Horace Clarence Boyer had a profound impact on gospel music over the past 50 years. He rose to fame in the late 1950s as one half of the Boyer Brothers.
Boyer died in July at age 74. This month, teachers, students and fans honored him at a memorial service in Central Florida.
The Boyer Brothers hit the road before they were even teenagers. But James Boyer says that their father, a pastor, set some ground rules.
"As little brothers will do, you fight. And my father didn't want us to fight each other," James Boyer says. "So he gave us an ultimatum when we were 10 and 11. He said, 'You cannot go anywhere to sing until you stop fighting a year.' That was the longest year of my life, and after that, I never hit him again."
James and Horace came from a family that took gospel music seriously, and that gave their singing credibility, composer Carl Maultsby says.
"When one heard the Boyer Brothers, it was clear they were not just performers," Maultsby says. "They were ministers of music."
Source: Mark Simpson, NPR
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