An interview with Chris White, founder of Sonlite Records and a member of the Southern Gospel Hall of Fame. If you haven’t already seen part 1 of this interview, check it out!
Transcript
Lightly edited for clarity.
Daniel Mount
Welcome to Southern Gospel Journal. My name is Daniel Mount, and I have the privilege today to be talking with Chris White, founder of Sonlite Records. How are you doing this evening?
Chris
I’m good Daniel, hope you are.
Daniel Mount
I am, thank you. To the listener, I would say this is part two. We had an earlier episode where we discussed the early years of his story. I’ll plan to link to that in the show notes and would encourage you to listen to that one first and then come back to this one.
So we’re picking up where we are in your story was the early days of Solid Gospel Radio, which later became Singing News Radio.
Could you share the story behind that? You know, what it was at the time that you became involved and your role in helping it grow?
Chris
Well, I was involved from minute one. As a matter of fact, if it hadn’t have been for me driving Maurice Templeton crazy about doing this, I don’t know that it would have ever happened. And he was the guy I knew that we had to have, media-wise, make it all come together.
But anyway, long story short is I found out that there were a couple of guys in Sacramento, California, that had started a digital radio network. Well, I wasn’t familiar with that. No one else was at that time, because this was early 90s. Could have been actually late 80s when I first started about it. Anyway, digital radio, I was not familiar with.
So I did a little research and found out basically what they were trying to do. And I thought, wow. The platform was built on creating a program log of Southern Gospel Music and its top artists, and radio stations across the country buying that signal, and the network would send it up to the bird.
And then the station would buy a big dish and put it on their property and pull that signal down. And that way they could feed their network 24/7 with Southern Gospel music. And in that, it had all of the breaks built in automatically to where they could do their commercials, because they still had to make money.
So we built all that in, or these guys built it in, but what they couldn’t do was take it to the next level. They had a great idea, and I wish I remembered their names. I don’t. I’d like to give them the credit for that idea.
But anyway, when I heard about it, I heard about it from Carroll McGruder’s brother-in-law, who knew the guys in Sacramento.
So I called Maurice and I said, “Maurice, we got something we need to look at here,” because I realized that the moment I heard about it, this could change Southern Gospel Radio completely and give it first class 24/7 programming in any station that wanted to bring that signal down to Earth, to their stations.
So it took me probably six months to talk him into doing it. And finally one day he said, “You know what, I’m just gonna fly out there with you and see what you’re so excited about here and get it over with. That way you’ll leave me alone.”
And I said, “Okay, well, if you’ll do that, that’s all I ask. Just go with me and look at it.”
He did. We spent the entire day with these guys and that evening after dinner, Maurice and I were sitting by the pool at the hotel just talking about what today had been. And all of a sudden, it was like he said, “We’ve got to do this.” And he saw the vision of it.
So we immediately pulled some stockholders together because we didn’t want to do it by ourselves. We needed help with people talking about it, marketing, especially in the arts space.
But we rounded up, I think it was eight. Eight was the initial amount of investors besides me and Maurice. And we bought this network from these guys for a whole lot more money than it was worth, because they didn’t really have anything of value. They had three stations online. That’s all they could get.
They didn’t have any equipment that was first class, you know, reliable 24/7 type equipment. It might run for two or three hours and break, you know. So we had to invest a lot of money in the front end as well on equipping a studio that was functional. But we gave them a lot of money for the rights to that studio, which basically was giving them the money for the rights to the idea.
And then we owned the Reach Solid Gospel Network. And so we bought the idea. We didn’t buy equipment, etc.
Come back to Nashville, I built the first two studios that the network was housed in. And the first one was in Oak Valley. And it was a small studio in Oak Valley, but it worked. It’s all we needed. And I hired a guy from Dallas, Texas to be the original engineer, Derek Farricks.
And I went to the airport. Do you ever remember the name Derek Farricks?
Daniel Mount
Don’t believe so. No.
Chris
I went to the airport to pick up Derek. He flew in from Dallas. And I’d already hired him. I hired him over the phone. And when I went to pick him up at the airport, he come walking out of the terminal with a big old cowboy hat and cowboy boots. And I thought, my, what did I do here? What did I do?
But man, did he ever turn out to be a jewel. And he still is. I talk to him every now and then. But he just did a fantastic job for us.
And then as time went forward, we hired two, three more guys in the DJ capacity. Then Maurice and his team of people were doing the marketing. So I was doing the production side. Maurice was doing the marketing side.
And that lasted for several years. And then a guy named Jim Cumbee come along. Jim was a Disney guy and he really wanted to be in the Southern Gospel music world in some way. There was one time he even looked at buying Crossroads. He just wanted to be in the business.
So he took a look at Reach and that’s what he said, “I found what I wanna do.” We let him buy 70% of it because it was really a great idea to let him come in because he had such experience with Disney. We thought he could take this to a level of we probably never could.
But when we sold him 70% of the network, we were at, I think the number was 100 stations. So we grew it from three to 130 in that time period. That was probably over going on two years.
And it was a slow go because again it was a format, it was a thing nobody ever heard of. Stations didn’t know what we were talking about when we first told them about a digital network. So it took a while to be able to explain and market that to them to where they got on board.
But when they did, they loved it because they could do all of their programming they wanted to do. They could flip us on, flip us off, just like a switch. So it didn’t bind them to us 24/7. They could just utilize us as much as they wanted.
So it stayed that way. Jim eventually sold to Salem Communication out of California. And then Salem sold to the current Singing News guys. And that’s where it’s at today, but they renamed it Singing News Radio.
Daniel Mount
Yes. Yeah, the current Singing News guys, which is kind of full circle because one thing we didn’t say at the top here was Maurice Templeton was in charge of leading Singing News at the time.
Chris
Yes, he was. And it kind of broke my heart that changed the name. I understood why they did. I mean, it made sense.
Daniel Mount
Mm-hmm. I have a bit of a sentimental connection to the network, actually in its Solid Gospel days. I grew up without any familiarity with Southern Gospel, borrowed a Cathedral CD on a whim from the library in 2003, got interested, and it was a local Solid Gospel affiliate where I learned about all the groups who are current.
It was 96.9 WLRD Willard. They had some hours of local programming, but as I recall, some Solid Gospel hours too. And it was through that that I learned who all the major groups were, who I ended up working with some of them not that many years later.
So Solid Gospel was a part of my story too, but from the other side.
Chris
Boy, that’s cool. That is very cool.
Daniel Mount
So in part one, we talked about your time at Oak Valley Studio. And we talked about how much work you put into building it. But one thing I didn’t ask was what you did there.
Chris
Uh, like anybody else at that stage of a new business, I did everything. The garbage, if they didn’t take it out, I took it out.
I was seriously kind of a jack of all trades. Of course, I had started the label at that point before, before I got there. So I brought the label in with me. It wasn’t all that big a deal at the time when we first started.
But Kevin [McManus] didn’t have anything to do with launching of Sonlite. He had a company named Nashville Teleproductions, which was a production company. So he and I partnered to rebuild and reopen, relight, as they say, Oak Valley to the recording facility that it became.
And I sold time. I booked groups. I did some engineering, not a whole lot of engineering, but I did quite a bit of producing. So, like I said, I did a little bit of all of it.
Daniel Mount
Mm-hmm. Cool!
You’ve been active in a number of different areas in Southern Gospel outside of just running a record company. We were just talking about the radio aspect.
Another one of those areas that you’ve been active in through the years is publishing songwriters through Chris White Music Publishing. Can you share the story behind launching that, and who are some of the writers you’ve worked with through the years?
Chris
Yeah, the way that was launched was basically having people say to me, “I’ve got this song I’ve written, but I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t have a publisher.” And that story kept coming up and up. And I thought, then maybe I ought to look at starting a publishing company. And that’s kind of how it happened. And I did.
I started that and that was just a little bit before the Oak Valley days as well, but it really didn’t do much or take off at all until Oak Valley. And then it really got its attention.
And I’ll tell you what I did to really get that thing off the ground, Daniel. I hired a guy that knew a lot about songwriting and was quite a famous songwriter himself at the time, whose name was Ronny Hinson.
Daniel Mount
My word, I did not know that!
Chris
Yeah, I hired Ronny when they came off the road. And I found out several years later Ronny hated that job because he wanted to be back on the road. He wanted to be on stage. And I had him in an office running my publishing company.
And what we did was we would bring students in, and Ronny would teach them the craft of songwriting.
And I remember the first girl that we really had a lot of success with was a girl named Marcia Henry. And she’s still writing great songs today, you know? And that was 40 years ago or whatever it was.
Ronny worked for me for, I would say, two, a little over two years probably. And then he could not get the burning desire to be out and sing again, you know. And that’s what he ended up doing. I was okay with that. I gave him a place to land when he had no home. He had nowhere to go because that, you know, the group, the Hinsons kind of ended suddenly. It wasn’t something that was planned for a long time.
So Ronny really appreciated that spot to light in until he could get his wits together about him and decide what he wanted to do with his life. So it worked great for both of us.
And then probably, you know, most of the writers I had, Daniel, were one-offs. It’s what I call one-offs because they’d have one or two songs that were strong and that would be it, which is probably for the most part the way most writers are. If you take how many writers have a big name value today, there’s still not that many of them.
But the biggest name value I had was Phil Cross. Phil was a phenomenal, phenomenal writer, and still is today. So he would be the person I would put at the top that really, when it came to the publishing side, as well as the side with Poet Voices, he was probably the leader of the pack.
Daniel Mount
He had so many good songs in his early days, but then in those early Poet Voices days it was one amazing song after another.
Chris
It was. Can I tell you a quick story about him?
Daniel Mount
Go for it!
Chris
We were in the studio, and this was in Poet’s Voices. It’s outside of the publisher so much.
Daniel Mount
Sure. That’s fine.
Chris
His first big single that we released to radio under Poet Voices, I called him and said, “Phil, I’ve got it mixed. It’s ready to go to radio, but I want you to come in and take a listen to it, and let’s discuss anything that we need to before it ships,” because Phil had never had a single ship off the label.
And so he came in. He listened to the song. He was very quiet through the whole thing. And he looked very solemn as he was listening. And when it was over, he looked at me and he said, “Chris, you missed it. You missed that mix.”
And I said, “Phil, I didn’t miss it. That’s as good a mix as I can get on it. It’s great.”
“Nope, nope, it’s not. You missed it.”
He said, “You’re going to put me out of business before I get started.”
So I said, “No, Phil, that’s a hit song right there. Just trust me. That’s a hit song.”
And he walked out believing it wasn’t. He walked out believing that I had really missed that mix and he was not happy. And that song turned out to be “Jesus Built A Bridge.” Yeah. And from there, he just took off.
And I’ve asked him sometimes through the years, said, “Hey, you still think I’ve missed that mix of ‘Jesus Built A Bridge?'” I won’t let him forget it.
But no, you know, and he’s a big one to me that really, really got in my gut every time I heard “I Am Redeemed.” And I’m telling you, I couldn’t listen to that song without, you know, crying and squalling and shouting. It just was a song that just hit me every time I heard it.
Daniel Mount
Yeah, it is an amazing song.
Chris
Yeah, “Champion Of Love,” by the Cathedrals. That wasn’t a bad song either, you know.
Daniel Mount
Mm-hmm. No, it wasn’t.
He had “Miracle In Me” by The Greenes, “Medals, Crowns And Trophies” by The Nelons. He’s had so many just amazing songs through the years, some of which, you know, everybody knows “Champion Of Love” still, but how many people remember “Medals, Crowns And Trophies?” But it was a good song.
Chris
Yeah. It was a good song.
Daniel Mount
Yeah. Well, why don’t we just talk about Phil Cross for another minute or two while we’re here, and then we can loop back to songwriting.
When did you meet him? How did that relationship start? Because you ended up working with him and with Poets Voices for a good long while.
Chris White
I cannot tell you exactly how our paths crossed for the first time. I know it involved Elmer Cole in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
And we were in Elmer’s studio in Chattanooga. I think it was up on Signal Mountain. And that’s where I met Phil, I think for the very first time. Well, it may not have been the first time, but it was close to it. And that’s where our relationship kind of began, I guess, at that point.
That’s the most I remember on where we started forming a relationship, where we actually met for the first time.
Daniel Mount
No worries, no worries.
So did he come to you with the idea of forming Poets Voices as a group? Because of course for eight or ten years before that, he was well established as a songwriter, but really only as a writer.
So did he come to you one day and say, you know, I’m thinking about getting a group together?
And we put a really, really good team of people around him, booking agents and managers, because that’s kind of the way Phil was. He wanted good people around him. He just refused to do it any other way.
So we put good people around him, and they all did a good job and worked hard for him. And it turned out to be a phenomenal career. He’s still going strong today, you know.
So Phil was one of those artists that I would say was one of the hardest artists I ever had to work with. He was tough to work with because he was so sold out to excellence, and he didn’t want anything that wasn’t excellent.
And neither did I, but a lot of times one’s theory about what excellence is is a little different than the next person. Sometimes we clashed a little, but most of the time we were on the same page.
And I appreciated his desire to do it right, and that’s sure enough what he had. Yeah, we were together for many, many years.
Daniel Mount
So while we’re talking about songwriters and songwriting, you’ve done some songwriting yourself. And didn’t you write “When It’s My Time,” a song that the Crabb Family recorded and I believe even sent to radio?
Chris White
I did, and there’s a story behind that, too. I don’t know if we have time for it, but it may be one of the best ones. It may be one of the best ones out of my career, as far as the way it all worked out.
The Crabb Family heard this song from a custom group that recorded it, a group from Alabama recorded it. And they sent it to radio. And when, you know what I mean, I don’t know where this group charts my song, and I don’t think anybody ever heard this group before, but they did a great job on it and it charted.
Well, Gerald Crabb called me at the office one day. And he said, “Chris, you wrote a song called ‘When It’s My Time.’ I’d like to maybe cut that song. Would you send me a demo of it?”
I said, “Sure, Gerald, I’ll send you one.”
Well, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to that, Daniel, because the Crabb Family was hotter than a pistol at that point. Gerald was writing one number one song after another number one song. And honestly, I just didn’t do what I should have done. I didn’t send the demo, because I didn’t take it serious enough, I guess.
A couple of weeks go by and he called me back and he said, “Chris, did you ever send me the demo of ‘When It’s My Time?'”
I said, “No, Gerald, I didn’t. That’s my fault. I’ll get it out to you today.” But I said, “Gerald, I have to ask you. I’ve got to ask you this question. You’re writing number one after number one after number one. Why would you want to record a song I wrote?”
And that was three or four years ago at that point, I guess. And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you why. I was working in a garage.” I think it was a body shop, maybe. And anyway, he said, “Our owner played Southern Gospel on the radio all day. Back when I first heard this song, I was working on my job and this song come on. It caught my attention, especially one line of it. And that line said, ‘Imagine millions upon millions, they’re all standing in line, waiting for a moment or more of the precious Savior’s time.’ When I heard that line, I realized I wasn’t gonna be standing in that line. So I laid my tools down. I went out back at the shop, I got on my knees and I started praying.”
And that was the beginning of bringing him to the Lord. And I thought, you never, ever, ever know.
And there was a couple more things that happened for him at the same time.
When things like that happen, it’s a God thing. But that song did it. That song did it. And that one line, particularly in that song, is what did it for him.
And what did he do? He went on to write how many number one songs, had performed all over this country with his family for a long time.
And I still will, next time I see him, I’ll ask him again. I keep saying, “Gerald, consider all those number one songs you wrote because my song convicted you to get right with the Lord. Will you go send me some royalties?”
But he would always say, “Brother, your royalties have been stacked up in Heaven.” And I’ll take that.
But yeah, “When It’s My Time” was my biggest song ever. It went to number two. And the McKameys, my own group, beat me out of getting my first number one, jumping the Crabb Family and going to number one in the charts. And we got stuck at number two.
So I never have written a number one because of that.
But I used to write a lot, Daniel, back in the earlier days, 80s and 90s especially. But when I got into, you know, running the company and the record business and everything else that was going on around me in the industry, I just didn’t have the creativity about me to write like I once did because my mind was so scattered everywhere.
You know, and to write good songs, you know, a writer, you’ve got to be focused on what you’re doing, and I just wasn’t for a long time.
So I’ve let my publishing be my, I guess, feel-good part of the lyric world since I don’t write much anymore. But yeah, back in the day, I wrote quite a bit. Several, about 40.
Daniel Mount
There was one other one I wanted to ask you about specifically because it was on such a landmark album, and that was the song “Love Bigger Than Heaven” for Gold City, which was on their Windows Of Heaven album, which was just a huge album for them in those days.
Do you have any recollection of writing that song or any interesting stories connected to that one?
Chris White
I do, and you know the first group to cut it was the Whisnants. They cut it before Gold City. Matter of fact, Gold City heard the Whisnants do it and that’s when they picked it up.
So it actually started with the Whisnants and then Gold City picked it up and did it. Michael LeFevre did the lead on it and did a great job.
And yeah, I guess that was the most proud I had been of a song because that was my first major, major artist on a major, major record that had one of my songs on it. So I was really excited about that.
I’ve never, ever forgotten that that was my, I guess you’ve heard the old saying, claim to fame. That was my first claim to fame as a writer, was “Love Bigger Than Heaven.”
Daniel Mount
Yeah.
Were there any songs that I didn’t ask about that really stand out in your mind as one worth mentioning here, or one that has a really cool story connected to it?
Chris White
No, not really. Those are the two that I would say stand out the most because of what they represent. Both of them had their own little representation of what they stood for.
I was pretty much one of those one-off writers, too, you know. I never did write enough big hits to become known as a writer. So I was never really known as a writer except for people who dig in the weeds like you do.
Daniel Mount
Definitely, that’s me! All right. I think I want to ask one more question that’s really business-oriented, and then maybe we can wrap up this episode with a couple of artist-related stories.
So one thing that we’ve started talking about in bits and pieces, but haven’t tied together as much is, you know, we talked about the early days of Sonlite in the 80s in episode one, part one. But then as we move into the 90s, Sonlite Records and Eldridge Fox’s Horizon Records started taking steps toward becoming Crossroads.
But if I recall correctly, it wasn’t like a sudden merger, with some joint distribution that led to a full merger later. So to kind of wrap out the behind the scenes portion of this part of the story, could you share the story of how Sonlite and Horizon started working together and then became Crossroads?
Chris White
Yeah, but if I can backtrack just for a second, I’ve noticed something when I watched the first episode: we didn’t even mention that the Hoppers had the first number one for the label and their first number one, “Here I Am.” That was their first number one.
And Claude would always say the Hoppers made Sonlite and Sonlite made the Hoppers. And that’s kind of true.
But me to Crossroads was, I saw the opportunity for two labels that were doing really well, Sonlite and Horizon, to come together as a partnership, not as a merger, but as a partnership, and gain strength in distribution and radio.
Because the more strong artists you had in distribution, the better. The more stores would be open to your products because they could get so much more major product on that one call, that one order. It just gave us leverage that we didn’t have independently.
Same thing applied to radio. And we both had our radio departments and they were working. Sonlite was working Sonlite and Horizon was working Horizon. But just to bring all that together made sense from a leverage point in the industry.
And so I went to them. The only guy I knew besides Foxy, and I’d met him one time, was Mickey Gamble. And Foxy had brought him to a Guild meeting and I met him there one day.
So I started kind of chasing on him because we’d run into each other at concerts a couple of times. And I said, Mickey, why don’t you get me a meeting with your guys, with your ownership, and let me pitch an idea at you. And that went on and on and on for six months, probably. And he never would pull it together.
And finally, and I can still see today, the parking lot, the church, me and him sitting in the car, I can see it like it was yesterday. I said, I’m going to give you one more shot at this. See if you can get these guys, your ownership, to sit down and let’s talk about this idea.
And he finally did it. And when he did, then I went to Asheville, where they were headquartered, talked through the whole idea, the whole philosophy of the partnership, etc.
Long story short, we come to an agreement to do that partnership, to merge both those labels together. So now the Kingdom Heirs and Karen Peck & New River were under the same representation. They still had their separate labels. Karen was Horizon, Kingdom Heirs was Sonlite, but they were represented by all of these now, plus the staffing that we had before, you know, sales department, everything else.
And that went on. I’m trying to think how many years that lasted now before Pamplin Entertainment out of Portland bought us. And that lasted for five years before they decided to get out of the music business.
And they were big. But they were a multifaceted company. So he, for personal reasons, decided to shut down the music side.
And then we bought the company back from Pamplin. We still have it today.
Did I leave out something?
Daniel Mount
Well, actually there’s one detail I’m not clear on.
So you started with joint efforts in radio and in distribution. At the time Pamplin came into the picture, which I think was late 90s, at the time Pamplin’s in the picture, are you still two separate companies working together on those fronts? Or had you merged to become Crossroads?
Did Pamplin acquire Horizon and Sonlite in a sense, or did Pamplin acquire Crossroads that was already one unified organization?
Chris White
Pamplin acquired Horizon assets, Sonlite assets, and Crossroads, the umbrella asset.
So we never ever merged the two labels as one company. We continued to be a partnership with Crossroads being the umbrella for both. Does that make sense?
Daniel Mount
Yeah. And I think it is, go on, sorry.
Chris White
No, I was just gonna say when Pamplin bought us, then it all came together under one roof and one ownership by Pamplin.
Daniel Mount
I see. And then when you bought yourselves back, it continued to be altogether under one roof.
Chris White
It did. We bought ourselves back in 2006, I believe it was. And there was some of the original owners for Horizon and me, and that was Jeff and Vicki Collins, and then Mickey, because some of their main guy, Eddie Swann, was probably their lead character, I guess you could say at the time that the partnership come together, and Foxy. But Foxy didn’t do a whole lot of running the business, he was too busy running the Kingsmen.
So we held all the business activity within the confines of who was part of the Horizon-owned camp, and then myself; I didn’t have any partners in Sonlite, so it was just me.
And when we bought it back, it was Jeff and Vicki bought a third of the company, Mickey bought a third, I bought a third, so we were all back together just the way we left.
Daniel Mount
I think it is a real blessing for the groups that were part of the record company and for Southern Gospel’s strength as a whole that you were able to get it back, because it’s my understanding from conversations with Scott Wagner that all the other divisions of Pamplin music organization just ceased operations.
And Crossroads was the only one that came out of that as an organization that continued to operate. And I think for the sake of the groups and the sake of the genre, I’m really grateful that you were able to work something out and that Crossroads didn’t just cease to exist when Pamplin did.
Chris White
Yeah, that’s very correct. That thing shut down almost like over 24 hours. It was 24 hours, but it felt that way.
It [Sonlite] started in my office in Nashville.
And I hired one guy as a sales guy, Mike Harrelson, who was a tenor singer that I had gotten a job before in the business. And I knew him. He was in Florida. I’m not sure what he was doing, but I said, “Mike, you want a job as a sales guy with this new company that we put together?”
And he said, “Sure.”
So he moved from Florida to Nashville. I set him up in a little office in my offices there in Nashville. I handed him a sales book with every retailer that we could put our hands on, and laid it on his desk, and I said, “Sell or you can’t sell.”
And that was selling all the products, Horizon, Sonlite, everything. And he did, and did quite well at it.
And then eventually as everything evolved, we just made the decision. It made more sense to move it all to Asheville, and that’s what we did. ’93, I think maybe. And then Crossroads was ’94 when it finally merged, or at least partnered, not merged. I’ll use the wrong word. Got the partnership alive and well.
Still going today.
Daniel Mount
Neat.
All right, maybe we can talk about one or two more artists and then wrap up for the night. And I think we’re far enough in your story that we can probably wrap it up in a part three.
So, one that I definitely wanted to ask you about, because it was such a big thing for the genre at the time this happened: Southern Gospel is a very group-oriented industry. And there aren’t many soloists who have really built strong, sustainable careers.
But you really helped change that in Kirk Talley’s Sonlite years. So I’m wondering if we could talk about Kirk’s solo career for a couple of minutes here. Both Kirk’s career itself, but also how he helped pave the way for the current generation of soloists – Mark Bishop, Ivan Parker, Joseph Habedank, and some others. So just curious for some of your insight in that.
Chris White
Well, you’re still right about it paving the way. And if you remember, at that time, NQC wouldn’t even let a soloist on stage. They were not allowed to perform at NQC because they weren’t a group.
But the thing with Kirk was he was a difficult to work with sometimes because he was so precise and he was so, got to be just right, you know, kind of an artist. And they’ll drive you crazy at the moment, but you appreciate the fact they’re that way.
And Kirk was definitely that way. And talk about a writer. Oh my goodness, that boy could write a song, and still does.
He was, in my opinion on this – just my opinion, everybody’s got their own. If you asked me to pick one single artist that checked all the boxes every time they walked on the stage, it would be this guy. And I mean from the performance. He knew how to reach an audience. He knew how to speak to their heart in ways that most artists… and the songs he delivered to them were just amazing, amazing songs.
And I don’t know, he just had it all. He had it all.
So I can remember him, as you said, the trailblazer to the soloists today.
Now I’ve got another great one right now, Mark. That’s a great source. Had Ivan Parker for years; he was on Horizon Records for years after the Gold City days. So soloists became a force.
Now you got Joseph, got Scotty Inman, Joseph Habedank, but Kirk’s the one who led that parade. He was the one that took the body blows for the rest of them.
Daniel Mount
Yeah.
And you talk about songs he wrote, there’s one song he wrote that made such an impact in his Sonlite years that people still talk about today, “Serenaded By Angels.” Do you remember when you first heard that? song?
Chris White
“Serenaded By Angels.” I don’t remember when I first heard it, but I remember when I heard it and knew the impact it was going to have. It seems like I may have heard it the first time at his house, but anyway, it was in the studio side of the production, because then it all really came together. You just knew, wow, it’s going to be such a good song.
And we knew the lady that the song was about and her husband as well. So that made it even more special.
And I’ll tell you another song he wrote that I think was one of his best ever, and that was “When He Hung The Moon.”
I’m sorry, that was another great lyric song that he did, which was so many. But “Serenaded By Angels” was, going away, his top song. Yep.
Daniel Mount
Yes.
All right. I would like to wrap up for today with, I think, a fun story or one that’s just a totally unexpected one.
One of the most unexpected things in the history of Crossroads was that you signed one of the legendary Harlem Globetrotters, Meadowlark Lemon, to a recording deal. How on earth did that come about?
Chris White
Yeah. That came about through my brother-in-law who knew Meadowlark’s son. Meadowlark’s son mentioned to my brother-in-law that his dad would like to cut a gospel record. So my brother-in-law says, “Well, I know who can do that.” So that’s how it came to be.
And his name was Bill Baker, my brother-in-law. And Bill was big, big, big time in production business.
And he ran into Meadowlark’s son somewhere in a show, production show of some type. I don’t remember what, but that’s where he met him.
So that was maybe the most interesting record I’ve ever done, Daniel. He was such a pleasure to work with, but he was difficult because his musical ability was not what his basketball ability was. I’ll say that.
But man, it turned out to be a good record, a really good record. And there’s some stories, you know, if you ever want to know any of those, two or three that just would… I’ll never forget the experiences I had with him, and to know what his ministry was all about. It was big.
Daniel Mount
Well, if you have a couple more minutes, I’m happy to talk about Meadowlark another couple minutes here.
Chris White
Well, then I’ll tell you a story that I thought really spoke to his seriousness.
We finished in the studio one night and I was taking him to dinner. So I took him to this little restaurant down in Asheville. It’s more of an upper-scale, upper-end type of restaurant.
And we went in and sat down. They set us at a table, the two of us. And you knew by the moment we sat down, it was going to be trouble because people started recognizing him right out the gate.
And I’m a little surprised at that because he had aged some since his basketball days. But boy, he was still very recognizable.
And people started coming and wanting autographs, etc., etc. Well, the manager of the restaurant had to come in through the restaurant itself and make an announcement: Folks, you have to let Mr. Lemon enjoy his dinner with us tonight. And he basically told the whole place, you got to calm down here. And maybe the time will come after dinner that he can spend some time with you.
But in the middle of that dinner, we’re sitting there in the middle of that dinner, and the table right behind us, this guy leaned over to Meadowlark and he said, Meadowlark, “I don’t want to bother you, but I just want to ask you to say a prayer for my son when you have a minute,” and told him a little bit about what the issue was. “When you have a little time, if you wouldn’t mind just say a prayer for him?”
Meadowlark said, “Well, how about right now?” And Meadowlark spun around, took that guy’s hands, and prayed for him right there in the middle of all the people.
And I thought, it’ll get any better than that, you know? To see somebody of his magnitude not be ashamed to expose himself like that and just say, “Jesus, come down,” you know. So that was a very cool thing. That’s the best spiritual story I got on him.
He got his golf clubs stolen one night in a hotel. They busted out the window of the car and stole his golf clubs because they had his name on it.
But anyway, he was a delight to work with, and the record turned out really good.
We took him to Louisville, Kentucky to NQC. I flew him in from Phoenix, Arizona to Louisville, but one night of NQC.
And about halfway through the show that night, they took a little bit of a break on stage, intentionally took it, because we were gonna bring Meadowlark on. Well, stage cleared. No artists. And all of a sudden, “Sweet Georgia Brown” started playing over the PA system. And you know, that was Globetrotter song, you know.
People heard that and they saw this guy walking up on stage, and when they realized who it was, you know that place went nuts, and standing clapping to “Sweet Georgia Brown.”
And when that part was over, he talked to the audience. And they didn’t let him sing because he was a soloist. But we took him out in the arena area where all the booths were set up and everybody was selling the records.
We had, I think it was 2,000 basketballs shipped, the miniature basketballs shipped through, and we had guys, Jim Stover, who you know, was one of them, throwing those basketballs up as fast as they could blow them up. And we had Meadowlark at the booth.
And the idea was, if you buy the CD, you know, for 20 bucks, you get the basketball free, autographed. Well, people didn’t want the CD, they just wanted the basketball.
So they’d just say, “No, no, no, you either buy the CD or you don’t get the basketball.” And they did.
We were out of those basketballs. We went through 2,000 in a heartbeat. So if we’d have had 5,000, we could have sold them. But people loved Meadowlark.
Daniel Mount
I recorded an episode with Jim a couple of weeks ago and we ended up talking about that. One of the things that stuck out to him the most – because he said it was a long line – but one thing that really stuck out to him was Dottie Rambo waited in line so she could get her basketball.
Chris White
Yeah.
Daniel Mount
All right. I think we can wrap up here for the night. Thank you so much for your time, for coming on. I have definitely enjoyed this conversation.
Chris White
I hope so. I try to make it as interesting as I can without getting in the weeds. And it brings back memories for me too, because some of this stuff I haven’t thought about in years and years. But it’s been such a good and blessed career that God has given me.
I never thank Him enough, and I’m always amazed at how He’s blessed me.
Daniel Mount
Amen. Well said.
To the listener, I’ll close by saying thank you for listening to Southern Gospel Journal. You can keep up with the latest episodes on YouTube, Facebook, your favorite podcast platform, or southerngospeljournal.com. Thanks for listening.