The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book

by Inc. The Foxfire Fund

  I think I’ve been lucky and been blessed to be able to hang out with these characters, to be able to play at some of the places, meet some of the people. It has just really worked out well. I feel fortunate to have been a part of it. The music is great, and we all have such a strong friendship. We’ve been through a lot together, but we’ve remained friends throughout it all. I hope it continues on, and I believe it will.

  Wayne Gipson

  I can’t even remember the first time that I performed with the Boys, but it was pretty scary for me gettin’ up in front of all those people. It’s just like anything else; the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with different cultures. It was a wonderful experience. It’s actually easier to perform for somebody you don’t know than it is people you do know. I know that sounds kind of strange. I think you want to do everything just perfect for people you know. I’ve gotten to the point now where it really don’t bother me. Just like any other kind of performing, I guess there’s always butterflies. I really don’t have stage fright or anything like that.

  Your favorite song is probably the one that you’ve just learned. You’ve got so many songs and you do ’em over and over and over. They don’t get boring, but they’re just not as fun to do as new songs. I guess the one right now that’s my favorite is “Last Day at Gettysburg.”

  Nowadays, we actually play less together, practice-wise. We hardly ever get to practice, but we play probably as much or more than we used to back when we were in school. We usually play during the summer and on up into fall.

  I think you can learn to read music. Anybody can learn to read music, but that’s not really what we were. I think George might have had a class or two that taught how to read music, but mainly we done it by ear. You know, just everybody can’t do it by ear, and I just think you gotta have the ability. I think some folks got it; some folks don’t. You really gotta be interested in it. My advice would be that just whichever instrument you want to play, it’s gonna take a long time. It’s not something you do overnight. Just get off to yourself and just practice.

  I think George influenced all of us. I think we all kinda looked up to him. I don’t know that any of us really considered George a teacher, although he really was. He was more of a friend, you know. He just knew so much about music and different instruments. It was a big influence on me.

  I guess one of the reasons that we’ve stayed together so long is that we are all such good friends, all the guys in the band. To really know what I was talking about, you’d really have to be in the band and know just the camaraderie between the guys and just the friendship mainly. I mean, we make a little bit of money here and there, but we really don’t do it for the money. I think it takes a special kind of people, and we were all friends before we began playing music together; well, I was with most of ’em, but I think it takes a special kind of people, you know, for that longevity. To be able to stay together that long, you gotta be able to not be too serious about anything. I really don’t think we’ve ever had any kind of dispute between any of us. You know, there’s some times when somebody’s late or somethin’ that we may get a little bent out of shape, but it’s forgotten in about five minutes. We’ve been lucky.

  The Foxfire Boys’ music may be ordered directly from Foxfire at www.foxfire.org or by phone at 706-746-5828.

  “Because He Loved Me”

  ~Morris Stancil and his son, Greg Stancil~

  Open any church hymnal, look on the back of award-winning southern gospel groups’ CD cases, choose the gospel playlists on airlines, even travel to other countries, and you will most likely see the Stancil name or hear the encouraging words written by Morris. However, Morris’s exceptional songwriting ability came with great loss. Through the tragic murder of his only sister, Morris begged and pleaded with the Lord for a way to cope with his grief. “It was Lord led,” says Morris, because a few days after pouring his heart out to God, words and a melody just came to him from out of nowhere. For over forty years since then, God has given Morris a song every few days. Through unbearable pain and loss, Morris and the millions of people touched by his music have been blessed. “God was in on it even back then,” he says, and exactly right he is. Who else could have turned the hardest time in Morris’s life into such a glorious and blessed ministry?

  —Casi Best

  Morris: I’m Morris Stancil. I was born February 26, 1943, in Alpharetta, Georgia. My daddy and most everybody were farmers back then. That’s all we knew to do, so everybody was poor. There wasn’t too many public jobs, and most people didn’t have much of an education and so forth. I had one brother and one sister. My sister was tragically killed at Christmastime in 1967, so it’s just me and my brother now. She was only nineteen when she was killed. She was the youngest of the three and, of course, that was really bad. Now Christmastime’s always a sad time for us. Mama and Daddy always took us to church, but they just didn’t sing. I always grew up in a Christian home and am thankful for that.

  Growin’ up, I’d get up on Sunday morning and watch The Gospel Singing Jubilee, which had all the older groups that I grew up listening to on it, like the Spear Family and the Lafevers. They were all my inspiration and I loved ’em. My parents never sang, so me getting into music was odd. The Lord gave me, my sister, and brother all three good voices to sing. There never had been no music in the family, on either side, so it had to be God. So I think me getting involved in music was just the Lord calling me into it. I was twelve years old when I got saved. When I got home, the same day I was saved, I had this feeling that I wanted to play the piano. I’d never had that feeling before. It was like my fingers were just wanting to touch the piano keys. I kept talking to Daddy about gettin’ me a piano and, like I said, money was not easy to come by back then. I begged and begged, and he finally bought me this old upright piano for fifty dollars. Well, that was a huge deal for me. Mama’d tell me that even before Daddy bought me the piano that I’d sit in the window[sill] and act like I was playing the piano. So to do that I knew it had to be a calling. When I got the piano, I started taking lessons from this old gentleman not far from us. I didn’t take them very long, about six or eight months, maybe a year. Then one day he told Daddy, “I can’t do anything else for this boy. He’s got the natural talent. Just let him go.” So that’s the way it was. I just took enough to know how to read music, which is the four-part, shape-note, harmony-style music. That helped because now I can read music enough to play any song, usually, that’s put before me out of the church book. To learn the rest of it, I just took out on my own and the Lord showed me that I should just play it like I feel it.

  My songwriting is another thing that I think God intervened and was in on. I told you about my sister, and I had never written a gospel song before her death. The Lord gave me, my sister, and my brother all a talent to sing. We started out just as small children, and after I was saved and got my piano, then we had a little trio. I was about fourteen years old and my sister and brother were younger. We sung at churches around the area—in revivals, singings, and so forth. After she was killed, I had a hard time dealing with that death. We were all very close. I told the Lord one day that I just needed some comfort with it all because I just couldn’t handle it. We were never told the truth, never told why or how it happened, or anything else about her case. Then, one day, the words from out of nowhere started coming to my mind, “By an eye of faith, I can vision Heaven portals, it helps me when my load is hard to bear, when the river is hard to cross, and the hill is oh so high, keep me humble, Lord each day, increase my faith.” So I wrote the full song as it came to me, and it was called “Let Me Look over the Hill”—first song I ever wrote. It just started from there, and every few days I would start hearing another song. I could hear it in my mind, just something feeding the words and the tune, and I’d go to scribbling it down on some paper. That’s how it all started. That was just another calling that the Lord gave me. Why He used it through the death of my sister, I’ll never know, but my si
ster was saved two or three years before she was killed. I could see it all over her face and heard her testimony, and I know where she went. There’s no doubt that she went to be in God’s paradise.

  When I was born, my right arm was completely paralyzed and laid up against my left shoulder, but I had a good, old-fashioned, praying Mama. She said that she started praying that the Lord would let me use that arm in His service someday. She didn’t ask that it be healed, just that I could use it for Him. Well, as time went on, when I started to school, it had moved down some, but not down to my waist yet; however, Mama kept praying. When I started to high school, it had moved on down some more and continued to move slowly down. Even today, it still is not straight and does not have much strength at all in it. Of course, I am left-handed, and do everything with my left hand. There is hardly enough strength in it to lift anything at all, but it [my arm] will play the piano for hours at a time and never get tired. Now, you tell if that is not an answer to a good ol’ mama’s prayers and a miracle from God. That’s important to me because when it comes to getting the Lord’s work done, even later down the road, He’ll do it. The Lord knew that I would play the piano, so He provided the way. Hallelujah, praise His name! It all started as a humble beginning, and now I have been in the gospel music ministry for over fifty years.

  I don’t know exactly how many songs that I’ve written, but it would be well up in the hundreds. I alone have recorded over two hundred of my songs, and there are a lot at home that I’ve never done anything with. I’m thankful that my songs have gone out to other gospel groups and been a blessing. Here again, it must have been what this was all about, that He could use me to bless somebody else.

  The Primitive Quartet has sung several of my songs, I’d say about ten or twelve. The most popular one that they’ve recorded is “Because He Loved Me”; that’s the first one they did of my songs. “Flight Without an Airplane,” “The Fire’s Never Gone Out,” “I’ll Never Walk in the Valley Again,” those are a few that come to mind right off.

  Gold City has done a few of my songs. One of them was “Angels Move Over ’Cause I’m Coming Home.” The Inspirations did a few, and one of them was “I Found a Treasure.” The Kingsmen have done several of my songs. The most popular song and one of their most requested still today is “Beautiful Home.” That song has been recorded by many groups, and you will find it in many church choir books, along with “Because He Loved Me.” They are also played on several commercial airlines’ playlists. I wrote “Holy Angels” and “I’ll Get to Lay It Down”; those are real popular songs, too. The Perrys picked up “Holy Angels” and recorded it.

  I’ve never written anything but gospel songs. The Lord just can’t let me. I’ve had people ask me to write them a country song, but the Lord has never given me a country song. He’s only given me gospel. I feel honored when I hear my songs on the radio by the different groups but then, at the same time, feel humbled that God would use someone like me.

  I had my own quartet before Greg, my son, and I started singing. Over the years I’ve had two or three different group arrangements. My brother and his wife sang with me for years. He sang bass and was a real good bass singer. His wife sang alto, and we had this outside friend who sang with us, too. As times change, people change, and they leave for this reason or that. So finally it wound up just being me and Greg, which everybody seems to like, so that’s the way I’m going to keep it. Greg and I’ve been singing for about ten years, just the two of us. He’s been playing bass for me even back when I had different people with me, so for about twenty years total. We mainly stay in the Southeast to sing, but we’ve done a few trips up north before.

  Churches have changed a lot throughout my life; of course, the music is a world of difference. Way back when we only had a piano, then a little later we had a bass guitar, and then gradually other things came along. It’s usually always been the four-part harmony, but the style has changed a lot. We always just had the old-fashioned, foot-stompin’ southern gospel, and now it’s more on the contemporary side with the praise-worship music. The whole thing has just really changed from what it used to be. It used to be those good, old-fashioned women would get so excited they’d go to shoutin’ and running across the church. We just don’t see that anymore, in most churches anyway. I think that people are longing for those spirit-filled services today and longing for those old-timey ways.

  I would tell young people today to follow their calling. If they know for sure that God’s wanting them to do something, then they need to do it. Financially, they may not get rich, but they’ll be paid many times over by blessings and the blessing of seeing others get saved from their ministry.

  PLATE 84 “It wound up just being me and Greg.” Morris and his son, Greg

  “I Saw the Light”—Greg Stancil

  Greg Stancil is an integral part of a well-loved vocal duet. He plays bass guitar, sings backup for his father, Morris, does some of the lead vocals, and brings humor to the stage, but he has not always walked the straight and narrow. He once was on a downward spiral of alcohol, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. I’ve always heard people say, “When the Lord gets ahold on you, you’ll never be the same.” I knew this statement was true; however, I did not realize how true prior to meeting Greg Stancil. Greg’s life has taken a complete one-eighty since the day he received God’s gift of salvation and traded rock music for the sacred hymns penned by a talented father. Greg attempted to outrun the Lord for many years, but quickly learned after an encounter with the devil and his demons [read about this experience on this page] that Jesus was the much better choice. Today Greg is living for the Lord and following through in the music ministry God has given to him. Greg has been an inspiration to many by sharing the comparison of his life before knowing the Lord. Greg says the best thing in his life was when he “saw that white light.”

  —Casi Best

  Greg: My name is Greg Stancil. I was born in 1967. Life growing up with my daddy, oh boy, I guess I would say that I’m just thankful that I grew up in my daddy’s home, because actually Mama and Daddy had got divorced when I was about six years old, and I was sorta like in between. Anyway, it all boiled down to one thing: My daddy’s mama, my granny, practically raised me, pretty much. I grew up in the home with them [his grandmother and father], and thank God it was a religious home. You know, it’s like the Bible says: If you bring one up in that way, they’ll never forget that, but I was also the one who also wanted to experiment in the world. I wanted to have the Christian atmosphere, but at the same time, I thought I wanted to live life like everybody else was living it. I realized, through time, that wasn’t the life to live.

  A lot of it has got to do with your environment, who you hang with. Where we grew up—now, don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of good people, but also there was these kids that was in the wrong. A lot of ’em were drinking alcohol and doing drugs and all sorts of things. I sorta fell in that category with them. The next thing that I knew, one thing led to another, and I won’t lie: It started off as a good time and I had fun, but looking back on the results of it all, it didn’t turn out as good as I thought that it would turn out; it had a flip side to it. A lot of things can start off good, but if you leave God out of anything, you won’t have anything, and you won’t be anything. I believe that the only thing that saved me were the prayers that were going out for me. I remember there was a lot of times when I was about eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old, I would come into the house maybe two thirty or three o’clock in the morning, and I would hear just this loud voice, and I would think, “God, what in the world?” I thought somebody was dying. I thought, “What’s going on?” I’d go through the house, trying to sneak in, of course, but after hearing this loud voice I’d think, “That sounds like Granny,” and I would think something was wrong. So I’d go hauling off through the house and open her bedroom door, and she’d have that little night-light on in there and you could see; it wasn’t bright, just that dim look in there but, man,
there she was on all fours, on her hands and knees, and, I mean, she was hollerin’ out to the top of her voice to God. I would keep hearing her bring up the name Greg. She kept bringing up my name and asking God to watch over me and all. At the time I just thought, “Well, whatever; that’s good, I guess,” but that would linger with me ’cause so many times I would come in late like that, or maybe a day or two later, and hear her doing that same thing. At the time I couldn’t see the whole picture ’cause I was lost, and to me all that was nonsense, but I thought, “So be it.”

  My turning point or last straw came when I realized the truth about my surroundings and about those I thought were my friends in that environment of drugs and alcohol. It just seemed like everything started closing in and something started bothering me, tugging at my heart. I had always been raised in church, and I’d hear preachers preach on rock ’n’ roll, drugs, Heaven, hell, and so on. There’d be a lot of times I would think to myself, “God, am I really saved?” At an earlier age I did go up to the altar and ask God to save my soul, and I thought I was saved, but I really just never got a connection to make me sure of that, and I started questioning myself. When all that started taking place, I was hearing those preachers’ words going over and over in my head, “If you died today, do you know where you’re going?” or “Are you saved, and if you are, are you really saved? Do you really have that assurance? Do you know that?” I got to thinking more and more about that ’cause I’d heard them say that if you’re saved, you don’t really live the life I was living. Of course, we all make excuses for everything, trying to avoid doing that better thing. We don’t want to give up what we are doing, and we don’t realize it at the time that what we are doing is killing us. It is what’s gonna take us out of this world. All that had started bothering me.