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| From the broadcast
the weekend of Feb. 20th & 21st, 2010: |
When I was thinking about what I could do that
would be "special" for our ongoing 30th anniversary celebration, I began
thinking about who would be in the best position to offer observations about
the past three decades in Southern Gospel music. The first name that came
to mind (and why go any farther?) was Bill Gaither. That's
how Bill became the "special guest" throughout this edition of The Gospel
Greats.
I've been interviewing Bill regularly over those past thirty years. In fact,
on this program I even shared a clip from an interview we did back in 1980,
the program's very first year. But this particular program was done differently
from almost every other program I've done, with the sound of a live studio
presentation. Actually, though, the live "studio" was Bill Gaither's office
in Alexandria, Indiana. He was gracious enough to record the program with
me on his first day back from a two-week Florida vacation. (If you know
what it's like to go back to the office after two weeks away, you can appreciate
his graciousness here in doing this.)
 A few
weeks ago in my weekly e-mail newsletter I asked readers to submit the one
question they would most like to ask Bill Gaither. We received quite a few.
Naturally, we couldn't use them all. But we did select several and called
those readers who then graciously recorded their questions over the phone.
These were actually played for Bill during our time together on-air, so it
almost had the feel of a call-in show. Bill even preferred to answer the
questions "cold" rather than knowing what they were in advance. Thanks again
to all who submitted questions.
As I mentioned on the program, I was there in that Nashville studio in 1991
when the video was recorded that unintentionally started the whole
Homecoming series. Bill had invited me there to record some interviews
with many of the Southern Gospel music veterans who were there that day to
participate in the recording of one song, "Where Could I Go?" But
when that work was done, a lot of the artists spontaneously gathered around
a piano and started singing together. The video crew kept rolling, although
not under the best conditions from a production standpoint. Nevertheless,
that spontaneously-recorded event made history.
In thirty years, this was only the second program which was primarily recorded
outside our studio. The only other one was ten years ago when, for our 20th
anniversary program, we
visited with the late
George Younce at his Stow, Ohio, home. He was our first-ever co-host
for that program. Five years ago, for our 25th anniversary program, Gerald
Wolfe was our special guest host (and, at his suggestion, I was the "Featured
Artist"), but Gerald came to our studio for that one.
As I mentioned on the broadcast, Bill quite often in interviews we record
with him has nice things to say about The Gospel Greats program. Usually,
they don't get on the air. But I promised him the opportunity to say something
this time and actually use it. He was very supportive and gracious: "You
know, I always want to do things and do them the best that I can do them.
And I have sung your praises all over the country — that for thirty
years you have produced a Southern Gospel radio program at its very highest
professional level. I don't know of any professional who does it better than
you. And also a professional who has a great heart for the music and a great
heart for the Lord. God bless you and may you have thirty more years."
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