Singer inspired by 'music giver'

A well-known gospel singer and songwriter is striving to return to the public eye after a 10-year absence.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE

Revised September 6, 2000

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 2, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Gospel singer and composer Dottie Rambo relates her life story, suffused with soap opera drama, in a surprisingly unsentimental manner.

At 12, she left home to sing gospel music. She endured verbal abuse from her father and sexual harassment from preachers. Married at 16, she gave birth to a girl 18 months later. She even realized her dream, composing more than 2,500 songs and winning a place in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. And her work has been performed by Elvis Presley, Sandi Patti, Whitney Houston and other well-known artists.

But as in a soap opera, heartbreak and illness arrived in the midst of success. Mrs. Rambo's marriage of 43 years crumbled, and a back ailment resulted in numerous surgeries, one of which left her partly paralyzed.

Today, at 66, Mrs. Rambo is learning to walk again and is striving to return to the public eye after a 10-year absence. She is writing a book about her life and hopes it will be made into a movie. She also is preparing to launch a Christian television program and is writing 25 new songs. Most of all, she has begun to tour again. This week she returned from a seven-day engagement in the Bahamas.

Next weekend she will visit the Tampa Bay area, conducting a composers workshop on Sept. 9 and giving a concert the next day.

"As long as I can get breath in my body," Mrs. Rambo said in Scarlett O'Hara fashion during a telephone interview from her home in Nashville, "I will still find strength to minister."

Her trip to St. Petersburg is being sponsored by Genesis Worship Center Church.

"She is a living legend," said Tim Dillinger, a minister with the St. Petersburg congregation.

"She has been a hero of mine for a long time, as a writer and as a singer," he said.

Maurice Jackson, artistic director of the Tampa Bay Community Gospel Choir and former director of the University of South Florida Gospel Choir, also is an admirer of Mrs. Rambo's work.

"She is a prolific writer, and I am excited to hear that she is going to be in this area," he said.

"I guess the piece that Dottie Rambo is most known for in my mind is the piece He Looked Beyond My Faults and Saw My Need," Jackson said.

"She put the folk music of Danny Boy with her words and it is just one of the most inspiring pieces of music ever written in my mind and it is one of the classics from the gospel music repertoire."

Jackson, a singer, songwriter and pianist, added that Mrs. Rambo's music is beloved in both black and white gospel music circles.

"It's not a cultural or racial thing. It crosses all lines," he said. "It's a spiritual thing, in other words."

Mrs. Rambo wrote her first piece of music when she was just 8 years old. Her mother was supportive, but her father, whom in later years she led to Christ, disapproved of his daughter's desire to perform before religious audiences.

"My father was very abusive to me after I was converted," said the Kentucky native, recalling her dramatic religious awakening when she was 11.

"He said, "No child of mine is going to be a holy roller,' " she recalled.

"I left home when I was 12 and I've been on my own ever since. . . . I stayed on for a while, but it got so bad. Mother took most of the beatings."

For her singing appearances, Mrs. Rambo remembered that she was given her mother's "one good dress" that was altered to fit her 12-year-old body. She took Greyhound buses to churches, camp meetings and youth rallies and often stayed in the homes of preachers during her travels. In exchange for room and board, she helped to do housework but, recalled Mrs. Rambo, she spent many sleepless nights hiding in closets from preachers who tried to molest her.

The money she earned was used to buy presents for her mother, including her first washing machine, and clothes for herself. Some of it, she gave away.

At 16 she married Buck Rambo, a young man who had gone to see her at a revival.

In hindsight, said Mrs. Rambo, "I should never have married then. Back then we had no counselors. You didn't feel free to go to the pastors. And the pastors' wives, they were intimidated and they didn't have much to say. . . . I knew I wasn't supposed to get married. He wasn't a Christian."

The two performed together, traveling the world, even venturing behind the Iron Curtain. During one trip, Mrs. Rambo remembers being startled to hear one of her songs on German radio.

"The Lord has been good," she said. "He lets my music go around the world."

Among her well-known songs are We Shall Behold Him, which is sung by Sandi Patti, and I Go to the Rock, made popular by Whitney Houston, who performed it in the movie The Preacher's Wife.

Mrs. Rambo said Elvis Presley had just signed a contract to sing 12 of her songs before he died.

"He had just recorded If That Isn't Love. Elvis, believe it or not, he was a real friend. He encouraged me to keep my home together," said Mrs. Rambo, who has Elvis' Bible and one of his jumpsuits as mementos of their friendship.

Her music has won Mrs. Rambo several prestigious awards. In 1982, her song, We Shall Behold Him won the Gospel Music Association Song of the Year. Her 1968 solo album, The Soul of Me, earned a Grammy Award. In addition, her Rambo Reunion and Makin' My Own Place albums were nominated for Grammys.

God gets credit for her achievements, Mrs. Rambo said.

"I want to give him praise. When they brag on my music, I say, "Let's brag on the music giver,' " she said.

But, said Mrs. Rambo, she has paid a high price for her success.

"A lot of people don't want to pay their dues. They want to start out with a big, new bus and staying in a big, new hotel and singing in the stadium," she said.

"And I know some people have done it that way, but I think you certainly appreciate the calling of God when you do come up through the ranks and you suffer a little bit. Then God starts blessing you."

One of her most important blessings is daughter Reba, who began singing with her parents when she was 3. Today Reba Rambo has a music ministry of her own, teaming up with her husband, Dony McGuire. In 1981, the two won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Gospel Album. Their children, Destiny Rambo McGuire and Israel Anthem McGuire, also perform.

"The gifts do carry down," said Mrs. Rambo, whose grandfather, a Baptist minister, also was musically gifted.

Mrs. Rambo also counts Dusty Wells, who has been managing her career for almost two dozen years, as one of the family. She refers to Wells, a husband and father of four, as her "adopted son."

Wells said he first heard Mrs. Rambo's music when he was 14.

"Her lyrics were just so thought-provoking. I just clung to the hope that I would meet her and work for her," he said.

At 23, he was able to express his admiration in person.

"It was a God thing. For the last 20 years, I've got to travel with her and take care of her . . . and do all the things that a son should be doing," said Wells, who works full time for Word Entertainment, a Christian record company.

He is pleased that Mrs. Rambo is being reunited with her public.

"I think it's long overdue," he said. "I see the strength in her, and she loves her fans. She gets so strong when she gets with the people. And the public is ready for Dottie to be back, to listen to her incredible stories of hope and wisdom."

If you go

Dottie Rambo will lead a composers workshop, 10 a.m. Sept. 9, at the Genesis Worship Center Church, 1625 Sixth Ave. S, St. Petersburg. Registration is $10. She will give a concert at 6 p.m. Sept. 10 at Gateway Christian Center, 3900 Fifth Ave. N. Call (727) 327-3839.

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