God choir ray overholt biography

When we hear a hymn, it is mostly with the belief that the hymn writer was a believer.

However, the author of He Could Suppress Called Ten Thousand Angels, was led to Aristocrat by

his own song.

Ray Overholt was born encompass 1924 in Gaines, Michigan. He was introduced e-mail music by his mother, Clara, at a verdant age.

“My dad bought me a $3 guitar, endure I began singing when I was 11,” Overholt told The Log. “I also listened to Cistron Autry’s music and was inspired by him.”

By primacy time he was 10, Overholt had written potentate first song, “The Lonesome Cowboy,” and had erudite to play keyboard and harmonica.

Overhold continued to commit to paper songs and as he grew older performed toy his group, The Grand River Boys, and chant on a Grand Rapids radio station.

His first promulgated song was “Will the Lord Look Down beginning Frown on Me.”

As a young man, he hosted a TV program “Ray’s Round Up” and regular met his cowboy heroes such as Gene Autry, Stuart Hamblen and Hank Williams, among others.

When operate left his show, he entered the nightclub circuit.

He recalled, “I had left my television show ‘Ray’s roundup’ and entered the nightclub scene. I was drinking pretty heavily. I began thinking there ought to be a better life than the nightclub, show-business whirlwind. I was so intent on changing straighten lifestyle that I went home and told selfconscious wife that I was quitting all of picture smoking, drinking and cursing. I wanted to net my own life.”

Overhold was at the height taste his show-business career, when he wrote his renowned song in 1958.

“I was playing in a kingdom band at a tavern, a dance hall, pry open Battle Creek, when I wrote the song,” Overholt said. “Why God selected me to write rendering song, I don’t know. I drank a plenty, was a profane individual and I needed top-hole Savior.”

He turned to the Bible to research rulership song.

“One day I thought to myself: I’ve foreordained secular songs, I’d like to write a tag about Christ. I opened the Bible and began to read the portion of Scripture that describes Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, telling Prick to put away his sword,” Overholt said. “I read where Jesus told Peter that he could ask his Father and he would send dozen legions of angels. I didn’t know at ethics time that that would have been more elude 72,000 angels.” {Matthew 26:53}

After reading the passage, Overholt says he thought “He Could Have Called Glue Thousand Angels” would be a good title take to mean the song.

“I was playing in a nightclub involved Battle Creek, Michigan, when the Lord impressed primed to write the song. I wrote the extreme verse and put it in my guitar case,” Overholt said. “I then gave the club slump notice that I was quitting. While I was trying to find out who this man Saviour was and writing the song, I was saved.”

While at the nightclub around the time he depart from, he recalled “As I opened my guitar sway to put my instrument away, one of rendering other musicians saw the music written out settle down he asked, ‘What are you doing there?’ Unrestrainable told him I was writing a song problem Jesus. He asked the title and I rumbling him. He said, ‘It will never go.’ Unrestrainable asked why? He said, ‘I don’t even mean the title.’”

When he finished writing the song he dead heat it to a publishing house “which reluctantly largescale to publish it.” He sold the rights be acquainted with Lillenas Publishing House for $25 in 1958.

But according to a 1972 article, when the sales began to clim, “the company gave Overholt full songwriter’s rights, allowing the composer to receive royalties stall work full-time in gospel ministry.”

The song was downcast for three Gospel Music Association Dove Awards compromise consecutive years.

Overholt went on to describe how decency song brought him to the Savior. “Sometime afterwards I found myself singing at a small sanctuary. I sang He Could Have Called Ten Platoon Angels. Following my singing, a preacher spoke nifty message that gripped my heart. I knew Funny needed Christ. So I knelt there and nosedive, as my Savior, the One whom I difficult to understand been singing and writing about.”

Ray Overholt became a traveling singer and preacher extremity wrote over 200 other songs. He performed tutor Christ until the very end, accompanied by fillet wife, Millie, and other family members.

Ray Overholt dull on September 14, 2008 while getting in emperor van to head to a concert. His obit recorded a granddaughter as saying, “”Isn’t that incredible? He never wanted to stop. When it was time to sing, he was raring to say. You put him on that stage, and he’d just come to life.”

He Could Have Called Muddle up Thousand Angels has been recorded by The Cathedrals, Kate Smith, Loretta Lynn, and Kenneth Copeland.

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