Remembering B.J. Thomas

What a voice.

"I've always tried to do more with a note than just hit it," he once wrote. Well, he certainly succeeded. His voice had a distinct sound. He was a record-selling machine. He was also a former drug addict, transformed by the grace of God. He was a complicated man and his was a complicated story. He's gone now, but his music will live on forever. 

The Thomas family. That's Billy Joe, 2nd from right.

Billy Joe Thomas was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Texas, focused on baseball and music (spoiler: music won out). As a kid he walked the aisle of a Baptist church and said the sinner's prayer, later confessing that he only did it because of peer pressure. Thomas' mother was, in his words, "a fantastic example of clean living," though not necessarily a Christian. His father had a drinking problem that often resulted in violent behavior. 

He started going by the initials B.J. because there were too many kids named Billy or Billy Joe on the little league baseball teams. The nickname stuck but the interest in baseball began to wane because his team just wasn't very good. It was around this time that B.J. heard Elvis Presley and Hank Williams on the radio of his Uncle Jack's car. Thomas said that from that time on, music was always in the back of his mind. He first sang publicly at Temple Oaks Baptist Church on 34th Street in Houston, not as a soloist but in male quartets and as a member of the church choir.

B.J. (3rd from right) with The Triumphs

B.J. became a big fan of an R&B singer by the name of Jackie Wilson. He credited Wilson with influencing his vocal style more than any other artist. Thomas became the front man for The Triumphs, a regional band that played small dances, teen canteens, American Legion halls and the like. Their first gig was in January of 1958, when B.J. was a junior at Lamar High School. It was with The Triumphs that he was first introduced to drugs. "Every year we made at least one trip to Garner State Park, ninety miles from San Antonio and not far from the Mexican border," Thomas wrote in his autobiography Home Where I Belong (Word, 1978). "It became an annual habit to make a run into Mexico to score some cheap grass or pills (it was always available and always cheap south of the border) and get blasted. We'd do the drugs and stay up all night staring at each other and laughing," he remembered. This was the beginning of a huge stronghold in B.J.'s life, one from which he would one day be set free by the power of God.

Tensions developed and jealousy arose within The Triumphs when B.J. Thomas proved to have much more star power than the other band members. B.J. was noticed for his unusual vocal talent and was asked to make a solo recording. He had his first hit with a remake of I'm So Lonesome by Hank Williams. "I could really get into singing it, and when we did it for Dad it made him cry," Thomas recounted. In three weeks' time, it was the #1 song in Houston and #78 out of the top pop songs in the country according to Cashbox. Within days, B.J. had offers to open for James Brown and go on the road with Dick Clark. B.J. Thomas was off and running.

By 1967 Thomas had sold four and a half million records and was pulling down $2,500 a night. He said that hundreds of thousands from record sales, royalties and personal appearances were spent on cars and clothes and gifts - extravagant things that he neither needed or really even wanted. "I was drunk with the freedom to have anything and everything I saw," he said. B.J. met and married Gloria Richardson, a decision that would eventually save his life.

The Eyes of a New York Woman. Hooked On A Feeling. Mighty Clouds of Joy. Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head. The hits just kept on coming. From 1969 thru 1975 B.J. Thomas would gross about 13 million dollars. "But I loved the drugs more than anything," he revealed. 

I purchased Thomas' Home Where I Belong autobiography when it first came out and I still have it today. I read it again in preparation for this blog post...and I was astounded at B.J.'s own descriptions of his dependence on drugs. Thousands of pills a month, sometimes 500 on a weekend. Literally awake for days. Demonic manifestations. Even detailed descriptions of what could only be described as domestic violence. Things were bad. Really bad. He said that during that era he never once performed or recorded without being high. Recording sessions became nightmares for all involved. 

And then...remember those tropes about rock stars trashing their hotel rooms? Yep, you guessed it. B.J. threw at least one television set out of a hotel room window. "More than once I left with a bill for as much as $8,000 in damages," he admitted. "Dope was my career. The singing was simply a means to an end."

And then a friend introduced him to cocaine. 

Thomas said the cocaine got him into trouble with women, only adding to problems on the home front. B.J.'s world came crashing in on him when his wife Gloria left him and took their daughter Paige with her. 

Things finally came to a head when Thomas pulled a knife on his producer in the recording studio, threatening to kill him. And then landed in a hospital with a near-overdose. 

Meanwhile, Gloria was witnessed to by friends Jim and Micah Reeves and ended up surrendering her heart to Jesus on December 27, 1975. "When I was finished and stood I just grinned, loving God so much that I couldn't think of anything else," she explained. "I didn't know how much to hope for with B.J. and me, but I knew that my relationship with God had just begun. And it was right."

Thomas' career was finally beginning to suffer as a result of his substance abuse. "No other jobs were lined up because my reputation had spread," Thomas said. "My managers didn't think I'd be able to continue performing for long anyway so they were afraid to book anything too far ahead of time. My professional life was over. No gigs were planned; everything was off. People were saying, 'Don't book him - he's flipped out.' No one would book a drug addict."

Though separated, B.J. and Gloria kept in touch. During one phone call, with divorce papers just days from completion, Gloria Thomas said, "I'm different, B. I've become a Christian and have turned my life over to Jesus Christ. He is the answer to why I am different. Come home. There's help for you here."

B.J. eventually took her up on her offer. The end result was an intense counseling and deliverance session with Jim Reeves and Bobby Guess while the wives were in another room, praying. Thomas reported being able to relax and feel a peace that washed over him - something he hadn't felt in many years. He prayed what he remembered as a 20-minute prayer, "the most sincere thing I had ever done in my life," he reported. "And I know the Holy Spirit authored it. I knew from the minute I opened my mouth that I was talking to the living God, the Creator of the universe, and He was going to answer. I got straight with the Lord everything I could think of, and the bridge between ten years of hell and a right relationship with God was just twenty minutes - the most unforgettable twenty minutes of my life. When I looked up after saying amen, it was midnight, January 28, 1976."

"I was so relieved and free I could have jumped through the roof," Thomas said. "I smiled so big it hurt."

The first miracle was B.J.'s salvation. The next miracle was that he quit drugs cold turkey with no withdrawal. Amazing.

Another amazing thing was about to happen. B.J. Thomas was going to record a very consequential album for a genre of music that barely even existed at the time.

Thomas with producer Chris Christian

Jesus Music and "Gospel Rock" had been around since the late 60s. Larry Norman, Love Song, and the Second Chapter of Acts were doing their thing on the West Coast and artists like Randy Matthews, Honeytree and Petra operated from the Midwest. But Stan Moser, head of sales and marketing for Word Records had something a little different in mind. A young, unproven producer by the name of Chris Christian had purchased a home near Nashville and built a studio in the basement. Moser heard an album that Christian had produced for the group Dogwood (his first) and on the strength of that album, Moser approached Christian about producing a faith-oriented record by B.J. Thomas for Word's contemporary label, Myrrh. This was a huge opportunity...it would only be Chris Christian's second album in the producer's chair...and his young lieutenant Brown Bannister's first-ever job as a professional engineer. 

Brown Bannister & Chris Christian

There had been other successful secular artists who had recorded Christian music - Johnny Cash, Pat Boone and Barry McGuire, to name a few. But B.J. Thomas was a pretty big pop star who was still at the top of his game, at the height of his powers. And Moser's vision for this album was for it to sound like a pop album, every bit as good as B.J.'s mainstream hits, just with a much smaller budget. In his autobiography A Grandmother's Prayer, Chris Christian recounts the experience: "[B.J.] came in filled with the joy of the Lord and was totally affable and easy to work with. He gave every song that distinctive B.J. Thomas touch that millions of fans had come to recognize."

Within a year of its release Home Where I Belong had sold more than 350,000 copies. First it went Gold; it eventually went Platinum, winning both a Grammy and a Dove Award. HWIB was a bestseller for more than a year. The title track gave songwriter Pat Terry some much-deserved recognition, and HWIB was the first Christian recording to get a cover review in Record World magazine. It was #1 on the Gospel chart in Cashbox for about 4 months.

Based on the tremendous success of Home Where I Belong, Stan Moser came up with a scheme to get Chris Christian to find five other artists and produce five albums per year for the next five years. These were to be Christian albums with essentially that same commercial, soft rock/pop sound as Home Where I Belong. No one really knew it at the time, but this was basically the birth of a new genre of music. We were leaving Jesus Music behind and entering the world of "contemporary Christian music" or CCM for short. And B.J. Thomas was a big part of that.

B.J. & Gloria's marriage was restored. They were in love again. "The old hassles were gone," he said. Thomas said that post-drugs, there was a power and energy in his singing that hadn't been there in a long time. He was pumped about performing again. He made it a point to share his testimony with audiences, and then experienced the peace of a good night's sleep after the concerts. "The Scriptures began to mean more and more to me," he said. 

Several other Christian albums followed for B.J., but none had the impact - or the sales figures - of Home Where I Belong. 

Much has been made of a rift that reportedly developed between Thomas and some of his fans in the Christian record-buying public. I won't recount the back-and-forth in any great detail here. But in an attempt to understand what happened, I offer the following: a lot of people who came to faith during the Jesus Movement were used to singers and musicians functioning essentially as ministers. Thomas' background was in entertainment. But he was presented to the Christian record-buying public as being in the same category as, say, Andrae Crouch or the 2nd Chapter of Acts...Dallas Holm or Don Francisco...artists with a hyper-focus on ministry, who viewed their music more as a tool in their toolbox. This unfortunately created some unrealistic expectations and misunderstandings. Sort of like when two people from very different backgrounds get married. I'm not excusing bad behavior...just offering another way to think about what went down.  

Back in 1978 Thomas was quoted as saying, "Some day this kind of life has to end. One day you wake up and find yourself thirty-six years old and sitting in the Holiday Inn in Minneapolis for the fourteenth time in your life and you have to wonder what it's all about. I have to quit traveling some day soon." 

He never did, really.

Thomas had more successes in mainstream pop, country and CCM, winning a total of 5 Grammy awards and enjoying a very lengthy career. It was announced on March 23, 2021 that he had stage four lung cancer. Just nine weeks later, B.J. Thomas was Home. He was 78 years old.  

B.J.'s music is still bringing comfort to people today. I have walked through a tremendously difficult trial in my own life over the past three years and I can remember lying on my bed one night and listening to B.J. Thomas sing...

He's got it all in control

God's got it all in control

He put that reassurance way down in my soul

He's got it all in control

and

He's the hand on my shoulder

When I need to know Someone cares

He's the hand on my shoulder

Assuring me that He's always there

...and tears came as the realization of that truth returned and bolstered my faith.

"When I think of the odds against my surviving the thousands upon thousands of drugs I poured into my body, I know that God spared me for a reason," Thomas penned in his autobiography. "I knew I was being drawn back to Him. I believe He laid claim on me as a child and wouldn't let me go."

"This old earth is really pretty to a mind that's been cleared by the power of God," B.J. said in '78. "But when we leave here, we'll really be home. Home where we belong."  

 

  

Remembering Ralph Carmichael

Ralph Carmichael

My hometown of Greenville, South Carolina puts on a Christmas parade every year on the first Saturday evening of December. Bands, floats, dance teams, Santa, the whole drill. Thousands of people - families, friends, young and old - come out and line the streets every year as the Greenville Poinsettia Christmas Parade serves as the official kickoff to the Christmas season in Upstate South Carolina. Greenville's mayor likes to say, "It's a Christmas parade the way Christmas parades used to be." Before the parade actually begins, a vehicle from the Greenville Police Department and a vehicle from the Greenville City Fire Department travel down the street. They are not officially part of the parade. Their job is to clear the way. I've been told by city employees (who take this stuff very seriously) that the police car and fire truck are not parade entries. Their symbolic purpose is to clear the streets - to pave the way, if you will, for all of the "holiday magic" that is to follow.

Looking back, Ralph Carmichael served a similar purpose. He began cutting a path. He helped clear the way. He helped clear the streets, if you will, for what God was going to do during a revival now known as the Jesus Movement. Carmichael's music was not full-blown Jesus Music and it certainly wasn't rock and roll. But it was an important, albeit controversial, incremental step in the right direction. And Christian young people sat up and took notice.

Ralph Carmichael was born in Quincy, Illinois on May 27, 1927. An Assemblies of God preacher's kid, Ralph grew up immersed in music, but he enjoyed the popular music that he heard on the radio more than what he heard at church. "I was captivated by the chordal expressions I heard on the radio," Carmichael said. "Our church orchestra sounded weak and terrible by comparison. Why? Why did we have to settle? Why couldn't we use those gorgeous rhythms, sweeping strings, the brass, the stirring chords? That started to control everything I did." 

Sound Familiar? Jesus Rock pioneers like Larry Norman and Randy Matthews expressed similar sentiments in the late 60s and early 70s. But Carmichael apparently had this epiphany decades earlier.

As a Bible college student, Ralph started a campus male quartet as well as some mixed vocal ensembles. Most Christian colleges utilize music groups to help with recruiting. Well, Ralph's efforts did more harm than good in the eyes of the school's Old Guard, because he attempted to blend some classical and jazz techniques into the music. His efforts were not appreciated. Thus, he was branded controversial, was not allowed to store his baritone sax on campus, and his music groups were dis-invited from many churches. 

It just wasn't time yet. 

After college it became clear to Carmichael that he was better suited to a career in music than as a pastor. In 1951 he was asked to score a film for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Graham & company had a desire to attract and hopefully reach a younger demographic; Ralph Carmichael's music was seen as a potentially effective tool in their toolbox. Meanwhile, doors began to open in the secular entertainment world as well. Carmichael began to work on hugely consequential television shows like I Love Lucy, My Mother the Car, and Bonanza. He was invited to work with big stars like Rosemary Clooney, Roy Rogers & Dale Evans, Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole. 

But it was Carmichael's efforts on behalf of "sacred" or "church music" that mean the most to those of us who love Jesus Music and CCM. 

By the mid-1960s, Billy Graham was again noticing too many grey heads at his crusades and had a desire to create a film to speak to youth culture. The movie was called The Restless Ones and it was scored by Ralph Carmichael. The film contained a song that would become a breakout hit, a folk anthem that was beloved by Christians teens around the world. He's Everything To Me had a "straight-eights" rhythm and just a hint of a backbeat. It ended up selling 5 million copies of sheet music and was covered by Cliff Richard, The Imperials, and more than 200 other artists. It even made its way to me - another Assemblies of God PK in south Alabama in the early 70s. I remember playing it from a red songbook full of other such "mod" Christian folk songs, many of them penned and arranged by Ralph Carmichael and Kurt Kaiser.

Other musicals followed - Tell It Like It Is, The Cross and the Switchblade, For Pete's Sake, Natural High, and more. There were songs like Love is Surrender, Pass It On, A Quiet Place, The new 23rd, A Bright New World, Reach Out to Jesus, and I Looked for Love.

Was this stuff rock music? No. But it was new. It was a different sound. This music was sung by fresh-faced young people. Carmichael's folk musicals were clearing the streets for what was soon to follow. 

Carmichael (seated) signing The Archers

Ralph Carmichael and his record label, Light Records, is also credited with "discovering" supremely talented artists such as Andrae Crouch & the Disciples and The Archers, bringing their music to attention of a world starved for excellent musical expressions that were also spiritually solid. It was said that Carmichael started Light Records to give Jesus Music a wider hearing. In addition to Crouch and The Archers, Light became label home to artists as diverse as Jamie Owens-Collins, Danniebelle Hall, The Hawkins Family, Bryan Duncan, Glad, The Winans, John Fischer, Dino, Jessy Dixon, Sweet Comfort Band, Allies, and even Resurrection Band. 

Always on the cutting edge, Carmichael even released an entire album of nothing but Moog synthesizers in 1970. As an aspiring keyboardist, I owned that album and thought it was mind-blowing.

All in all, Carmichael scored or produced about 200 albums and wrote about 3,000 musical arrangements. His Christmas songs recorded with Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole will be enjoyed forever. He was inducted into the GMA Hall of Fame in 1985 and the National Religious Broadcasters' Hall of Fame in 2001. 

Ralph Carmichael passed from this life on October 18, 2021. He was 94.