Dusty Wells shares the stories behind We Shall Behold Him: A Tribute to Dottie Rambo. Along the way, he shares his testimony and the influence the Rambos had in it, stories from his many years touring with and supporting Dottie Rambo, and how this tribute album came together. There are also moving stories, like the stories behind “He Looked Beyond My Faults,” “I Will Glory in the Cross,” and “Sheltered in the Arms of God,” and a moving moment when Whitney Houston was excited to meet Dottie Rambo.
Show Notes
Listen to this album: Daywind, YouTube
I Love 2 Tell the Story: Website, YouTube, Reba Rambo episode
Some of the deep cuts we discussed:
- How Graciously Grace Has Covered My Sin
- O Blessed Hope
- He Sees Me Through the Blood
- Oil and the Wine
- He Went Out of His Way
- Breaking Bread
- Son of Thunder, Daughter of Light
- It Will Pass
- Bring All Your Needs to the Altar
- Stand Still and See His Glory
- Nothing Like Home To Me
Transcript
Lightly edited for clarity.
Daniel J. Mount
Thank you for listening to Southern Gospel Journal. My name is Daniel Mount, and this evening I have the privilege of being joined by Dusty Wells. How are you this evening?
Dusty Wells
I’m doing good, Daniel. It’s good to see you.
Daniel J. Mount
Good to see you too! I’m going to say right up top, I love your podcast. You and Dave Clark do “I Love to Tell the Story.” I’ve been listening to it since the first episode, listened to every episode, and it’s a delight to talk with you.
Dusty Wells
That’s awesome. I appreciate that so much. Dave and I have been friends for years, and we would get together for lunch and we would talk. Sometimes we’d have an agenda, but almost every time we would get together, we’d end up just telling stories because we both were the same age. I always love to tease him that he’s a lot older than me, but he’s not. I’m older than him. But we would just end up telling road stories and stories about the music and the artistry and the songs and how it impacted our lives.
And we finally, several years ago, said, let’s do a podcast. Honestly, I thought, okay, this will last a year. We are having the time of our lives, and we’re going on to our third year. I love that you’ve listened to all of them. When you were telling me that earlier, there have been some episodes where you think, okay, how’s this gonna… Those are the ones that have been really effective and touched people’s lives. We do love telling the stories and hearing the different people who have been impacted by this great music that we call Christian music. So, yeah. Thank you.
Daniel J. Mount
Thank you. So this episode’s a bit of a hybrid, because it’s inevitable as we talk about this topic that we’re talking about your life and testimony. But our entryway into this is an album that has just come out, We Shall Behold Him: A Tribute to Dottie Rambo.
And that just came out this past Friday as of recording. This album, I know, is special to you because of the role the Rambos played in your testimony. So if you would, let’s just start there.
Dusty Wells
You know, I was a 14-year-old kid. My mom had been married numerous times. I was raised in a development for widows and people on welfare. It was a housing authority. It was a little project. It was nice, cute little apartments, but low-income families. And my mother was a great mom. She’s still alive. I get to go see her next month. She’s in Twin Falls, Idaho.
But she was a product of her own environment. Her life had been just as rough. So she raised me and my sister and my brother the best that she could. It was a pretty tough road. She kept searching for love, acceptance, forgiveness, and she chose a lot of wrong paths. We didn’t know anything about church, Daniel, nothing. I remember, maybe I do remember one thing.
I had a great-grandmother that I’d gone to see in Oregon one time. And I remember she had a picture on her wall of Jesus, and it was the close-up thing of Jesus with the lamb over His shoulders. And I always thought that was sweet, but I don’t ever remember anybody talking about the Lord. We never went to church. We had to steal our school clothes. It was abus, it was rough in most every way.
But one Saturday afternoon, I was sitting at home in February of 1972, and it was cold and snowy, and I got a knock on our little apartment door. And I thought, “Who’s here?” It was a Saturday afternoon, and I went to the door, and this precious couple was standing there. And they said, “Hey, we’re Keith and Sharon Johns, and we’re inviting you to Sunday school on a church bus. And we have activities where we go up to the South Hills and go snowmobiling.”
They said all these great things. I thought. We didn’t have a car. We didn’t have a lot of money. I thought this sounded fun. Then this couple took an interest in me, and I went to church with them the next Sunday, went back, and they led me to the Lord a few weeks later. They took such an interest in me, and they had their own family and their own life. At 14 years old, one of the coolest things, I was a big pop music lover. I loved Carole King. I loved what I like to call heart music, James Taylor, The Carpenters, and I loved music. I’d listened to a lot of music. I’d never heard of anything Christian.
But they’d take me over to their house on Sunday afternoon. She’d cook dinner, and they didn’t have a TV, but they did have a stereo turntable with a lot of vinyl records. And they’d go in the living room and sit in their lounge chairs, and they’d say, “Well, Dusty, why don’t you find us some music?” And I’d go down there and look at these records, and here was this group called the Singing Rambos, and this lady with her big hairdo, and Reba with her big bouffant, and Buck with that curled-up lip and his mustache. And I’d listen to these songs, groups like the Downings, the Lanny Wolfe Trio. I mean, that era of music was so… you didn’t call it Southern gospel, you just called it music that touched your heart. And I’d listen to them.
And I’d hear lyrics like, “I feel the touch of hands so kind and tender, they’re leading me.” And I’d play these albums over and over. And I started reading the credits, and I just fell in love with the Rambos’ music. I fell in love with those harmonies. I fell in love with that country kind of Southern style. And so I just began to collect their music. I remember they became my best friends. They didn’t even know it.
I was in Twin Falls, Idaho, and I started collecting their music. I started going out to the record store. I found out what a Christian bookstore was, and I started volunteering to help. This lady, her name was Mary, the Christian bookstore was called Magic Valley Christian Supply and Harry’s Bait and Tackle Shop. She owned the Christian bookstore part of it, and her husband had the bait and tackle shop that was attached to it.
But I’d go in there, and she’d say, “You know so much about music,” because I started studying it out, just reading everything I could. And we didn’t have internet back then, but I had the Singing News that I’d see at her store. And there was a magazine that was just getting started, CCM, Contemporary Christian Music. And I’d study everything about it. I just read it cover to cover. I’d go in and find big catalogs where it would talk about the new releases.
But the Rambos had that special place in my heart. I collected all their music. I never wrote them a fan letter. I’m from Idaho. Fast forward it about ten years later; I was 24. I went to a concert. I started working at a Christian bookstore. I got married, started working at a Christian bookstore in Portland, Oregon, where my wife was from.
One day, I was a music buyer for eight stores called Christian Supply, and I saw a poster pop up. Daniel, they brought it in and said, “Hey, we’re having the Rambos in a high school here.” And I was in hog heaven. I’d been introduced to Christian, back then early Jesus music, and I loved Dallas Holm and Keith Green and Michael Card. But the Rambos, the Lanny Wolfe Trio, and the Downings, they were the ones that I just, man, I thought…
So me and my wife, who was nine months pregnant, went to the Rambos, and it was in a high school auditorium. There’s about 800 people. And this is how God is so… I love His cleverness and how faithful He is to us. I said, “We got great tickets around the front row.” We got there real early.
In the middle of the concert, I went back to the record table, and they weren’t back there, but I wanted to meet them and I wanted to say how much I appreciated their music. It was Buck and Dottie and Reba and Donnie, and it was called the Rambos Reunion. They didn’t have the band. It was Donnie on the keyboards, and they were using tracks. And so after the concert, I went back there, and everybody was standing around the record table, and it was just Buck and Donnie over there. And I thought, I wonder where Reba [and Dottie are]. So I turned and I looked down the hallway, and Reba and Dottie were standing there by themselves.
As I look back at it now, after traveling with them for years, Reba and Dottie were always at the table. That’s who everybody wanted to see. Nothing against Buck, nothing against Donnie. They talked to Dottie Rambo or Reba Rambo. But for some reason they were down there.
So I walked back there and I said, “Hi, Ms. Rambo, I’m Dusty Wells, and I just love your music.” And Daniel, out of the blue, I said, “And you know what? One of these days I’m going to work for you.”
And she grabbed Reba’s arm and she said, “Reba, do you remember me at intermission looking out the curtain and pointing at the guy in the white suit?” She said, “That guy’s supposed to be involved in our ministry.”
Well, we exchanged phone numbers, which, traveling with them years after this, this stuff never happens. But it was a God thing. And I believe God just looked down and said, “You know, you’ve been faithful with this music and you’ve shared it with everybody.”
So it was a few years later, I went to work for Sparrow Records. But I’d go out on the road with them. Buck would call me and say, “Hey, we’re going to be in San Antonio. Why don’t we fly you out here and you’d be with us, help us with the date?” And I did that for years.
And then when I was about 28 or 29, they called me up and they said, “We’d like for you to work for us full time.” And my wife and our two little girls moved to Atlanta, Georgia. And that’s been many, many years ago. And I got to travel and take care of Dottie and Reba and Donnie and Buck and work with them, started their publishing company.
And when they went through a really tough time, as everybody knows, Buck and Dottie divorced, and I went to work for Word Records and spent 25 years there. But when I sat down with Word, I said, “I still want to travel with Dottie,” and Word was so gracious. So I was able to do that.
And we’ve been dear friends forever, just dear friends. I still keep in touch with Reba. I still keep in touch with Donnie, kept in touch with Buck. They were really heroes and mentors in my life.
It’s a great story, a God story. So yeah, that’s how I got started with them. And her songs, you know how they touch that heartstring of every person, it seems like, I’ve talked to. At times I’ll go to Quartet Convention, and it amazes me at how her songs are 50, 60, 40 years old. Night after night, you hear them redone in a special new way, and artists still sing them. And you watch the audience, and you think that’s the power of what Christian music is all about. And I’m a product of that.
Daniel J. Mount
It is, and it is an amazing story, and it shows why you’re the perfect person to shepherd this project and bring it forward.
I don’t think there’s anybody in the world who could have cared about it as much as you do, because something Gold City shared on their podcast is Danny Riley has a different perspective on Gold City. [Tim] Riley is his dad. That’s what he grew up with, and he appreciates it. He knows it was big.
But the other guys who have come in, Jeff Chapman, Josh Feemster, Chris Jenkins, they’re like, this is Gold City. We sat in the pews, we sat in the stage pews and watched Brian and Ivan and Mike, and then we watched Jonathan and Jay and Mark. This is Gold City. They have that fire and passion for Gold City that is different when you come at it from the outside. You see the impact from the outside, and then you’re on the inside and you help make that impact. And I think you’re the person perfectly positioned to make this tribute happen. And I’m thrilled that you did it.
And I think that’s the perfect pivot point, if you would talk about where did the idea come from? How long has this been in the works?
Dusty Wells
Well, when Dottie would go on the road, even in the midst of her great pain, where she would get a lot of freedom from the pain was when she would go out and sing and talk to people. I’d go with her. I traveled with her for numerous years all across the United States, big churches, conferences. And I would watch her do those songs just by herself. The Rambos’ legacy was so incredible, those harmonies, those parts, but then I… the songs. Dottie just wrote some of the most incredible songs.
It’s been 20, 25 years ago. I’ve been at Daywind for almost 10 years now. And when Word decided to close distribution, Word and Daywind got together and said Dusty would be the perfect person to be the liaison because they were going over to Daywind. So I came out there, having a rich heritage at Word. And we had actually started this project at Word. I had talked about it, but back then I was still going to have some Southern Gospel artists, but it was going to be artists like Point of Grace, more artists that were church-oriented, great artists.
And so we had a list of artists. I started compiling the list of songs. And even as I look at the project today, almost with the exception of maybe one or two songs, they were all the songs that I wanted to use back then because they were songs that had touched my heart. But in my journeys, when I’d sit there, when I’d hand Dottie her guitar, I’d watch the audience because I’ve always said I’ve always wanted to write a book about stories from behind the record table or else from sitting on the front row. Because I’d watch the people when she would do a little thing where she’d call out, “What song would you like to hear?” And it was always “If That Is Love,” “Sheltered in the Arms of God,” “The Holy Hills of Heaven Call Me.”
And she had certain… you know, she would open every service, Daniel, by herself. She had opened with “Holy Spirit, Thou Art Welcome in This Place.” And she’d always close with “We Shall Behold Him.” That was her signature. She always had a starting place. So I knew those songs.
When Word got sold, they moved over to Daywind, and I started talking about it actually probably about four or five years ago, real serious again, with Dottie Leonard, our wonderful owner who started Daywind. She passed away a couple of years ago, but she loved the music of Dottie Rambo. They’d do a track, they’d do a songbook. And I said, “We need to do…” When I went into A&R, I said, “One of the projects I’d love to do is I’d love to do a tribute to Dottie Rambo.” And so I got the go-ahead.
So I started putting everything together, and absolutely every song and every artist… I reached out to them and said, “What would you like to sing? If you were going to sing a Dottie Rambo song, what would you say?” And I had so many that almost every artist said a different song. And honest to goodness, out of the 11 songs, nine of them were in that list. Nine of them were in their list.
So it started with “Holy Spirit, Thou Art Welcome,” which Joseph [Habedank] said was his favorite song to sing when he was growing up and he would sing it. And that song has always just been such a perfect opener because, I mean, the Holy Spirit, that’s what you would want. I’ve often said… I teased Gerald Wolfe about it another time, and Gerald teased back with me, man, can you imagine if every church just would open their… not because it’s a Dottie Rambo song, but the lyrics to that song, “Holy Spirit, Thou Art Welcome in This Place, Omnipotent Father of Mercy and Grace, Thou Art Welcome in This Place. Lord, in Thy presence there’s healing divine. No other power can save, Lord, but Thine. Holy Spirit, Thou Art Welcome in This Place.”
But every song just fell into place. One of the greatest things, one of my sweetest memories, and it’s bittersweet, the Nelons were some of my dearest friends, and we all know they had tragedy that took their lives, with the exception of precious Autumn. I had asked the Nelons what they wanted to sing, and they said, “Dusty, we love singing ‘We Shall Behold Him.'” And that’s the one I would have chosen for them. And so we had that prepared. We were in the middle of doing the track, and the accident happened.
Well, I knew that 20-some-odd years ago I had asked Selah to sing that on the project. And Selah and I had worked together, and Selah loves Southern Gospel, they love heart music. But the Nelons and Selah were really dear, dear friends. And it was right after the Nelons had gone home to be with the Lord, I knew I wanted Autumn to sing it. And out of the blue, Todd Smith from Selah called me and he said, “Dusty, are you going to ever do that Dottie Rambo tribute?” And I said, this is where you know the faithfulness of God.
And I don’t know if you… but I listened to it with Autumn starting it off and then Selah joining, and the promise that “we shall behold,” one of these days. So there’s some cool moments on this project.
Tribute – one of my favorite songs is “Sheltered in the Arms of God.” One of the first songs I remember singing when I got saved, and that was the first song that Gus [Gaches] from Tribute ever sang as a solo when he was four years old. So you hear these kinds of stories. I knew the song… you’ll love this because of the Cathedrals. “For What Earthly Reason” was Dottie Rambo’s favorite. She didn’t have favorite songs, but she always said one of her favorite babies was “For What Earthly Reason.”
Daniel J. Mount
Wow.
Dusty Wells
And many artists recorded it. Her favorite version was the Cathedrals. Of course, Danny sang it back. And I knew I wanted the closest thing that I could get to the Cathedrals was Greater Vision. Gerald, and how much Gerald and Chris and Rodney… I thought to myself, they will dress this up, and it is absolutely beautiful.
Daniel J. Mount
If I could ask, with what we’re talking about, “For What Earthly Reason,” do you have any idea why it was special to her?
Dusty Wells
You have to remember, she would always tell me she’d had that idea. She said she’d hear people say, “For what earthly reason, for what earth…” She said her mother and her grandmother always said it. And she started just saying… she always sang about the cross. She loved songs about the cross. And she just started writing some notes one day, and she said all of a sudden it just hit her.
“For what earthly reason would the Father send down His Son?” And she said it perfectly flowed, and she knew. And when she sang it, she would sit there with her guitar or else she’d have a track, and it was the third song she did every night. People would love it because it was one of those later songs in her life when she was writing a lot more differently than she had in the early years.
But to me, it is one of the most special songs because it was truly so simple when you think about the lyrics, and that’s where Dottie… those lyrics were so simple, yet they were so profound. So profound.
Daniel J. Mount
Yes. While we’re talking about songs from different eras, there is one that we have to talk about because it’s from such a different era than the others. I looked at it, and this project has four songs from the ’60s, five from the ’70s, two from the ’80s, and then one from 2008. We have to talk about “Calvary Will Never Run Out of Songs.”
Now, I’m going to plug your podcast again, because I absolutely love it. You did an episode with Reba Rambo where she talked about this song. But while we’re here, while we’re talking, could you share the story of this song?
Dusty Wells
You know, for years, if you know the Steve Hurst school of music, or how she would teach, we’d go in the songwriting class. There inevitably, they’d say, “Dottie, how do you never run out of creativity?” And she would, not flippantly in a bad way, but she’d always say, “Darling, Calvary’s never going to run out of songs.”
She said that as long as you’ve got the cross and what He did for us, it’ll never run out of songs. You just think back to that, and she would say that. Well, in the latter years before she… she’d go out, but she was still bedridden quite a bit. She had a little briefcase that she would write and put her little song notes in and everything.
One day Reba and Destiny went over there, and they were talking about “Calvary Will Never Run Out of Songs.” And Dottie said… Reba loved to write, and her daughter, Dottie’s granddaughter, who Dottie just adored, Destiny, they all sat up on Dottie’s bed and were just sitting there talking. Destiny loved this idea. Destiny was very smart. She had a notebook.
And Reba said she asked her mom, and I’d heard this several times right after it all happened, but I remember she said to me, “Dusty,” she said, “I said to her mom, ‘How would you begin this song?'” And all of a sudden, Dottie just perfectly started quoting the first verse of the song. And she said, “This is how I would start it,” and wrote it down. Destiny wrote it. They got through the first verse, and Dottie said, “Well, I think that’s all I want to do today. I’m just going to go back to sleep. Will you go get me a banana popsicle?” Because she loved popsicles.
And so they put it in that little attaché, that little briefcase. And after Dottie had passed away, they got it out, and Reba and Destiny finished it. And it is absolutely… when you hear the majesticness of it, and Reba… here’s her daughter singing it and her granddaughter, and knowing that that was probably the last song, most likely, that Dottie ever wrote. And it’s the truth. Calvary will never run out of songs. They’re always there. They’re there.
And I really want that story to be told in a big way to the songwriters that are out there, the people that are out there. They think, what else? How can we say something new? If you look at all of Dottie… she always spoke stuff that some of the new modern worship songs are saying because she knew how to take those lyrics and craft them in such a way that it was real life and it’s what she was walking through.
You know, I think back to her song – we didn’t put it on the record, but it’ll be on the next one – “Too Much to Gain to Lose.” When she said, “I’ve crossed the hot burning desert, struggling the right road to choose.” How many times have you, myself, we’ve chosen? But “somewhere up ahead there’s cool clear water, and defeat is one word I don’t use.” Man, every song, there is a story behind it, it feels like.
Jim and Melissa Brady, Melissa sang “I Will Glory in the Cross.”
Daniel J. Mount
My favorite rendition. There’s something special.
Dusty Wells
It is. And I’ve seen tons of artists, Larnelle Harris sang it, incredible artists. But Melissa and Jim dressed it up as only they could, and it’s just absolutely stunning.
I think one of my favorites, because when I talked to Mark Lowry, who’s been a dear friend and he talks about the Rambos all the time. Well, he’ll probably hear this and he’ll give me a bad time, because he always does. He sings “If That Isn’t Love.” He’s sung it with Lordsong. He’s sung it with the Sound. He’s sung it with Sisters. He’s sung it for years. I didn’t want him to sing that because I knew that people would expect that.
I knew how much he loved the Rambos and I knew how much Dottie and Buck and Reba loved Mark. And one of Dottie’s biggest songs that had not been recorded in a while was “He Looked Beyond My Fault.” And I thought, I can hear Mark Lowry doing this.
Well, we went down to Houston to record his vocals, and Mark got really sick, but he got through the first verse and the chorus, and it’s absolutely incredible. And then Scotty Inman, who is such a fan of Dottie’s, he comes in and he does the first verse again, and then they harmonize, and it is just beautiful. It’s just beautiful. So yeah.
Daniel J. Mount
Neat. Do you know, “I Will Glory in the Cross” is just… it might be my favorite Rambo song, as much as I love the others. Do you happen to know anything of the story behind that one?
Dusty Wells
I do. And I’ve got to make sure I tell this right or Reba will give me a bad time. One of the things that I was able to do years ago, when Dottie would be in a lot of pain, I would go over to her house and when I had to pay her bills or do things, I’d sit there in the evening because I was still working full time for Word. But I’d go over there, and when she would be in a lot of pain, I would try to get her mind distracted off the pain, because I knew what it was like for her to go out and do the concerts. And that’s where I’d see her really shine.
So I’d take her guitar, her Martin guitar, and take it into the bedroom, and she’d be laying on the bed. And I said, “Dottie, here, I’m going to ask you some questions about your songs. I want you to just sit here and tell me the story.” And I had a little cassette player, and I was blessed that I taped about 40 or 50 of those stories behind the songs. I’d ask her, how did you write [indistinguishable]? How did you write…? And one of them was “I Will Glory in the Cross.”
And Dottie said, you know, everybody thinks that was written for a church dedication or something, like where the great cathedrals are, just about the cross and all the stuff that’s in a cathedral. But they had been asked to sing behind the Iron Curtain. And they had sung there, but they had told them, they said, “Don’t sing about the blood.” This is when they were traveling, doing the stuff for Vietnam, but they happened to go behind the Iron Curtain. And they said, “Man, we just want your family harmonies, do your family stuff, do songs about mama and home, because these soldiers want to be uplifted.”
And so they went into a restaurant, and Dottie said, “I prayed that God would just let me talk to somebody about Jesus.” And she had a little card that she ended up giving to the waitress. But as she walked out of the restaurant, she said, “You know what? I can’t sing…” Like people, they don’t want you to sing about the blood. They don’t want you to sing about the cross. She said, “Well, let me tell you, that’s all I’ll ever write about. That’s it.”
“I will glory in the cross, I boast not of…” She timed it out just perfectly. And Dottie was one that it didn’t take her a lot of time to write. She wrote just really from her heart. And that song, I hear it sung at Easter time, I hear it sung all… But she wasn’t afraid to sing about the cross. She wasn’t afraid to sing about the blood because she knew that’s what people needed to hear.
So it’s one of my favorite songs. It’s one of her most requested songs. It was always one of the last songs she sang right before “We Shall Behold Him.”
Daniel J. Mount
Neat! I have a question about the arrangements on this album. There’s a lot of consistency, stylistically, track to track. And sometimes when there’s an album like this, it really goes toward the side of each song being geared toward that artist’s style. And there might be a little bit of that, but is it the case that on this one you were intentionally more going for a coherent style for the album itself?
Dusty Wells
You know, we did. When I sat down, and it was the same thing when I talked with Word, I said I wanted… there was a project out years ago that I was involved with called My Utmost for His Highest, a beautiful project with contemporary artists taking Oswald Chambers songs, and it just was so peaceful to me. Beautiful songs, “Man of God’s Own Heart,” “Quiet Prayers,” love, just beautiful songs.
When we sat down with Bradley – Bradley Knight did all the arranging and just wrote the charts. And Bradley is a genius. If you follow the Collingsworth Family, those groups, Bradley has done the big Brooklyn Tabernacle… I mean, he’s worked with every choir. He does that world. I told Bradley, I said, “Bradley, I want that feel. I want it to have some of that beautiful Rambo stuff,” which we got. We got that with the artists and the way they sang it. “But I want it to feel like it is a motion picture, when people sit down and you start at the beginning and it goes to the end.”
Some of those songs, we didn’t even know how the artists were going to sound with them. We just said, this is who I’m thinking about. This is… I think this would be perfect. Jonathan Crouch was tremendous, and Rick Shelton. But I knew in my mind, even I’m looking at the list of the artists here right now, I knew that I wanted Karen to do “The Holy Hills of Heaven Call Me” because it just had that home feeling. And Bradley captured every bit of it in such a beautiful way. It’s so consistent. I feel like it flows.
And we sat down and I said, okay, let’s do this song here, this song here, this song here. You know, there were some special things. When Southbound, because they’re that gospel-grit kind of group… and I knew Clint Brown had grown up with Dottie Rambo music, and he had sung “I Go to the Rock.” We’d heard him sing that years ago on a project. I knew they would be perfect for that. I knew Adam Crabb would be absolutely perfect for “I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before” because the Crabb Family had sung it for years and years.
I looked at all that, but every arrangement, he didn’t stray too far from each one. So it all just absolutely flows. And I wanted it, and Bradley did too, he wanted to make it different enough so it would appeal to other people. And that’s what we’re hearing. We’re hearing other markets say, “My gosh, who is this lady?” We’re having songwriters, modern songwriters, say, “Who is this?” Well, that’s what I wanted because Dottie Rambo was one of the finest.
I’ve said, I wish every artist today could go and study her catalog, because it’s true. And even Bill Gaither… some of these artists nowadays don’t know who the writers are, like Dallas Holm, Bill Gaither, Lanny Wolfe, Dottie Rambo. But their songs are still being sung constantly, you know? So yeah.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. Well, the artist not knowing who the writers are, this is a deep cut from the lore of “I Love to Tell the Story” – your Chris Blue interview. Where he’s singing “Because He Lives” for Bill Gaither. He’s like, “I’m just going to sing a good old hymn to demonstrate what I can do,” not realizing he was singing Bill Gaither’s song to Bill Gaither. That happens.
Dusty Wells
It happens all the time. There’s another modern-day Christian, Matt Maher, a great artist. He sang “Because He Lives,” and he didn’t know until one day he was talking with Bill Gaither, and he’d sung it for years. He said, “I just thought it was a hymn, an old hymn.”
That’s the kind of stuff, when you even look at Dottie’s catalog. “Holy Spirit, Thou Art Welcome” is in tons of hymnals, but yet nobody really knew Dottie Rambo. I’ve heard CeCe Winans sing it. There was a group called Plus One years ago that was the biggest. I’ll never forget the little Assembly of God boy that sang with them. His name was Jason Perry. He asked me one night – he was a Word artist – and he said, “Man, I wish I could open with a song at this youth convention.” And I just flippantly and kind of jokingly said, “Just walk out there and do Dottie Rambo’s ‘Holy Spirit, Thou Art Welcome in This Place.'” Twelve thousand kids.
And Daniel, he said, “My gosh, my mom sings that song. That’s an old hymn. I’ll do it.” I watched him walk out on stage 20 years ago, and that crowd just fell into a hush and people began to worship. That’s the power of these songs, you know? So yeah, Chris Blue was great. I loved when he told us that story, because I see that more and more. “I didn’t know Dottie wrote that song.”
Going through the Christian Music Hall of Fame, when you look and see that Dottie… Whitney Houston… I mean, one of my favorite stories, Daniel, I think I’ve told this on the podcast, was when the Preacher’s Wife soundtrack, “I Go to the Rock” was on that soundtrack, and Whitney was singing it on the HBO special. She was in concerts with it.
Well, it was nominated for a Dove Award, and it was Dottie’s last time she was able to go to the Doves. And they had called me – and they never do this – and they said, “We know Dottie’s been real sick, but we’re just going to tell you, we’re bringing Whitney in to sing that song. And that song has won for Gospel Song of the Year.”
Daniel J. Mount
And this is before the award was handed out.
Dusty Wells
Before the award was handed out, and they never do that. But they knew Dottie was very slow trying to get up, and it was at Bridgestone Arena. So we got Dottie there. My wife and I got Dottie there, and we were sitting on the front row over to the side. They had come up… they had told me, but I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t tell Dottie. And they said, “No, we’re going to take Dottie back. We want her to meet Whitney.”
And it was going to be a surprise that Whitney was there. Well, as we got backstage, Whitney was getting ready to go on with the choir. And I said, “Well, Dottie, they have a surprise. You’re going to hear it in a minute. Whitney Houston’s here.” And about that time, we looked over to the side, probably 15 feet away from us. Whitney was standing there. And Whitney, I promise you, Daniel, she went, “My goodness, that’s Dottie Rambo right there!”
Immediately she went on stage, sang the song. We won the award. I got Dottie up there. She accepted the award with Whitney. It was beautiful. They took us backstage. And Dottie… I don’t know, did you ever get to meet Dottie?
Daniel J. Mount
I sadly did not.
Dusty Wells
She was one of the funniest people and one of the most… she wasn’t afraid to… So we were sitting in this little backstage room, Cindy Wilt, who was the publisher of the music at that time, several of us there. Dottie walked in. Whitney said, “Oh, I’m so glad to meet you, Dottie.” And Dottie just out of the blue said, “Now, darling, tell me, how did you hear this song?” And I was standing there, and you didn’t have social media because I sure would have taped it.
Whitney looked there and said, “Dottie, darling, I’ve been singing your songs since I was a little girl.” And she started singing “Sheltered…” She sang, “Too Much to Gain to Lose.” She just sang a little bit, as only Whitney could, and then she went into “Holy Spirit, Thou Art Welcome.” Then she said, “But my favorite, I knew I wanted it for The Preacher’s Wife, was ‘I Go to the Rock.'”
And that’s where you realize Elvis Presley loved her music, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dolly Parton. These artists all fell in love with her music because it had such a real heart.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. So since you put that time into collecting the stories behind so many of her songs, are there any songs that are on this album that just have an incredible story that maybe you haven’t had the chance to talk about in another context? Or even if you have, I don’t care. Are there any other song stories that really just jump to the front of your mind as, this song has a story people want to hear if they know and love her music?
Dusty Wells
You know, I love the story about “He Looked Beyond My Fault.” A lot of people probably have heard it. I love “Sheltered in the Arms of God.” But you know, she had a story. Dottie could not, in my tenure with her… if you look, if you study her catalog, the only people she ever wrote with, David Huntsinger helped her write some music, Donnie McGuire, Phil Johnson, and then the Reba and Destiny thing. But she rarely, if ever, wrote anything with anybody, because she could not…
I remember Steven Curtis Chapman, Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant… when we moved back to Nashville from Atlanta, everybody wanted to write with her in those days. Bill Gaither wanted to write with her, Gloria did. But Dottie, it wasn’t that she was insecure, but she wanted to really make sure… you couldn’t tell her, “Dottie, I need you to go in there…” She probably could have done it, but she didn’t. She never wanted to abuse her gifts. This would be, “We need you to write a filler song about the blood of Jesus.” She had to be inspired.
That’s nothing against how anybody writes nowadays. That’s Dottie. She was old school. She had experienced these songs from her heart during times of rejoicing and hurt and pain.
But with “He Looked Beyond My Fault,” what she used to tell about her brother, her brother had walked away from the Lord for years and had just made a mess of his life, really a mess of his life. And they were out on the West Coast, and this was her brother that she was so close to.
She got a call, and they said, “Hey, you probably need to come home. Your brother’s getting ready to pass away. He’s in the hospital. Cancer is eating him up.” And so they got home, and she wasn’t sure if he was even a Christian. She prayed. She spent several days there, and he kept saying, “Dottie, I don’t know if God can ever forgive me. I just know He won’t. He’s never going to…”
And as Dottie stayed there and sat there, she prayed for him. She’d talk to him. And she used the term several times, “He looks beyond all your faults. He knows what you need.” She said she would say that over and over. She left the hospital, and she came back in the next day, and her brother was sitting up. He said, “Dottie, you know what? He does look beyond our faults. He does.” He said, “I asked Him to come into my heart.” So Dottie wrote “He Looked Beyond My Fault,” and she said she sang it at his funeral. And those are the stories that I love.
Daniel J. Mount
Thank you.
Dusty Wells
“Sheltered in the Arms of God” is one of my favorite stories, and I used to love it when I would hand her her guitar. She’d just get a faraway look in her eyes. I’d say, “Now you gotta tell the story behind ‘Sheltered,'” because it was so beautiful.
But she had been going through a really tough time in life, and it was the first time they’d ever been down to see the ocean, she and Buck, or even… they were in their heyday. And she said they were down there, and she’d had some brokenheartedness, and she was out early one morning walking the beach, and she had her coffee. Buck was behind her, but she was all alone. And she said she’d watch the waves come in, and she’d see all this junk and debris on the sandbar, and she’d watch the waves come in and take that debris out to sea, and then it would be gone. She’d watch it.
And she had had some of the verses for “Sheltered.” She knew parts of it. She said, “I just don’t know how to start it.” And as she was walking there, she said, all of a sudden – it’s the only time she said she ever did it – she just felt this hand on her shoulder. She thought it was Buck, and she went to turn around, and all of a sudden she said, “I felt these five fingers.” She said, “I feel the touch…” And she said they were so kind and tender. She said, “Aha, that’s how You want me to begin the song.” Again, it went on to be still one of the most recorded songs.
So every song, they just have such sweet stories. Reba has just finished writing the story behind the songs. She used some of the cassettes that I’d given her, but she took a lot of her memory also. She’s just finishing writing, because if anybody could write it, it would be Reba. And she’s written a book that she’s going to get published, and it tells a lot of those precious stories.
Because there’s so many. “We Shall Behold Him” she wrote in seven minutes, driving seven miles. God just gave her that song on the way to a revival.
Daniel J. Mount
Amazing. Yeah, well, I am actually very excited to hear that Reba’s working on that because when you said that those stories had been recorded, I was like, those have to be preserved for posterity somehow or another.
Dusty Wells
Between Reba, myself, there’s another young man named Tim that had heard a lot of the stories, we all have a collection of memories and things that she would say out on the road. I have a lot of VHS. Whenever we’d do a church, John Hagee’s church or any other churches, I’d always get them to tape.
My favorite part of the service, she’d come in and we’d do three or four songs, and then she would sit down with her guitar. And Daniel, that’s when she’d tell the story. That’s what I always like to say. That’s when I saw the Holy Spirit just go, let me show you what I could do, you know, and take requests. And that’s when you’d hear the heart of Dottie, where she would talk about those songs, how she wrote them.
And I’m so glad that we’ve all had those memories, and Reba was very smart to write things down. It’s good to have that kind of stuff that you’re reminded by of how important that is and how these songs will live on. I mean, some of them were written in the ’60s, and yet they’re still being recorded, you know.
And I wanted this project, at the end of the day… I know what this music did for me. I know what it still does for me. I had not listened to the full project… We actually did a premiere last year at the Quartet Convention, and it was really sweet. But I had kept listening to the songs, bits and pieces, but I waited for about three months before I listened to it in its entirety. This last week at midnight, when the record released, I got out of bed and I sat in my living room and I listened to the record, and I thought, I know, without a shadow of doubt, this is going to touch people’s lives.
Because I had some moments that I listened to those songs, and I thought, I remember what I was like as a kid, as a teenager, thinking I had no hope. And then I’d hear songs like “If That Isn’t Love,” “Sheltered in the Arms of God,” and what it did for me, and why I’m doing what I do today is just so much because of these songs.
Daniel J. Mount
Neat! Now the next question I was actually going to ask you was if there were plans to stage any of this live, at least that you could talk about. But I think you might have touched on that already. So you already did some of this at last year’s Quartet Convention.
Dusty Wells
We did almost every song at Quartet Convention with the exception of… and we taped it, we’ll have it out this year. Adam was not there, he was on a Gaither tour, and Mark Lowry was not there. But we did every other song, including Destiny. I mean, everything. We did every other song except those two. We did nine of the songs.
But then I also had one of the first groups that recorded one of Dottie’s songs. We just happened to sign them last year, and one of Dottie’s best friends was Anna Gordon, Chuck Wagon Gang. They had one of the first groups that recorded one of her songs. They did an old song called “There’s Nothing, No Nothing, My God Can’t Do.” They opened the event, just them and their instruments doing “There’s Nothing…”
Daniel J. Mount
Love that song.
Dusty Wells
But it flowed, and then the choir and all of them came out and they did the whole program. And then I had High Road toward the end, who I love. They had really done the song… it was one of her older favorites, “When I Lift Up My Head.”
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. Actually, so I never got to see Dottie live, but there was about 2009 or ’10, somewhere in there, NQC did a Rambos reunion segment on main stage where Reba was there and Destiny was there and Buck was there.
Dusty Wells
It was called “Remembering the Greats.”
Daniel J. Mount
And the band was High Road. And I heard them play for the Rambos, and I was like, wow, these young ladies are unbelievable. They don’t know that too many people. I got their CD also that Quartet Convention. So I’ve known High Road ever since that segment.
So sadly, I just missed seeing Dottie. I did get to see Buck. I actually got to meet him at that Quartet Convention or another one, and I’m grateful I did. But yeah, that was a moment.
Dusty Wells
Sarah’s just… she’s such a Rambos fan. I love that Sarah has a dog named Buck.
Daniel J. Mount
I didn’t know that. That is so cool.
Now, one of the other things I was going to ask you about was, you know, there’s only so many songs you can put on one CD. And you have to do the songs people want to hear. But one of the things I was going to ask you about was: In a world where you had infinite budget and you could do all the songs you liked, what are some other songs that would make the cut?
Now, I know you can’t necessarily spoil the track list, but you said three words about a half an hour ago and I noticed them. You said “the next one.” What can you say about that? I can’t let that go without asking you. What can you say about the next one?
Dusty Wells
We feel like there will be a next one. From some other stuff that Daywind has just added, they’ve been so great about it. You know, there’s a choral book that goes along with it. People can buy the tracks, the stems, they can sing the songs solo, they can have a choir sing with them. So we do feel like this music needs to be out there.
But there’s several songs that I think… when I think about Dottie’s catalog, she has a song that a lot of people… it’s called “How Graciously Grace Has Covered My Sin.” I think back to those songs. “Too Much to Gain to Lose” is not on there.
There’s just so many. She had so many songs. She had a catalog of, she always said, over 2,000. But there’s just dozens and dozens when you go back and listen to her catalog.
There’s so many songs that I would love to see us do new versions of, and there’s so many artists. I mean, it was really hard. I had to leave out some of my other artists that I absolutely loved. But it was real hard. So I do feel like there will be a volume two, maybe a volume three.
And then you hear other new versions of songs from some of the CCM artists that have done stuff through the years of her music. It’s not a lot out there, but there is some. People are starting to all of a sudden wake up and say, “I heard this song somewhere.” And I really want this to be just a reintroduction to her music.
And there’s other songwriters out there. I think Lanny Wolfe is well deserving that his songs should live on. Bill Gaither, of course it’s Bill Gaither. But there’s still a lot of his songs that people have never heard in this modern world that we’re in.
Daniel J. Mount
Neat! Just going a little bit further, I think a lot of people know Dottie’s songs from the ’60s and ’70s, her big songs. Those are the songs people know. People know a few of the songs from the ’80s. They know “We Shall Behold Him,” they know “For What Earthly Reason,” and a few others. But you two were with her and worked with her a lot between that period and 2008. Not saying this is something that has to go on a record, but for somebody who doesn’t know the work from later in her life, what are some of her songs they should go on YouTube or go on Spotify and look for?
Dusty Wells
She always wanted to write a song like Fanny Crosby. She always said, “God, give me one song that would be like Fanny.” She wrote a song called “Blessed Hope” that is absolutely beautiful. I know she sings it on YouTube. We did it on TBN numerous times. But then there was another guy by the name of Steve Brock that recorded it. It’s absolutely beautiful, “Blessed Hope.” A song that Janet Paschal absolutely loved, she always said she wanted to record it. She never did.
There’s a song called “He Sees Me Through the Blood” that is absolutely stunning and just beautiful. That era was “For What Earthly Reason,” which is there, of course. She wrote “Blessed Hope,” “Oil and the Wine.” I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the song “Oil and the Wine.”
Daniel J. Mount
This one I don’t know. I think it’s the first one you’ve named I haven’t heard.
Dusty Wells
It is one, and it was on a record. She only did one record with a company called Light. So when Reba signed with… they went over there and did one record, but she wrote it for when Reba went through her divorce. Yeah. I mean, and it’s called “Oil and the Wine.” It’s probably one of my favorite Dottie songs. And it’s one that everybody… people would buy the record when she sang it, and it would be the only song she would sing from that record. But the song was powerful.
She had another song that I absolutely loved that’s on one of her solo projects called “I Got It in My Mind.” “He Went Out of His Way.” And then there was another one. She just had so many. Then those later years, the three Buck and Dottie projects that she did, The Legend Lives On, Destined for the Throne, and then there was another one. There were actually four records. They are chock-full of just incredible songs that nobody really did a lot with. “For What Earthly Reason” was on there, “Blessed Hope.”
But she had some beautiful… “Breaking Bread,” there’s a communion song that is absolutely beautiful, “We’re Breaking Bread.” “Son of Thunder, Daughter of Light” was a great fast song. It talked about who we are in Christ. We’re sons of thunder and daughters of light. And I just think there’s so many songs on those records.
Dottie also did four solo records. She won a Grammy for an album she did in 1967 by herself called The Soul of Me, which was very gospel-influenced. But she had two other records, Love Letters and three other records, one called Tiny Love Letters, and then another one, Making My Own Place. They were solo and had some great songs on them that she wrote that are just classics. I have my whole Rambo stash here. I should have pulled out some of these.
Daniel J. Mount
That, I think that ’67 solo record was the one that introduced a song that was huge for the Isaacs later, “He Ain’t Never Done Me Nothin’ but Good.”
Dusty Wells
Exactly right. They sing it all the time. There were two other songs that I love. She loved a song called “It Will Pass.” I would want that on there. I don’t know if you ever heard that song. And then two other songs that I’ve said have got to be on this project. She wrote one at Jimmy Swaggart’s church, at an altar call, called “Bring All Your Needs to the Altar.” She wrote it right while she was at the altar praying with people.
She has a big choral kind of sound called “Stand Still and See His Glory” that was on the Rambos records that Phil Johnson produced. She just had so many songs.
But I love the ’60s and ’70s. That was their real era. But those ’80s and ’90s, there’s some hidden gems on some of those that are just incredible.
Daniel J. Mount
And the thing is, those gems are hidden. So artists, if you’re listening, go listen to her stuff from the ’80s and ’90s. You’re probably going to find something you want to sing.
Dusty Wells
Every now and then I’ll get artists to say, “Is there anything she wrote that didn’t get recorded?” Yeah, there was a lot of them that the Rambos sang but nobody else did. But they’re full of them. “Stand Still and See His Glory,” when I hear some of these lyrics and some of the stuff… there’s so many. One of my favorite songs was off of, I think, the Crossing Over record, which Phil produced. It’s called “Nothing Like Home to Me.” The lyrics, “Dusty road looks familiar, cattle grazing on a hill.” It just takes you to where so many of these songs began. But there’s nothing like home, and then it turns it into one of these days there’s nothing like home that we’re going to be at.
Daniel J. Mount
Wonderful.
So just moving toward wrapping up, are there any questions that I should have asked you about this album but maybe didn’t think of? Is there anything else you’d love to say about this album before we wrap up the conversation tonight?
Dusty Wells
I think I just would love this… there again, I used to always hate it when Dottie would say, “Man, it’s hard to pick favorites. It’s hard to…” and it’s hard to talk about your new records. But because I was so close to this record, I want people to hear this and just be reminded of their own journeys and where they’ve come from, and that this music that we all sing and we talk about. So many of us were products of this music. It’s what gets us through.
And this record, I really want it to touch people’s lives like it did mine going through those tough times. Like when I hear an artist, whoever it is, they’ll say, “That Dottie Rambo song, that helped me.” This is the perfect record, I think, that I would love for people to give to people who need to be introduced to this music because it is such a beautiful representation of not only our industry. I wish I could have had a ton more artists on it, but there again, time will bring that up.
But just for them to see our music – and I call it our music, it’s heart music – truly it’s something that touches the depth of the heart that nothing else can.
Daniel J. Mount
Amen.
Dusty Wells
So what else would you like to ask? I was looking at our little notes here.
Daniel J. Mount
I have so many things I could ask, but there’s only so many hours of the day. Yeah, I think those are the highlights that I really wanted to get to for this album. Is there anything you’d like to promote? Where can people keep up with the latest releases from Daywind, keep up with the social media, anything along those lines?
Dusty Wells
We have Instagram, we have Facebook, and everything is under daywind.com or Daywind Worship. But one thing that we did that was really special for this record, look, got even the… there it is, there it is. The inside, it turned out so good. So great pictures of Dottie and just so many sweet things about this. Yeah, how God orchestrated it.
But if you go to daywind.com/DottieRambo, you can find everything that Daywind has done, including the new project. We did a vintage-inspired T-shirt with that image of her on it that everybody loved. That image actually came… she carried sheet music for years, and that was one of Dottie’s favorite images on her sheet music. And a lot of people, we would poll people and they would say, “What image did you love?” And they’d say, “We’d like that one where her hair was down.”
So we wanted to use that image because that’s what so many people remembered her from. And so it has every soundtrack that Daywind has ever done. It has the choral book. It has the songbook with a ton of pictures and quotes from different artists that we did many years ago. Soundtracks, karaoke, it has a couple of solo projects that we still sell. But it’s just daywind.com, and there’s some specials on it. And we’ve got such a beautiful, wonderful array of talent with Daywind that I’m just so proud of all of our artists. So proud of all of our artists.
Daniel J. Mount
Wonderful. And one more thing to plug. I don’t want to leave without mentioning “I Love to Tell the Story” one more time. Where can people keep up with your podcast?
Dusty Wells
You can go to iTunes, you can go to Spotify, you can go to Pandora. And we love it if you go to YouTube and subscribe. There’s no cost to it. Just press subscribe here and listen to it. Every Tuesday we have a new one. Got some great ones coming up that I’m really excited about. We’re gonna have some good stuff the rest of the year. And it’s just simply “I Love to Tell the Story,” and we’re on Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff.
Daniel J. Mount
And just a little tip for somebody who’s on YouTube, if you just type in “Love to Tell the Story,” you might get a grand old hymn. Type in “I Love to Tell the Story podcast” and you’re going to get it.
Dusty Wells
That’s great. Look at you. I love that. Daniel, you’ve been awesome.
Daniel J. Mount
Thank you so much. 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.
Dusty Wells
Thank you, Daniel. Thank you, everybody.
Daniel J. Mount
Thank you.