Say No" campaign was introduced as part of the Reagan-era war on drugs. Despite the metaphor of hand-to-hand combat in the title, the cover art depicts battle with melee weapons. For some reason, Satan wields a trident like Neptune instead of a pitchfork.

The text below, which appears on the back of the cassette, erroneously claims that the word sorcery originally meant "one who uses drugs."

Don starts with Satan's beginnings and explains that Satan works on the weaknesses he discovers in each of us.

Don shows how badly Satan and his angels want physical bodies, how far they will go to get them, and how anxious Satan is to stop the growth of the gospel.

Satan uses alcohol, mind-expanding drugs, and sorcery to get to the kids today. The original meaning of the word "sorcery" is "one who uses drugs." Don shows how "drugs control the mind; the mind controls the body; the body houses the spirit; and thus Satan has just captured one child of God intact." He warns: "It isn't bad kids who are falling. It is the good kids ... who then become bad."

Don relates the experience of speaking at a fireside for youth who were in the drug culture; his own battle as a young man with Satan after the loss of a girl he wanted to marry; and how he won his battle through personal revelation. 

The Battle with Satan to Stay Morally Clean (1986)

Black tackles teen sex and moral cleanliness in this 1986 recording. (The Music Weird previously looked at the secular books of moral instruction that were written by pop music stars in the 1950s.) 

Satan is represented on the cover by a red arm that is doing battle via the sport of arm wrestling. Note: If you're concerned about cleanliness, you probably shouldn't hold hands with the Devil.

The text on the back says:

An inspiring speaker, Don Black directs his message to the youth of today. This is an excellent lecture in which he sensitively discusses the issue of chastity.

He states that the husband and wife have the only legal use of intimate relations. God has never changed that—never will. The love-making expression has never been approved as a form of recreation out of wedlock.

Brother Black tastefully defines and explains kissing, necking, light petting and heavy petting. He provides cautions and guidelines that can be followed by those that wish to avoid the pitfalls of early intimacy, but does not leave those who have fallen without hope.

This outstanding lecture can be shared with mixed groups of youth without any embarrassment. It can be an excellent teaching tool for both parents and youth leaders.

These cassettes were atypical even for Black. He authored numerous other cassettes, books, and audiobooks in the 1970s-1990s with titles like A Pocketful of Miracles: A Collection of Heart-Warming True Stories and Seven Keys to Happiness. Brigham Young University has a short biography of Black on its Mormon Literature & Creative Arts website.