Grammy winner was the voice of Rev. Billy Graham’s crusades
Perhaps the most widely heard gospel singer
George Beverly Shea, who escaped a life of toil in an insurance office to become a Grammy-winning gospel singer and a longtime associate of the Rev. Billy Graham, appearing before an estimated 200 million people at Graham revival meetings worldwide, died on Tuesday in Asheville, N.C. He was 104.
His death was announced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, in Charlotte, N.C., of which Shea was the official singing voice for more than half a century. Canadian-born, he lived in Montreat, N.C., for decades, just a mile from the home of Graham, a close friend.
Through the Billy Graham crusades, as the stadium-sized revival meetings begun by Graham are known, Shea was perhaps the most widely heard gospel artist in the world, singing before tens of millions of worshippers throughout the United States and around the globe.
He also appeared regularly on The Hour of Decision, Graham’s weekly radio broadcast, which began in 1950 and continues to this day.
On a more intimate scale, he sang at the prayer breakfasts of a series of U.S. presidents, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson and the first George Bush.
Shea, who was still singing as he embarked on his second century, was fond of saying that Graham would not let him retire, since nowhere in Scripture is the concept of retirement overtly addressed.
“I’ve been listening to Bev Shea sing for more than 50 years,” Graham told The Charlotte Observer in 1997, “and I would still rather hear him sing than anyone else I know.”
When interviewers asked why Graham did not lead his flock in song himself, as many preachers do, Shea did venture to suggest the status quo was better for all concerned: Graham, as Shea put it with true Christian charity, suffered from “the malady of no melody.”
Shea’s vocal style was characterized by a resonant bass-baritone, impeccable diction, sensitive musical phrasing and an unshowmanlike delivery that nonetheless conveyed his own ardent religious conviction.
He recorded more than 70 albums, including In Times Like These (1962), Every Time I Feel the Spirit (1972) and The Old Rugged Cross (1978). In 1966, he won the Grammy award for best gospel or other religious recording for his album Southland Favorites, recorded with the Anita Kerr Singers.
Shea received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy, which administers the Grammys, in 2011.
Of the hundreds of songs he sang, Shea was most closely identified with How Great Thou Art, a hymn that became the de facto anthem of Graham’s ministry.
Other songs for which he was known include I’d Rather Have Jesus, for which he composed the music, and The Wonder of It All, for which he wrote words and music.
George Beverly Shea was born Feb. 1, 1909, in Winchester, Ont. His father was a Wesleyan Methodist minister; his mother was the organist in her husband’s church.
Growing up, Shea dreamed the dream of many a red-blooded Canadian boy — to be a Mountie — but he also studied piano, organ and violin. One of eight children, he did his first formal singing in his father’s church choir and his first informal singing long before, around the family table.
Though Shea was long a vital part of Graham’s work — Graham routinely insisted that without him he would have had no ministry — he retained a wry modesty about his role.
“The people didn’t come to hear me,” Shea told The Charlotte Observer in 2009. “They came to hear Billy. To get to hear him, they first had to listen to me.”