Hello, we're going to talk about Dottie Rambo today. I just love her music. Dottie had written over 2,000 Christian songs. She had a very interesting life. She grew up in Kentucky. She learned 1934, during the Depression. She learned how to play the guitar listening to the Grand Old Opry and at eight years old she wrote her first song. Her mother and father supported her at that and by 10, she was singing and she played country cover songs on radio programs and at different places. But when she was 12 years old she became a Christian and she decided that she was going to write Christian songs.
Speaker 1:That was the beginning of the story of Dottie Rambo. Her father didn't want her doing Christian music. In fact he told her she didn't stop doing it, that she would have to leave. So she did, and that's when she started traveling from church to church and singing the songs that she wrote. She met a man named Buck Rambo. Now Dottie's name was Joyce Reba Latrell, but she changed it to Dottie and when she got married it was Dottie Rambo. They met at a revival meeting. They started singing together and she was continuing to write songs, and they had a daughter named Reba, and when Reba got older she sang with them. Their group had several names, but they ended up being called the Rambos.
Speaker 1:She wrote some beautiful, beautiful, beautiful songs. They were like Southern gospel songs. She was singing and the governor of Louisiana, jimmy Davis, heard her singing and paid her $3,000 to publish her songs and so a lot of her stuff she did through Jimmy Davis. She went from whatever they could pick up at a collection plate to singing at some of the largest concert halls. Now you think about how many songs she wrote and the music you hear in the background, you're probably thinking well, that's Danny Boy. It's Danny Boy, it is London Dairy Air, but it's also. He looked beyond my faults and saw my needs, which is a song that she wrote. And she wasn't the only one that sang her songs. Any of you who have watched the movie the Preacher's Wife has heard one of her songs. I Go to the Rock, which was sung by Whitney Houston. Some of the other people that sang her songs were Elvis Presley, george Beverly Shea, larnell Harris, andre Crouch, janet Flasco, jerry Lee Lewis and the Oak Ridge Boys, among a few that sang her songs. She was so proficient at writing music that the ASCAP, which is one of the alphabet companies that I was trying to get licensed through that I was telling you about on Facebook gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Christian Country Music Association awarded her with Song Writer of the Century. So people knew her and you may have never heard her name, but I'm sure you've heard some of her songs. She was just getting back into traveling and getting more concert dates in the early 2000s, but in 2008, on Mother's Day, her tour bus wrecked and she was killed. So we lost Dottie, but her daughter, reba, the Rambo Maguire, still sings.
Speaker 1:The songs that she wrote are just classics. If you've ever listened to Gather's Homecoming, you've heard Dottie Rambo's songs, some of the songs that she wrote that really touched me, and there were some songs that I sang when I was singing. If that isn't love, that is one that I just think is beautiful. Elvis Presley sang this song and the chorus says and if that isn't love, then the oceans are dry, there's no stars in the sky and the sparrows can't fly. If that isn't love, then heaven's amiss. There's no feeling like this if that isn't love, you know, it's just wonderful.
Speaker 1:The other songs that she wrote that went along with the tune that we're listening to right now was he looked beyond my faults and saw my need.
Speaker 1:And it starts out Amazing Grace shall always be my song of praise, for it was grace that bought my liberty.
Speaker 1:I do not know just why he came to love me.
Speaker 1:So he looked beyond my faults and saw my need.
Speaker 1:She just got to the heart and soul of the songs.
Speaker 1:One of the songs that you might remember is the song that Whitney Houston sang on the preacher's wife, and it is I go to the rock, and the chorus of that goes I go to the rock for my salvation.
Speaker 1:I go to the stone that the builders rejected. I run into the mountain and the mountain stands by me. When the earth all around me is sinking sand, on Christ's solid rock, I stand. When I need a shelter, when I need a friend, I go to the rock. These are songs that touch hearts and have touched hearts all over, and that's why it hurts me when I see the songs not being remembered and not being sung. You're only hearing the new songs that come up. If you've never listened to any of Dottie's music, I don't care who sings it, whether she sings it or someone else sings it. Just go look up songs that Dottie Rambos are wrote. She wrote sheltered in the arms of God. That's another one that I used to sing, and there were times I sang that I couldn't sing without weeping. She was a wonderful woman, she was a wonderful songwriter and she gave us music that should last for centuries. Let's not lose it.