If you’re a Southern Gospel fan who reads production credits, you may occasionally see Russell Mauldin’s name listed as an arranger. You’re even more likely to be familiar with his work if you sing in a church choir.

I recently contacted Russell to find out what precisely goes into bringing a choral collection to life. We won’t get into that in Part 1, however. His answer to my first question contains so much interesting history that I didn’t want to cut it down.

So, here’s question one and Russell’s response:

David Bruce Murray: Tell me about how long you’ve been in the business of arranging choral music along with some background on how you got interested in this line of work.

Russell Mauldin: I was raised by parents who loved God, loved me and my brother, and loved music. Besides making his living as a home builder, my dad wrote “convention-style” songs and led our family gospel singing group around the southeast each weekend, singing mostly in churches. My mom also taught piano in our home several weekday afternoons each week. I sang on my first family LP album (remember those!) when I was 5 years old and have fond memories of hanging out in recording studios as far back as I can remember. My dad built Mark V studio for the Huffman brothers in my hometown of Greenville, SC and Dad produced numerous custom albums through the years.

Besides being smitten by the recording business bug early on and experience gained from our family touring throughout the years, I earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Theory from Furman University. There, I sang in choir and the Chamber Singers (an elite 16 member group from within the Furman Singers). As a singer and Theory major, I learned to understand the limitations and flexibility of the human voice as a musical instrument. From there, God literally opened all the doors to Nashville and the Evangelical church music industry!

I moved to Nashville as a studio drummer, background vocalist, and aspiring arranger. A gentleman named Ed Kee at Brentwood-Benson Music offered me my first choral writing assignment, a Christmas Musical with Dave Clark called “Meet Him at the Manger”. It sold well and Ed Kee and Dale Mathews truly believed in and invested heavily in my talents, assigning to me a steady flow of single-song anthems, collections, and musicals from then on. For the next 26 years, I was blessed with arranging assignments from every major publisher in the industry.

Having sung with my family in hundreds of small rural churches through the years, God placed on my heart a passion to help EVERY choir sound their best. Many of my peers write wonderful music that can only be mastered by the large, extremely talented choirs. I love helping choirs of any size to master the arrangement and sing with confidence! It thrills me to receive countless messages of “We never knew we could sound so good and strong! Everyone in the congregation said we sounded great!

Come back tomorrow for Part 2!