Saints and Sinners: Do you think Graham can sing?
The hair is snow white. The years, creeping in their petty pace from day to day, have reached 95. But God has left George Beverly Shea’s golden larynx intact.
Soloist on the Billy Graham Crusades since their inception in 1949, Shea still looks forward to taking part in the crusade’s 55th anniversary in Kansas City in June and Los Angeles in July.
Until recent years, it was rare for Shea to miss a crusade performance. But he missed three in a row in Boston in 1964.
“I had never tried lobster stew before,” Shea says, “but when I had some this particular night in Boston, I liked it so much I had several more bowls of it.
“The next morning when I woke up, my tongue was all swollen. I called my doctor in Chicago. He wasn’t in, so while waiting for him to return my call, I phoned room service and ordered a bowl of lobster stew to be brought up!”
The doctor immediately diagnosed Shea’s case as an allergy to lobster stew. Bev was lost to the crusade for three nights.
Shea once gave me a private concert in his hotel room during the course of one of the crusades. One of the songs he sang was “Amazing Grace.” Or should I say “we” sang?
Shea started out singing alone, with instrumental accompaniment on cassette. But then he asked me to join in. I think I may even have drowned him out in the rousing last stanza, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years,” as we sang with our arms around each other’s shoulder.
It has gone down in my memory — and will remain there — as “The Day I Sang ‘Amazing Grace’ with George Beverly Shea.”
There is something I want to ask Shea the next time I see him. I want to ask him whether Billy Graham can sing.
In one of his books “Songs that Lift the Heart” (F.H. Revell, 1972), Shea says, “I would not be one to tell tales out of school but a well-known evangelist friend of mine, with whom I have been associated for over 25 years, has been afflicted with Dwight Moody’s problem — the ‘malady of no melody.”‘ (Moody was a famous evangelist of an earlier period who had no sense of pitch or harmony.)
Shea added, “This friend of mine has a beautiful sonorous speaking voice and most would imagine an equally good singing voice. But such is not the case.” While Shea doesn’t mention Graham by name, when he wrote that in 1972, he had been associated with Graham (“a well-known evangelist”) for 28 years (“over 25 years.”)
They met in 1944, when Graham was doing a Saturday evening radio program. Shea was doing a daily 15-minute program on the same station in the Chicago area. Graham heard him and invited him to sing on his program.
When I read what Shea had written, it suddenly occurred to me that I had, in fact, never heard Graham sing. When the Graham crusades are on television in Kansas City and Los Angeles this summer, I will listen closely (and you can, too) to see whether Billy joins in with the crowd in singing “Just As I Am,” the finale of every crusade broadcast.
In the foreword of “Songs that Lift the Heart,” Shea lists “The Favorite 50” — the most popular gospel songs of the time as picked by the readers of Christian Herald magazine.
They are songs that would probably still top the list in 2004, more than 30 years later. The top five are “The Old Rugged Cross,” “What A Friend We Have in Jesus,” “In the Garden,” “How Great Thou Art” and “Sweet Hour of Prayer.”
Let’s sing them now. C’mon Billy, you join in. A lot of us are afflicted with “the malady of no melody.” It’s what comes from the heart, not the larynx, that God hears.
But even God must smile when George Beverly Shea sings.
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)