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With more drive and focus, Shea moved to New York City and trained with voice coaches, singing on radio stations WMCA and WHN. Though he had a chance to work in the secular business, Shea instead chose to move to Chicago, where he built his popularity at radio station WMBI and later on ABC radio's "Club Time." So he was already well-known in Christian music circles even before he met Graham when the lanky young man, then a student at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., came to the WMBI studio in Chicago in the early 1940s. "I knew he was from the South. I could hear it in my ears," Shea recalled. "He was what I call a Southern gentleman. He was just too complimentary of what he was hearing on the air." Their friendship began with that first handshake. "I said: 'The only gospel singers I've ever heard of, they have to sing a little bit and then talk for a while, would I have to do that?'" Shea recalled. "I hope not," was Graham's response. A few years later, in 1947, the two began their crusade ministry. Shea always performed a peaceful hymn just before the famed evangelist preached his message and asked people to make Jesus their personal savior. Graham "really loves the quiet song before he speaks. Perhaps something that will point to what he's going to speak on," Shea said. Kurt Kaiser, Shea's accompanist of 30 years, recalled his personal touch. "When he begins to sing a song, he can sing it directly to you. He tried to find a single face in the audience, maybe a sympathetic gaze," Kaiser once said. "This personal quality is same thing that can be found in the gospel message." Shea released only a handful of his own songs during his career, including "The Wonder of It All," but was particularly known for reviving gospel classics, such as "How Great Thou Art," originally a 19th century Swedish hymn that Shea first recorded in 1956. He recorded more than 70 albums of gospel music and won a Grammy along with 10 Grammy nominations. The soloist had two children from his marriage to his first wife, Erma, who died in 1976. Shea and his second wife, Karlene, lived in Montreat. ___ Online: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association:
http://www.billygraham.org/
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