I love it when this happens. A few years ago I wrote about watching the Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line and discovering that the Blackwood Brothers were in it.
Tonight me and my wife were watching Letters to God, a real tearjerker but quite a good movie, and what do you know. I heard a very quiet hint of a solid a cappella choir, and then the scene moved to a church where the choir was rehearsing. The sound level came up, and the room was filled with the unmistakable sound of a Derric Johnson ensemble! Awesome.
And I’m pretty sure that was Derric himself directing the choir. As I was exclaiming over this to my wife, I spotted Kevin Miles in the back row! Awesome!
Derric has arranged incredible 8+ part a cappella music for ages. Re’Generation, the Voices of Liberty down at Epcot, Liberty Voices (made up of Voices of Liberty alums if I understand correctly) are all pretty much his doings. He’s truly a legend in a cappella music.
Their “rehearsal” in the church ended, and the pastor exclaimed how good they sounded and that he’d see them on Sunday morning. Riiiiiiiiiight, you just find me a church that has a choir like that sing on Sunday morning!
Kevin Miles is a long time Derric Johson group singer, I think he’s sung with all the aforementioned Derric Johnson groups, and is known as the Voice of Walt Disney World. My favorite though, was when he sang with the mind-bending barbershop international champion quartet Platinum. Incredible stuff.
Some more things I figured out. I knew that he had done a bunch of work as a duo with another Derric Johnson singer as Miles and Webb. I learned tonight on the internet that Webb is Rick Webb of the current Southern Gospel family group, the Rick Webb Family. I then realized that they are playing the Blue Gate in Shipshewana several days this week and weekend!
I’m not done. Later in the movie, I heard an announcer at a park or something in the background of a scene mention “Wintley Phipps.” All right! I had just been telling my wife a few days ago about how I was introduced to Wintley Phipps music and became a big fan. He’s got a voice like a freight train, enormous.
Soon after that scene, sure enough, there was Wintley Phipps. He was in the capacity of an emcee or moderator though, for a while I thought we weren’t going to hear him sing. Instead we had to listen to a kid with a gittar sing some emotional ditty with his best emotional delivery.
Shortly though, we got to hear a few lines of Wintley singing his arrangement of Amazing Grace on the soundtrack. Very nice.