Rich Mullins

Rich Mullins occupied multiple roles within the CCM scene, from a cherished stage presence who earned twelve Dove Award nominations to a versatile instrumentalist skilled on hammered dulcimer, piano, and guitar, as well as a prolific tunesmith who penned “Awesome God,” one of the era’s most enduring contemporary praise songs. He entered the world in 1955 in Richmond, IN, and started piano lessons at age four before extending his abilities to guitar and dulcimer. In 1974 he enrolled at Cincinnati Bible College, where he composed praise songs and frequently performed them on acoustic guitar. Through Zion Ministries he crisscrossed the country, guiding praise-and-worship gatherings at various retreats; one such event in Nashville secured him a publishing agreement with Reunion Records, after which Amy Grant included his composition “Sing Your Praise to the Lord” on her 1982 album Age to Age. Two years later he also obtained a recording contract with the same label.

Mullins’s early output already displayed his knack for pointed lyrics paired with folky, Celtic textures, evident on the 1986 self-titled album as well as the subsequent releases Pictures in the Sky and Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth. Although he relocated to Kansas in 1988 to pursue music education studies at Friends University, he maintained a steady recording schedule through the late eighties and early nineties, issuing two volumes of the loosely connected song cycle The World as Best as I Remember It. Following his graduation from Friends, he deepened ties with relief organizations and devoted time in the American Southwest to teaching music to children on a Navajo reservation. Two further sets of original material and an additional compilation appeared before his death in an Illinois car accident in September 1997. The Jesus Record came out the next year, and 2003 brought Here in America, a package of live recordings and demos packaged with a DVD.