Dottie Rambo: The Gifted Songwriter of the Twentieth Century (Part 4)

Dottie Rambo on Dove Nightline (Part 4)



Come Spring



Is That the Lights of Home?



How Graciously Grace Has Covered My Sin



Dottie Meets Buck Rambo

For a few years between the ages of 12 and 16 Dottie Rambo would be traveling and singing in churches.  She would write songs and she would sing and play the guitar.  There was a group from her church with whom she traveled with.  I don't know all the different places she traveled when singing in churches, but I do know she traveled around Indiana and then eventually to Dawson Springs, Kentucky.  Dottie was approximately 15 years old when she participated at a revival meeting in Dawson Springs, Kentucky.   From what I heard on "Dottie Rambo: Behind the Music", the pastor of the church she was singing at was Bro. Jimmy Russell.  It was there that Dottie encountered the Rambo family.  The Rambo family were a very poor family themselves.  They struggled just like the Luttrell family and other families during the Great Depression and beyond.  Noah and Mary Rambo had several children.  One of their sons was named Buck Rambo.  Buck had taken an interest in Dottie and would hang around the group Dottie was traveling with.  Usually after the meeting was over, Dottie would go out with a group to purchase a coke and fellowship with one another.  Buck asked Dottie to go out on a date with him.  Dottie told him that she didn't date men that weren't Christians.  Buck at the time wasn't a Christian.  How she knew he wasn't a Christian I don't have any idea.  However, she knew he wasn't.  She had it instilled in her that Christians aren't to hook up with non-believers.  She mentioned in her interview with Joanne Thompson on Dove Nightline in 2007 that she saw a few men that she thought were appealing but she didn't let them know it.  She said she was too smart and too proud to allow any man to think she might have any interest in them. 

I believe it might have been toward the end of the week in one of the revival meetings that Dottie Rambo was singing either "Pass Me Not" or one of the songs that she wrote that she happened to see Buck at the altar when the invitation was given to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior.  Following his "conversion", Buck finally asked Dottie, "Now can I go out with you?"  Joanne Thompson remarked to Dottie that it makes you wonder if Buck actually got saved that night.  It does make you wonder that when you consider that was the first thing he asked Dottie after he left the altar along with some of the problems he faced later in life.  However, God will have to be the final judge at that.  As a result of his altar "experience", they started going on group dates.

About six months or so later Buck one day in his father's car asked Dottie to marry him.  Dottie told him that she wasn't interested in marrying him.  She admitted this in her interview with Joanne and on another Dottie Rambo special.  Buck kept on pressuring her saying that they were meant to be together.  Dottie told him she didn't want to go through with this.  Buck was persistent and he said something that persuaded Dottie to go through with this.  Even though Dottie was very reluctant to go through with this marriage, she thought they could both work things out.  As time would reveal, Buck and Dottie had major problems in their marriage.  Their marriage was eventually dissolved in 1994, which I will discuss in another post.  I will say that given I don't know much about the problems their marriage encountered, it would be easy to judge and assume their marriage was rocky partially given the fact that Dottie went into the marriage not being in love with Buck.  However, there have been couples where one or both partners didn't have their heart into the relationship prior to marriage and still were able to have a great marriage.  A couple can learn to love one another if they will determine to follow the Bible's prescription for a happy, Biblical home.  It would be easy to assume that Dottie struggled to be the wife she needed to be because her heart wasn't in the relationship at the time they married and as a result, that partially had an effect on Buck.  However, one can't prove that.  Dottie did struggle with her marriage when Buck had betrayed her years later.  I heard Reba say in an interview that the couple had given themselves more to their calling in their music ministry than each other, which definitely contributed to the problems their marriage encountered.  Going out and traveling on the road extensively can cause undue stress on a marriage, esp. with all the different types of people out there musicians can encounter.  There are fans at these concerts that want to shake your hands and talk to you.  Those kinds of things alone can be unhealthy for a marriage especially if it involves the opposite sex.  I will discuss the problems Buck and Dottie faced with each other in a later post.

Buck and Dottie Rambo married in 1950.  She was sixteen years old.  I believe he was around nineteen years old.  I heard on "Dottie Rambo: Faith and Fame" they both first settled in a home in Evansville, Indiana.  They eventually moved in and settled around Dawson Springs and Madisonville, Kentucky.  They were both members of the church that Bro. Jimmy Russell pastored.  He was a Pentecostal preacher.  I read in The Legacy of Buck and Dottie Rambo that Buck and Dottie attended a United Pentecostal Church.  I don't quite understand all of that because Dottie did believe in the Trinity.  Her songs even reflected that.  Bro. Russell probably pastored an Apostolic church or something of that nature.  He definitely pastored one of the holiness churches.  You can tell that by the way Dottie adorned herself during her earlier years she attended a Pentecostal holiness church.  She had long hair and wore nice, modest dresses during her earlier years.  Of all the pictures I've seen of Dottie singing in front of crowds, I never saw pictures of Dottie singing in public wearing pants until either the late 70's or early 80's.  She used to wear dresses extensively when she sang in public from the pictures I saw of her during her earlier years.  She dressed very nicely. 

In 1952, Reba Faye Rambo was born.  Reba was born approximately seventeen or eighteen months after Buck and Dottie married.  She was the only child of Buck and Dottie Rambo.  Dottie desired to have more children, but complications in delivering Reba prevented Dottie from having any more children.  I will leave off on this note and speak about the early days of Buck and Dottie's singing ministry in the next post.