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.