Dottie Rambo's "It’s The Soul of Me" is Available for the First Time Digitally in 53 Years!

By Blessing Harper Aug 02, 2021 08:50 PM EDT

For the first time in 53 years, Gospel music veteran Dottie Rambo's 1968 Grammy Award-winning album, It's The Soul of Me, is now available on all digital music platforms. The new digital issue of It's The Soul of Me has been remastered from the original master tapes and will mark the first time in over a decade that the album has been made available to digital music stores and streaming services.

The album was recorded live at Nashville's RCA Studio B with a rhythm section comprised of country music's top session players including Weldon Myrick (Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson), Buddy Harman (Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams Jr.) and Marvin Hughes (Johnny Cash, The Everly Brothers). Backed by Nashville's Pentecostal Tabernacle Church of God In Christ Choir, with their then-pastor Jonathan Greer on the organ, It's The Soul of Me made gospel music history when it was released in June of 1968, finding success in both black and white markets. It would take home the Grammy Award for Best Soul Gospel Performance in 1969.

Rambo would earn nine additional Grammy nominations throughout her career and win Dove Awards for both Songwriter of the Year and Song of the Year in 1981 for "We Shall Behold Him," and Traditional Gospel Song of the Year in 1997 for Whitney Houston's recording of "I Go To The Rock." She wrote hundreds of songs, recorded by the likes of Elvis Presley, Sandi Patty, Barbara Mandrell, Andrae Crouch, Dolly Parton, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Vickie Winans and many others. She was awarded the Songwriter of the Century Award from the Christian Country Music Association and the ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award. She died in a bus accident while touring in 2008.