Join me in getting to know Randy Shaw, the final baritone singer for Southern Sound.
Show Notes
Ben Harris shares the story of how he almost joined The Statesmen.
Randy Shaw sings with Southern Sound at the Memphis Quartet Show.
Transcript
Lightly edited for clarity.
Daniel Mount
Welcome to Southern Gospel Journal. My name is Daniel Mount, and I have the honor this evening of being joined by Randy Shaw. How are you this evening?
Randy Shaw
I am great, Daniel, and the honor is all mine. Thank you for allowing me to be on with you.
Daniel Mount
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much. So I love to always start – after the first question, it could go just about anywhere – but I love to always start with your background and your testimony. So where are you from, and how did you come to know the Lord?
Randy Shaw
Mm-hmm.
Well, I live just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, but I was raised about an hour above Pittsburgh in a little town called Grove City, Pennsylvania.
Daniel Mount
Oh, I know where that is. My wife’s parents both went to college there, and then I think that’s where they met too. So, family connections to that town. Neat.
Randy Shaw
That’s a good school. That’s a good school. Interesting. That’s where I was raised.
I think I was eight years old, and it was a Sunday night in the service. And I really felt a tug from the Lord and told my parents that I wanted to go down and pray. I went to the altar and asked the Lord into my heart. And so I did that at eight years old. I was raised in a pastor’s home.
I had two great godly parents. So they, I think the very most important thing they did was they lived it, and they continue to. They continue to leave a great legacy for me. And they will probably never know how important that is to me and my brother and sister, that they have that kind of a legacy. So anyhow, that, and then music. You know, I grew up singing with them. Back in that day, Daniel, we didn’t wear seat belts.
And so I would stand – I’m the oldest of three – and so I would stand on that little hump on the back seat in the middle and hang over the seat and sing with my parents when I was little because we sang everywhere. We sang around the house, we sang in the car wherever we went, and they sang in churches, camp meetings, conferences, whatever. And so when I was five, I was standing up and leaning over the seat and started singing with them. And my parents got excited and said, “We better keep singing this song for a long time and make sure he remembers his part.” And so they cemented that one into me.
And shortly after that, when I was five, I started traveling with them and singing. And I guess it’s interesting, if you hear three voices but only see two people because I’m down behind a pulpit, that can be a problem. So we got a stool, and my parents – I don’t remember it now, but my parents tell me that we always took a stool wherever we sang, and I would stand up on that so I could see over the pulpit, and started at that young age. So a good godly home, lots of music there in western Pennsylvania. That was kind of the beginning.
Daniel Mount
What were some of the songs that you most remember singing in those days with your parents?
Randy Shaw
Well, we sang “Across the Bridge.” “There’ll Be No Sorrow Across the Bridge,” “There’ll Be No Pain,” “The Sun Is Shining” – some of those days. Maybe “Because He Lives,” some Gaither things. I’ve always loved some of the old hymns. Great, great hymns. “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” is maybe my favorite one, but there are a number of great ones. Goodmans, the Aaron Wilburn song, “What a Beautiful Day for the Lord to Come Again.” So we sang a number of Goodman songs way back in the day, and I tried my best – I started playing piano back then – and I tried my best to work out some of the piano licks of either Eddie Crook or Johnny Minick, which will keep you working because those two are pretty good. Yeah, that was those early days. Those are just a few of the songs there.
Daniel Mount
Yes. So did you get to hear some of those groups live back in the day? Did you get to see the Happy Goodmans with Howard, Vestal, Sam, and Rusty and all that in those days?
Randy Shaw
Sure did. In fact, yes, my parents, especially my dad, loved the Goodmans. And we were there when Johnny Cook joined the scene.
And Ivan Parker – oh, my lands. And so we went and saw them. Some of the concerts were in Ohio. I don’t remember the city right now, but we were in Ohio a number of times to see several of the quartets, the Cathedrals sometimes. Oh, my lands, I can’t remember who else, but definitely the Goodmans. That was one of our favorites. They were exciting.
Daniel Mount
Yes, definitely. A little bit before my time, but I have Wanted Live and several other live records, and even if you couldn’t be there, how exciting it is comes through on those records. When you hear the drummer set up and whoever was the MC is like, “We’re reinforcing the stage,” then you’re off to the races. So, some great records.
Randy Shaw
Yes, yes. You know what is funny? You mentioned that because I have always been amazed at the spirit that can come through in a recording.
Daniel Mount
Yes.
Randy Shaw
You get a live album, and if you get the Goodmans, they were exciting. They were fun, and you felt it, even if it was just a record you were listening to. And there are some albums over the years that there’s an anointing of the Lord on them. And years later, you can put that on your record player – I’m going back with the LPs. I’ll always be a record guy, I guess – but put those on and just be moved in your spirit by the spirit that was on that recording. I’ve always been amazed that that is still there after the live experience is over.
Daniel Mount
It’s true. It is amazing. And, you know, there’s nothing to be ashamed of with being a record guy and liking vinyl. When I say that vinyl is back, I looked up the numbers just a week or two ago, and it blew my mind. Last year, vinyl sales compared to CD sales – vinyl, look, this is RIAA. That’s the Recording Industry Association that oversees the Grammys.
Randy Shaw
Yeah.
Daniel Mount
So these are US nationwide statistics across the country, all genres. Vinyl outsold CDs. More vinyl sold than CDs by a three-to-one margin.
Randy Shaw
Wow. Unbelievable. I didn’t know it was that kind of number. That’s impressive.
Daniel Mount
So when I say vinyl’s back, that’s how much vinyl’s back. It’s outselling CDs three to one.
Randy Shaw
Wow. Very interesting.
Daniel Mount
So then once you grew up, finished high school, whether you moved on to college or a career, did you keep singing, or did you take a break from singing for a while?
Randy Shaw
You know, I don’t know if – well, maybe taking a break here and there. I hadn’t thought about that in a little while, but yes, I sang the whole way through. And when I went to college, I sang three of my four years. I traveled and sang in college groups for the school.
And then after that, I pastored for a few years. I was on staff at some churches. It was okay, but it wasn’t quite the right fit for me. We saw some people come to the Lord and some good things happened, but it wasn’t quite the right fit. And so I finally left the pastorate and took a regular job so that I could travel and sing. And for maybe nine years at that point, I had a ministry called Magnify Ministries – magnifying the Lord through music. And I would travel in a region doing conferences, worship leading, and I took my keyboard out. And I also did a lot of original material in those times. Some of the highlights for me, I got to go to quite a few different countries and worship lead, sing, and play. But several African trips were some of my highlights back then, to be able to work with these people. You get on that side of the world, you’re in their world. And it’s really moving to sense the people, and they didn’t have very much, but they were joyful people.
Daniel Mount
Yeah. So, two questions. One is, I’m curious if you remember any of those specific African countries you went to. If you’re going north in the Sahara versus South Africa, there’s a pretty big spectrum of cultures and fields and everything in between.
Randy Shaw
Yes, absolutely. My first trip was to Kenya, and I led worship there. Yes, worked with a worship team there, kind of some sessions with them, and then led the team. Several of them were on my team at night. Another trip was to Zambia.
And so we flew to Zambia, and I taught worship classes at a college there. And I think I did seven sessions that week and had 25 students. One was from Zimbabwe and the rest were from Zambia. And so I taught them worship that week, and then when I led worship for the conference at nights, the people that sang were my worship team or my choir or whatever.
A funny little story that came out of that experience in Zambia – I almost fell out laughing. I was in front of the group. I had an interpreter, and I thought, we’re gonna break the ice. We’re talking music and worship. And I asked them, you know, in Zambia, we are way out from any big city. And I said, “What singers have you heard of around the world?” And I had no idea what the answer would be.
And this African guy answered me, but his accent was pretty thick. And I said, “Excuse me, I didn’t understand you.” And he said, “Dolly Parton.” So we are in Zambia, way out from the city, and this guy says, “Dolly Parton.”
My lands, I lost my composure. That was so funny. I did not see that one coming. I promise. But that was Zambia, and a great experience there. I’ve had a couple of different evangelists that I traveled with, and that was a blessing for me because they were solid guys and they were the leader of the whole thing, but I was the music guy, so to speak. And we went into Uganda. We rode on back of bicycle taxis and rode across the border into Uganda and led worship there. And then back in Kenya with another organization and worked with that worship team and sang. And I did that in a few other countries, but then we went to other African countries, South Africa and a number of places. But that was some of the most impactful worship I got to be a part of.
I started missions trips – I was counting. We were in a group talking a while back and I said, well, let me count up the countries. I think it’s been like 17 countries, something like that. The first one was Costa Rica. That was maybe ’89. And so I was in a group. I wasn’t leading the group. I was in the music group doing that one.
And then coming through the 90s, yes, and even into the late – you know what, see, it was early 2000s, the last couple African trips. Early 2000s. So it was spread over quite a few years there
Daniel Mount
And then fairly praise-and-worship stylistically? Okay.
Randy Shaw
Yeah, somewhat.
Yeah. I tried to learn some of their songs in advance, you know, so that I would know their stuff. It was interesting to me. I was worried, as a spoiled American that has a couple of really good keyboards. I knew I didn’t dare take them on those planes, have them thrown around Africa and all the airports. And so I had to count on what they had. And the short of it is that I kept emailing the one missionary. I said, “Hey, I don’t want to bother you. I’m just wanting to do my homework. Do you know what kind of keyboard it is?” And they didn’t answer it, didn’t answer it. They had a lot more important things on their mind than what keyboard I was going to have to play, but it was pretty important to me. And I never found out.
So I got over there, and they said, “Oh, if you want to go over, we’ll show you what we have set up in the church.” There were going to be hundreds of people there that night, but they had a little Casio keyboard that you might spend $35 for at a yard sale.
And my heart sank to the floor because I played it a little bit, and it wasn’t touch sensitive. It just wasn’t fun. But the Lord quickly spoke to me and said, “Randy, this is all they’ve got.” I have a really nice Roland keyboard at home, I’ve got a nice Nord, but they have this. This is all they’ve got. And I got my attitude adjusted pretty quickly, and then I was able to enjoy it.
But what would happen, I’d be worship leading the people and I’d be standing there playing. I wouldn’t hear any sound. I looked down, the lights had gone out on this little keyboard, so the electric’s out on this keyboard. It was pretty cheap. And so I just stood there and sang. I looked down, the lights were on, so I started playing again. And we were singing the whole time. And there were people in there who were just singing. They didn’t care. And I looked, I didn’t hear anything, I looked down – the lights are out again. And so I played and I stopped playing just depending on if the keyboard was working.
But the Lord seemed to get along fine. So those are fun experiences. Now, it bothered me a little bit then, but I said, it’s my issue, not anybody else’s because, you know – just a quick story, Daniel. I’m gonna take one.
Daniel Mount
Go for it. I’m not in any rush.
Randy Shaw
Okay, a quick story. On the day after the Zambia conference ended, I thought, I’m gonna go out and take a little walk around the grounds. It was a pretty good-sized place. And I heard some music, and I wandered over toward the church and I heard some people singing. And that keyboard – that keyboard I’ve been telling you about – and I realized they were in there, some African local people were singing the worship song that I wrote and I taught them that week.
Daniel Mount
Wow.
Randy Shaw
And I stood outside of the building and listened to them sing my worship song. And wow, I mean, I get goosebumps right now telling you about it. You know, we just never know what might connect or whatever, but they were singing that song that the Lord gave me, and that warmed my heart. I’ll promise you that.
Daniel Mount
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. So you had some familiarity with the Southern Gospel side of things through the Happy Goodmans and the Cathedrals back in the 70s, maybe into the early 80s. And then you’re kind of in this not totally different world, but praise-and-worship, congregational music for traveling evangelists is just a different world than the Southern Gospel circuit by and large. So how did you end up back singing Southern Gospel, and was Southern Sound your entry point back, or did you sing with somebody else first?
Randy Shaw
That was my first foray back into Southern Gospel. That’s an interesting question, Daniel. For a number of years, I grew up in Southern Gospel. I sang kind of Southern Gospel or inspirational in college in those groups.
Daniel Mount
Mm-hmm. Like Steve Green, Sandi Patty, that kind of thing. That’s great music. That’s great music. Yeah. Me too.
Randy Shaw
It’s great music, great music. I love a wide variety of music. I love it. I started writing a little bit more contemporary. Never was heavy contemporary, but a little more contemporary or worship. I ended up making a custom album a number of years ago of all original material, and I put a little bit of worship material on there. And that was what I got into when I was traveling with Magnify Ministries. That was largely like contemporary music over those years, with some of the standards.
You know, one of the ones I’ve always loved to sing and play is the Imperials’ “Praise the Lord.” I think it’s Brown Bannister maybe. Great song. Oh, great, that chorus. I mean, just powerful chorus.
But then, oh man, it was 2013. My cousin Will Shaw was singing tenor with this group, and I didn’t know the guys and didn’t really know the group, but he had joined Ben Harris’s Southern Sound. And so when their baritone left, they needed somebody the next week because the group traveled – even though everybody worked jobs, the group traveled about three weeks a month and weekends, and sometimes three days. There were a few weekends or four days, you know, miss Friday work and do that. So it was quite a commitment, but a lot of fun. And my cousin Will told Ben, “My cousin Randy sings, so he could do the baritone.” And so Ben said, “Well, you know, let’s have him come over.”
So I went to Ben’s studio, and Will and Ben and I – I did my audition in Ben’s studio on a Sunday night. And Ben said that evening, he said, “Let me ask you, could you go out this next weekend?” And I said, “I don’t have any plans.” So I auditioned Sunday night, and Friday morning at about six o’clock I got on the bus and we drove to Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and I sang my first weekend. And I had to learn about 15 songs and the arrangements by Friday morning.
So I was listening to music all week on the way up. I laid in my bunk with headphones and listened to music most of the way up because Ben Harris, he’s an arranger. He is a great arranger. And we started with a song, “Day by Day,” and I was baritone. And then we would repeat that chorus, and then when we repeated it, I’m singing the tenor an octave lower. And so you don’t just learn a baritone part and then sing. You’ve got to learn those meshed chords that Ben does, and I love them. It was a great challenge, but it was a lot of work to learn those songs.
And my first night, we were in a church in Louisville, Kentucky, and we had not had a rehearsal together. I auditioned Sunday night, then they sent all these songs in email, and I listened all week. When we did the concert, I had not sung a number of those songs with them yet. And there were several songs then, you know, that when the track started, I stood there with my mic and said, “I don’t know what song this is,” because they weren’t running together. I had to learn so many songs in four days, and it’s like, my oh my. And once they started singing, “Oh, it’s that song,” and we’d get through it. So it was a great experience, and they were very gracious about it, but it was a little nerve-racking at first.
Daniel Mount
Mm-hmm. Do you remember when you auditioned, what songs they had you audition with? What songs were the ones that were like, okay, if he can sing this, then he’s a good baritone for us?
Randy Shaw
The only one I’m thinking of right away is “Hide Thou Me,” the old quartet song. That’s the only one I think he had me play that night because we had the tracks and the piano on almost all the tracks. And so I think he had me play that one, and a few times we did it live with keyboard only or piano only. But that’s the only one I’m remembering for sure right now.
Daniel Mount
Okay. So your cousin Will, you said, was the tenor singer? And Ben Harris, of course, is the lead. You were the baritone. Who was the bass singer at that point?
Randy Shaw
Will. Will Shaw.
Bass was one of the best basses I’ve ever sung with, Alan Brewster. Lives in Ringgold, Georgia, by Chattanooga. Great bass. My lands, he’s really good, and a great guy too.
Daniel Mount
Alan Brewster. Okay. Was he the one who was on the Pure Platinum album? Yeah, his tone was unreal. His placement, his tone, it was just phenomenal.
Randy Shaw
Sure was. Yes.
Daniel Mount
Now, were those the same singers that were there your whole time with the group, or did you sing with anybody else in your years with Southern Sound?
Randy Shaw
You know, the only change was the tenor. My cousin Will was maybe the first couple of years, and then Shannon Burns, who sang with The Ambassadors in Alabama. A good tenor and a really good guy. So he was the tenor by change. And then maybe not quite my last year, Mike Franklin became our tenor, who sang with Gerald Williams for a lot of years.
Daniel Mount
Mm-hmm. He’d been with Gerald Williams. And that Gerald Williams lineup with Mike Franklin there about 20 years ago, that had such a good quartet sound when he was with them. Jonathan Sawrie on lead, and they had a couple different baritones coming through the years. Yeah.
Randy Shaw
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And he had great energy. Yeah, Mike – Mike’s a really good guy. I mean, he got on the bus the first night, and he and I sat in the lobby and he said, “Now, what do we have, assignments? Or, you know, do I need to do a certain job, you know, on the bus or at the table or whatever?” Just a quartet guy. He wanted to know, you know, am I needed? What do I need to do? And he was a great guy besides a good singer and a lot of good energy on the stage. So yeah, it was fun singing with him too.
Daniel Mount
Yeah. So, Pure Platinum, was that the only album that you recorded with Southern Sound, or were there others besides?
Randy Shaw
I was on three. Pure Platinum was my first. Classy Southern is what Ben called the second one. And then the third one was a live DVD that we made at the Gospel Barn in Hillsdale, Michigan. Yeah, and yeah, that was the last one, the live DVD that we made. So I guess it was three.
You know, and I’ll take this opportunity to say I will always be grateful to Ben Harris because he opened so many doors for me. You know, I’ve gotten to travel and sing and do some fun things over my life, but there were venues I probably never would have sung at if I wouldn’t have had those doors open with Ben and the guys, you know, the Gospel Barn in Hillsdale and the Grand Ole Gospel Reunion in Greenville, South Carolina, and just the Memphis Quartet Show. Got to sing there.
Daniel Mount
Memphis Quartet Show – I know that one because Diana Brantley actually posted a video back when it happened of you singing at the Memphis Quartet Show, and I think that’s like the only YouTube video I could find of Southern Sound with you in it where you had the featured solo. So it was really cool to be able to actually find that. So yeah, definitely some cool places during those years.
Randy Shaw
Absolutely. I think the other featured one I had – some other ones – but I think the one that there are several versions of on YouTube, “God Himself the Lamb.” Glenn [Payne] obviously did that one with the Cathedrals years before, but that’s just a great song. That was probably my favorite song to do with the group, “God Himself the Lamb.”
Daniel Mount
So it was interesting to me listening to the Pure Platinum album. It’s clear Ben Harris’s Statesmen influence. And so I actually blogged about Southern Gospel, southerngospelblog.com, later became Southern Gospel Journal. I blogged about Southern Gospel from 2006 through 2014. So eight years. And during that period, I actually interviewed him several times, one of which I talked with him about how he auditioned for the Statesmen back, I think it was ’72, and Big Chief was still with them. And he told me that story, and I got to get that story down and preserved for the record. And that was cool. And okay, I can put the link in the show notes, but for whoever hasn’t read that, Hovie kind of offered him the job. He offered him a three-week trial period.
Randy Shaw
Yes. Yes.
Daniel Mount
And his wife was like, that’s not a job offer. We have a baby. You can’t do something that’s not a job offer. That’s a trial period. You can’t quit your job for a trial period. So he didn’t become a Statesman, and he’s wondered ever since. But when you listen to Ben Harris’s voice and style, you can hear the Jake Hess influence, of course. And when you hear the arrangements and the chords, you can tell he paid close attention to Statesmen chords.
Randy Shaw
Without a question.
Daniel Mount
But then you listen – it seems like some of the other guys in the group were inspired by the Cathedrals era, the 80s music, and are singing some of the 80s and 90s songs. Is that a fair read on the group, that at the leadership of the group, you have a big Statesmen influence, but if one of you all wanted to sing a Cathedrals song, he’d give you his blessing? You want to sing “God Himself the Lamb,” you go sing “God Himself the Lamb.” I’m not going to make you sing “These Tender Hands” if you want to sing “God Himself the Lamb.” Is that kind of a good read on him being comfortable with you pulling stuff from other eras, that you didn’t have to just do the 50s?
Randy Shaw
Well, maybe somewhat. It wasn’t that he wasn’t workable. I don’t say that at all. But he largely shaped the songs and the style. People could bring something in. You know, Alan the bass said, “Hey, I’d like to try ‘Shoes,'” you know, the uptempo gospel song. I think it maybe was the opener on Pure Platinum, if I’m not mistaken. But he suggested that one.
But Ben was the only original member of Southern Sound that was left and was kind of the brains behind the arrangements and everything. So he had much more influence, I think, than anybody else in the group.
Daniel Mount
Okay. So Southern Sound has retired now, right? Were you there up till the retirement, or did you leave before the group retired?
Randy Shaw
Did retire, yes.
I was looking at a picture just a couple of nights ago on my phone of Ben and Alan and myself at a restaurant in Lebanon, Tennessee, or one of those places over there, Hermitage, where we said, “Okay, we think we’re going to call it a day and let it go.” And Ben ended up moving to Texas for a while, and so it made it official. And for just a minute, we said, “Do we want to carry on and try to take this to the next place with it?” And never did. We said, “Let’s just let it be retired.” Because he really shaped so much of it that it wouldn’t have been quite the same, I don’t think. So we never did that.
Daniel Mount
Yeah.
Okay. So who was that? So Alan was still there at the end, and you and Ben. Who was the tenor?
Randy Shaw
Yes. Mike Franklin. He was the last one.
Daniel Mount
So Mike was there through the end also. Okay. Okay. What have those members – what have the different members done? And we’ll get to you last, because I actually want to ask specifically about your ministry work since it’s very interesting, and I’ll talk about that for a number of minutes. But Ben, Mike, Alan – to the extent you’re able to keep up with them, what have they been doing in the years since the group came off the road?
Randy Shaw
Ben went back to working the job that he was working at the time. You probably know that Ben was Ronnie Milsap’s chief engineer for, I think it was 14 years. And he had gold records on the wall from different Ronnie Milsap albums that he engineered.
And so he was behind a lot of those big Milsap hits for a number of years. Then he said, “I really need to sing gospel and get back in the gospel field.” And he and his cousin Keith and a couple other guys started Southern Sound then. So Ben has gone back to driving a truck, locally around Nashville.
Mike Franklin was kind of semi-retired. I think he was Air Force, if I’m not mistaken. And so he started a group in Arkansas where he lives with two other guys.
Alan Brewster, I think he’s fully retired now, in Ringgold, Georgia, and he has been an insurance agent for a lot of years. But I believe he fully retired in the last year or so, if I’m not mistaken.
Daniel Mount
Cool.
Randy Shaw
That’s the guys there. We had a piano player for a while, really good piano player. Brett Warren lived in – man, where? Was he in Arkansas? No, no, Alabama. He was down by Shannon Burns, the other tenor. But he passed away maybe a year ago, something like that. So that was the piano player.
Daniel Mount
Okay. Sorry to hear that.
Well, I would like to have a couple of general Southern Gospel questions that we can kind of get back to as we get near the end. But I think it’s fascinating: The organization you work for is one I’ve known about and heard about for years, but I don’t guess I’ve ever talked to anybody who’s actually a part of this organization. So this is really interesting. And I think that this is one that a lot of people who listen to this will already be quite familiar with, but it’s inevitable there’ll be some people who have never heard before or only heard the name. So can we start with, before we get to you joining them, can you just give us a general overview of the history of Mercy Ships?
Randy Shaw
Okay.
Okay.
Yes, Don and Dionne Stephens felt the call of the Lord to found Mercy Ships in 1978. And we all say, it’s interesting, Don was not a ship person. He did not have a career on the water. He wasn’t in medicine.
And yet he felt that there needed to be hospital ships that could pull into port in poor countries around the world and bring a state-of-the-art hospital and operating rooms to those countries and do it wrapped around the gospel. So, 1978. And Mercy Ships has been to around 70 countries, maybe a few more, around that. But a number of years ago, the founder said, “We’ve kind of done a lot of different things. We’ve taken medicine and food supplies to hurricane-ravaged countries, whatever. We need to get back to focusing on what we do best, and that’s surgery.”
And so we do thousands of surgeries every year, and we have two hospital ships. They’re actually the two largest private hospital ships in the world. One has about 425 crew plus the patients and all that. The biggest one has about 625 crew and about 200 hospital beds. It has six operating rooms. I’ve been on it. It’s huge. I mean, you get lost, literally get lost, in the ship trying to find your way to the next place. It’s huge.
But one of the things I love about Mercy Ships, we’re in two different African countries right now where both of them work, and I love the fact that it’s physical and spiritual. We are doing surgeries on people that are blind from cataracts. You know, you or I, we’d be at the doctor next week if we had much of a cataract situation. Some of these people have had them so long, and no access to health care or surgery, that they are blind. We have to lead them up the stairs of the ship and down into the medical wards. Children with bowed legs, some children have fallen into fires, unfortunately, and they’ve had burn contractures. We’ve had children with a cleft lip, cleft palate, on and on, ladies’ fistula surgeries.
And Daniel, one of the things that’s tragic about some of these African countries is that they believe kind of a mysticism, in a way. They believe that if you have one of these situations, a huge facial tumor, that you have been touched by the devil. You can’t be in our home. And here’s maybe an African woman that goes from being poor in Africa to being homeless in Africa because somebody, the husband, whoever, may kick her out because we don’t want somebody touched by the devil in our house.
And so when they come on the ship, they find these perfect strangers that say, “We love you, God loves you, and we want to serve you and do whatever we can for you, and it won’t cost you a penny.” And so we’re doing the surgery that changes their physical life, but we’ve got chaplains on the ship that are ministering to them, praying with them, giving them Bibles. We don’t push it on them, but it’s very available. And they’re ready to pray with them before surgeries and all that. So that spiritual aspect, we’re looking at eternity as well as their physical life. So I love the balance there.
Daniel Mount
Yeah. Now, am I correct in remembering or understanding that at least some of the people who are on the different, if you will, deployments are volunteers?
Randy Shaw
Great question. The vast majority are volunteers. They’re some of my heroes. You get Dr. Gary Parker and Susan – she’s become a friend. In fact, I was with her last week. And they came to the ship as two different single people that didn’t know one another. He was at medical school and said, “I want to see if I have what it takes,” quote-unquote. And they met on the ship. He started his surgery career there. She worked as a chaplain. They fell in love, got married. They had two children, and they raised their kids on the ship.
Some people don’t know that we have an academy on both ships, K through 12, and it’s fully accredited so that, you know, we don’t ever want the kids to come to our academy and not be licensed throughout the world. So they’re fully accredited academies, K to 12. And their kids were raised on the ship. And there are many – the vast majority of the crew are volunteers. Yeah, good question. That’s right.
Daniel Mount
And something you touched on that I think is worth people knowing if they’re interested in a really unique ministry opportunity is, yes, there is a need for doctors and nurses, but you mentioned chaplains, you mentioned a school with teachers, and I’m sure there’s general labor and need for people with mechanical skills to keep the mechanical stuff running. Can you give people an idea of some of the different ways that somebody who’s interested in seeing if something like this is the right fit for them for a short-term deployment or for a long-term thing – what are the sorts of things people can do and what is the usual commitment that somebody signs up for is on their first try to see if it’s cut out for them?
Randy Shaw
Yes, good question again. The easiest thing would be to go on the web to mercyships.org.
And we’ve got a great website, a lot of before-and-after videos of patients, a lot of pictures and things of work we do around the world. And there’s a large page of volunteering opportunities. Yes, carpentry, like you said. In fact, right now, the carpenters are busy in the next country. When we go in to the next country – like Ghana is one of the next places we’re going again – we will send a crew in. We will choose a building that could be a hospital or maybe is already a hospital but needs serious work. And what we’ll do, preparing for the ship to come, carpenters will add on to or remodel that building, whatever, plumbers, electricians, all kinds of trades will do that and get that country ready.
We’ve got an advance team that is in the country working with the government, with the Ministry of Health, all of those, signing protocols and preparing so that when the ship pulls in, we have already seen hundreds, if not thousands, of potential patients and screened them to find out which ones we will be able to help, and then giving them a card with a number. And so we bring them back at certain dates and do those surgeries there.
So those jobs – we need people serving food, we need people cleaning, we need chaplains. We have HR on the ship because each ship has somewhere around 1,200 volunteers a year. So you’ve got people coming and going all year long. So there’s an HR department on both ships trying to coordinate all of that. And I’m forgetting a lot of things, but there’s a whole page there if they go to mercyships.org.
Daniel Mount
Okay, one more question before I get to your involvement specifically, and that is, do they really exclusively help African countries, or have you been to Southeast Asia, the islands of Micronesia, or elsewhere in the world?
Randy Shaw
We’ve been to – I couldn’t name them all, to be honest. I know only a few. But about 68 or 70 countries, I think, is what I last saw. Again, we started helping if Haiti had a hurricane or something, yeah, we would do those kinds of things until we said we really need to focus on what we do best, and that’s surgeries. And so a number of years ago, we got back to that one there, and now it’s all African countries that we have talked about. Other continents, other places in the world, we’ve been there doing work before, but we’ve been in African countries mostly on the west side or down – like one of the ones we’re in right now is Madagascar, which is that island south of Africa.
So just – they’re great people, and they’re so moved because they go from being outcasts to being treated like royalty on the ship. And when I went on my first trip, I went to Cameroon, and the Africa Mercy was our ship that was there. And I heard people say before I went, there was a lot of love on the ship. And I thought, yeah, a lot of love on the ship, a lot of love on the ship, that’s great. I got there and I walked through the wards and I watched doctors and nurses treating them with all the love and patience. Dr. Gary Parker, I would walk through and he was assuring people, you know, “I’m doing your surgery this afternoon, everything looks good,” and would encourage them. He’d pray with them if they wanted prayer. The nurses were loving and, you know, hugging the kids and playing with them. There’s a lot of children getting surgeries. And I came home, I said, there’s a lot of love on the ship. They weren’t kidding. And it moved me deeply.
I had seen pictures of like one patient at a time, before and after, and a little bit of their story. Then I saw groups of children with the bowed legs where they could hardly walk and play. They couldn’t go to school. I saw a large group of people – I think to say a hundred or more is not exaggerating – and I looked. They were outside the ship waiting, and I looked back and they had the facial tumors.
One lady, her face was turned somewhat sideways, literally. And I looked back and I said, Randy, you cannot stare. You cannot stare. But I had seen the before-and-after pictures of one patient at a time, and here was a large group of people, and they were all hoping that we could do a surgery and change their life. And then there are people of these different faiths, a lot of Muslim people there, that hear the gospel.
I hear lots of stories of Muslim people saying – just another one recently – “Tell me about your God.” And I think my favorite one, there was a man that had, I think it was an 18-pound tumor. I believe that’s the right number. And I’m not exaggerating, Daniel, it was out this far. I could send you the video to let you see his name, Sambany. And down in Madagascar, when Sambany came in, the doctor said, “This is the biggest tumor we’ve ever seen.” And so they did the MRI and the exam and everything, and they said, “We are not sure that we can save your life. We need to be honest with you.” He said, “Look, if you don’t do the surgery and send me home, I’ll die. So I’m willing to try it.” And they said, “Okay, we’ll do it.”
And the Lord blessed it all, and he came through. And there’s video of him laughing and smiling. And they’re asking everybody in the chapel service, you know, “Stand if you had anything to do with treating somebody, serving him, surgery, whatever.” All these people were standing, including the surgeons and nurses. And I was sitting in Indiana in some donor’s home, and it turns out they’re both doctors, husband and wife, and their daughter is a nurse. And she was on the ship, and she personally served Sambany. And I hadn’t heard the backstory, I just knew his story. And they said, “Our daughter was his personal nurse, and she told us that Sambany asked them, ‘Tell me about your God,'” because it turns out he was a witch doctor.
Daniel Mount
Wow.
Randy Shaw
They didn’t know that. He was a witch doctor, and he said, “The gods I pray to didn’t do anything for me, but your God sent you to my country to save my life. Tell me about your God.” And I said, it doesn’t get much better than that. So, man, you know, this is amazing how the Lord uses these stories.
Daniel Mount
It is. Well, speaking of using stories, we’ve kind of touched on your involvement a few different ways, but why don’t we, if you don’t mind, talk for a minute about how you came to be involved and what you do right now for them with development, and anything else you’d like to share. You already mentioned the website. Anything else you’d like to share about how people can get involved and help support the mission. And then I’ll conclude back with a couple Southern Gospel questions.
Randy Shaw
Absolutely. It was interesting for me, and it was around 2000 somewhere. It’s been quite a few years. My boss at another nonprofit called me on my cell phone and said, “Where are you?” I said, “I’m driving home from work.” He said, “When you come in tomorrow, I want you to pack your office.”
I sat up a little taller, Daniel, and he said, “I want to teach you fundraising. The economy’s tough, our funds are down a little bit for the ministry, and I want you to take your people skills, and I want you to learn fundraising.” I wasn’t seeking that, I wasn’t thinking about it, wasn’t really interested. He told me later, “If you had put up a fight, I was not giving in. You were going to be a fundraiser.”
Later on, I said, okay, Lord, this was your way of picking me up and carrying me into fundraising. And it’s right, but I was never on this side of the ministry. So the Lord prepared me by developing a major gift program at another nonprofit. And then when a friend of mine, Roy Jones, said, “Randy, I know that God has been moving on your heart that something else is coming. I just want you to know Mercy Ships has asked me to be their new vice president of resource development, and I want you to be my first hire.”
And I said, “I’m honored,” but I thought, you know what, they may say we’re not hiring right now, funds are tight or whatever, and it may not happen even if his intentions are good. But he came to Nashville a month later and he said, “I’m here to fulfill my promise. I want to hire you. Let’s bring you to Mercy Ships.” And my wife and I both said, there’s something different. I was interviewing at several different organizations, and my wife said, “There’s something different about this Mercy Ships.”
And then it turned out they said, “We need you to develop what will be the Midwest region.” And so at the other organization, I worked in the city and just around that region, trying to build a major gift program, which I’d never done before. I was learning. But when I came to Mercy Ships, they had me with a region of 10 states. So I traveled from Nashville to 10 states, visiting with donors, building relationships, pairing people with different projects, that kind of thing. And it was the Lord. The Lord was completely directing it all, and it took me a little while to figure it out. That’s how I got into development and into Mercy Ships itself.
Daniel Mount
Okay. And how can people – one more time let’s go to the website – how can people keep up with what Mercy Ships is doing and get involved if that’s how God leads them?
Randy Shaw
Yes, mercyships.org. If you look at the volunteer page, you’ll find all the opportunities. I’m happy to give my Mercy Ships email address –
Daniel Mount
Sure, go for it.
Randy Shaw
Because sometimes people ask me when they meet me in public somewhere and find out what I do, “I’ve always wanted to serve on your ship,” they tell me. And so I tell them, email me at randy.shaw@mercyships.org. That’s my email and I’ll get right back with you, and I can connect you if you’re saying, “I want to serve on the ship in whatever capacity.”
It doesn’t have to be your career. You don’t have to be a carpenter doing carpenter work or a doctor doing surgery. There are some CEOs and other people that come and say, “I’m here to serve. Do you need me in the dining room? Do you need me serving food in the line? What do you need me to do?” And so there are all kinds of opportunities like that to serve.
Daniel Mount
One question I meant to ask earlier, but forgot. And it’s just something that, it’s asked in every interview, but people like to hear the answer, so I’ll ask it. And that is, in your years traveling in a Southern Gospel quartet or with your parents or other music ministries, do you have any favorite funny road stories or moving stories of how God moved that come to mind? One or multiple, whatever comes to mind.
Randy Shaw
Well, both. That’s a good question. One – I’m thinking it was my second night with Southern Sound. We were singing at the Gospel Barn in Hillsdale, great venue. And again, I had barely learned the songs that week. I was there Saturday evening, I think, at Hillsdale at the Barn, and I auditioned the Sunday night before, so I still knew the songs just enough to be dangerous. And I was singing – man, it was one of the Statesmen songs. I said, “What a time, my Lord, what a time.” I think I said – and I had the lead on it. And so they’re all following me. And I skipped a whole paragraph of like four lines, and I went on to the next one. And they stopped singing. And I thought, why aren’t they singing with me? Well, they couldn’t follow me because I skipped a whole thing. I wasn’t on with the track. It was embarrassing, but I was hanging on for the ride, and I had to keep going. And so they laughed about it, and everybody, you know, they picked on me on the bus and all that.
And the next weekend we were at some cowboy something in Arkansas, and I did it again, the same song, the same thing. I forgot it again. And they looked at me like, you didn’t do this again, did you? And so obviously I was the brunt of the jokes both of those weekends because I just fell over myself.
Daniel Mount
Oh my!
Randy Shaw
But then, you know, my mind jumps back to when Alan Brewster, our bass, was standing one weekend – we’re out on the interstate – and he was standing in the hallway of the bus. And Ben was driving, and somebody kind of cut him off. Well, you got a 50,000-pound bus with air brakes. They don’t stop like a car. And so Ben said, “Whoa,” and he hit the air brakes. And Alan was standing in the hall there getting something out of his bunk, and of course it threw him forward. And he came sprinting down the hallway and into the lobby. And I was sitting behind the driver in the lobby, and he came past me and hit that wall. And it was funny now. I made sure he wasn’t hurt, and he wasn’t injured, wasn’t hurt at all. But once I realized that he was okay, I was about falling out. It was a funny thing to see. However, that’s something Alan and I did not have a comment about that evening because he didn’t think it was funny. He’d probably laugh at us tonight, but it was funny to watch.
I told him, I said, “Alan, we need you on the United States Olympic running team. I hadn’t seen a man run that fast in a long time.” So we picked on him. It was time to quit picking on Randy and pick on Alan this weekend. So those were kind of funny little things that happened on the bus.
Daniel Mount
Oh my! Do you have any favorite moving or ministry moments that come to mind?
Randy Shaw
You know, interesting – when we are the least ready sometimes, I don’t mean fail to prepare or whatever, but when we’re the least ready, sometimes the Lord shows up and you know exactly that it was Him. Man, in the late 90s, it wasn’t a music venue. I was doing music as well, but I was working at the Los Angeles Mission on what they call Skid Row. So I was there for about four years, and I was a chaplain.
And so one of my jobs was to oversee the noon chapel service where all the homeless people came in, and there were sometimes several hundred. I mean, it was a big place, and there would be several hundred people in chapel. And so I was looking because I hadn’t seen the pastor in Los Angeles that was scheduled to do the service. And I got nervous because it was like 10 minutes till the service, and there was no show. And at about one till, I realized I am it today, and I don’t have anything prepared. I had this pastor scheduled, so I wasn’t ready.
And I walked up to the platform and I welcomed everybody to the service. I said, “We’re going to sing some worship songs,” and I didn’t have a clue what we’re gonna sing, “and we’re gonna have a message, and I’m gonna preach in a little bit.” I didn’t know what I was gonna say because I just should have had something in the bag just in case, but I totally assumed this guy would show up.
So the short of it, I went and sat at the piano, worship-led the people. I got up and preached the Word. I do not remember what I preached on that day. I was flying by the seat of my pants. But I opened the altar, and it lined with people. And I said, wow. And the enemy whispered in my ear like he’s prone to do, said, “Randy, not too bad. Not too bad. You didn’t get to prepare. You sing, you preach, and the altar lines.” And I was quickly convicted because I was reminded, hey, one, Randy, you’re something. You stood up there not having a clue what to do. The Lord worked around all of that, touched these people, and they came down to pray. And I got to be a part of it.
It moves me to tell you about it right now. There were a number of times, or a concert in Kentucky with Southern Sound where some people came down to the altar and got saved at the end of the service. There were different ones like that where we felt the presence of the Lord. So different kinds of venues, but those are always moving. You know, when the Lord comes in and He does it in such a way, you know good and well deep in your heart it was Him. So yes, yes.
Daniel Mount
Exactly.
All right. So here’s just a question in a totally different direction than your recollections of your time on the road. And that is, you’ve been able to experience a pretty wide spectrum of Southern Gospel through the years because you got to see what – I know Ben Harris might see things a little differently, but I kind of think of the 70s and maybe 80s as the glory days in a way. I love the Statesmen, don’t get me wrong, but there’s just something about the Happy Goodmans and Cathedrals and Hensons and the Kingsmen big-and-live era. The groups of that era had something special, especially when you consider the live albums. We were talking about live albums earlier.
There are no live albums like the albums from about 1970 to 1985. Just nothing else comes close to those live albums. You’ve experienced several different eras of Southern Gospel music, and you’re even still familiar with it today. What do you hope Southern Gospel looks like 50 years from now, and what do you think it might take for us to get there?
Randy Shaw
Wow, that’s a great question. I hope that some of the basics remain. And when I say basics, where it’s fun, where when you go to a concert, you forget your problems for a while because the groups are fun and they understand entertaining – George Younce and people – but they can turn that thing around on a dime. And because it’s not all fun and games, they’re not there just to entertain, make a few dollars, and get out of town.
I love the ministry aspect, and I really hope that that is the focus many years from now. I think that’s one of the reasons I do some songwriting. But I look at these songwriting heroes of mine and I say we need those people to continue coming down the line, writing good solid stuff that states our faith and reminds us who we are, but also speaks to the world and draws the unsaved person. That’s – you know, I hope that the music doesn’t change in what it does. Yeah, those two pieces, I guess, are what I go to first.
Daniel Mount
Well said, well said.
Is there any aspect of your life or ministry that I didn’t ask about that you’d like to talk about?
Randy Shaw
Well, Daniel, probably one of the very most important would be my wife, Karen. This August, we will celebrate 48 years.
Daniel Mount
Congratulations! That’s cool.
Randy Shaw
Thank you, thank you. It’s largely due to her. I did some, she did a lot. But all that to say, she has been greatly supportive in everything, you know. And Southern Sound, we traveled a lot. We were gone most of the time, three weekends a month besides our jobs, some Friday through Sunday, sometimes early Monday morning. And if any opportunity came up, or even today, any opportunity that comes up, she says, “Do it, do it. You love this.” And I’ll say, “Yeah, but, you know, any inconvenience -” “Don’t think about it. Do it. You love this.”
And she has just been – and many other ways too – but she’s been really supportive of the music, and so that has meant a lot to me. And that’s a big part of this story, so I wanted to say thank you to Karen as well.
Daniel Mount
Very cool.
Randy Shaw
One thing I wanted to do tonight, Daniel, is say thank you to you for what you’ve done over a lot of years and what you continue to do. And I thought, I want to tell him to his face. I discovered you a while back, and I’ll tell you, my first thought was, he’s a good guy. I like him. And that’s before we had connected in any way.
And secondly, I said, he’s got a good radio voice. No wonder he’s on here. Another thing I said, he asks interesting questions.
Daniel Mount
Thanks!
Randy Shaw
You know, I mentioned Pat Barker interview and different ones, different ones. You know, you do different things with different interviews, and I love that. But you’ve been really creative with that.
And I think the fourth and last thing is, over the years, you have stayed with the current trends and communicated whatever was working. And years ago it was – I mean, I think you wrote thousands of blogs for years. Yeah.
Daniel Mount
Thank you. Blogging. I wrote more than 3,000 blog posts over eight years. And after writing 3,000, I was running out of ideas. I had 3,000 ideas, but a big part of the reason I was stepping back was I was like, after 3,000 blog posts, what is there left to say?
Randy Shaw
I remember you doing the 3,000 one. Wow.
You wrote longer than I would have. That’s funny. But then when the current trend became more recording and blogs – not blogs, video and podcasts – you stepped into this. And so you have continued to look at what was current and tell people stories and continue to tell the story of gospel music. And I wanted to tell you thank you because you continue to make a real impact, and I appreciate that. Yes.
Daniel Mount
Thank you. It’s my pleasure. Glad to do it.
Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you for your time this evening. I have definitely enjoyed our wide-ranging and very interesting conversation.
Randy Shaw
I have too. It’s been a fun night. I’m really honored to be on and enjoyed the time with you. Thank you, Daniel.
Daniel Mount
Thank you!
And to the listener, I would say thank you for listening to Southern Gospel Journal. You can keep up with the latest episodes on YouTube, Facebook, your favorite podcast platform, or on southerngospeljournal.com. Thanks for listening.