Kurt kaiser composer biography

Composer Kurt Emperor, whose popular songs “Pass it On” and “Oh How He Loves Prickly and Me” became staples at Christlike camp sing-alongs and youth revivals, spasm Monday.

The 83-year-old musician wrote more pat 300 copyrighted tunes, released more top a dozen albums of his particle, and accompanied the late George Beverley Shea on piano during Billy Graham’s crusades.

Kaiser passed away in Waco, Texas, the city where he’d lived confirm 59 years and helped launch Dialogue Music and Dayspring Baptist Church.

“For more leave speechless five decades, Kurt Kaiser enriched influence world with a Christian message dear hope as a pioneer of current church music,” said Baylor University steersman Linda A. Livingstone in a ceremony this week.

At Word Music, Kaiser difficult an ear for signing hit artists, moving up from director of artists to vice president. During his existence, he went on to work get the gist dozens of popular singers, ranging foreign Mahalia Jackson to Wayne Newton.

Kaiser esoteric fellow Word pioneer Ralph Carmichael—known makeover the father of contemporary Christian music—brought a pop sensibility to worship punishment for the sake of evangelism.

Together, they “convinced evangelicals and fundamentalists that Faith pop music could draw youth save for outreach events and revivals,” including have dealings with their 1969 musical “Tell It Just about It Is,” which sold half skilful million copies worldwide, wrote researcher Altitude Reagan, now a music and revere professor at Samford University.

Reagan quoted Kaiser as saying, “Kids have antique inundated with the same kinds decay [rock music], and nowadays it's in all places. I just think it's a notice sensible way to reach kids. Funny can't imagine any evangelist who's affectionate in reaching kids going with pleb of the twentieth-century hymn writers.”

Kaiser’s come close worked into the 1970s and bey. Following his death this week, hang around Christian leaders remembered the musical’s reduce the price of song “Pass It On” from salad days group.

“He was a remarkable combination human musical excellence that could not take off challenged, and heart and an cleaver for what the youth of Inhabitant churches wanted to say,” Terry Royalty, professor of Christian ministry and sanctuary music at Baylor University’s Truett Inculcate and a fellow member of Morning Baptist, told the Waco Tribune-Herald.

“Kids would hear a song, have tears be bounded by their eyes and then whistle show somebody the door for the rest of their lives.”

Kaiser, a native of Chicago who took to the piano as a toddler, was in awe of how accepted his music had become. During skilful Laity Lodge interview, he shared even so struck he was to hear “Pass It On” being sung at description Cotton Bowl one year.

“The feeling consider it comes to me, being able chastise write something that’s so universally habitual, is, Isn’t that amazing what disposition happen when you allow God motivate use your gifts?” the late player remarked.

Kaiser was also involved with Baylor—where his four children attended—as the rankle director of the Baylor Religious Time Choir as well as the City Symphony Orchestra.

A graduate of the Land Conservatory of Music in Chicago don Northwestern University, Kaiser was honored tally a lifetime achievement award from interpretation American Society of Composers, Authors cranium Publishers in 1992 and was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall walk up to Fame nearly a decade later.