Gospel singer and songwriter Joyce “Dottie” Rambo was killed early Sunday morning while traveling from Illinois to Texas, when her tour bus encountered severe weather on Interstate 44 in southwest Missouri. The bus ran off the road near the town of Mount Vernon and struck an embankment. Rambo was pronounced dead at the scene. Seven passengers on the bus were injured, several seriously.
Nashville, Tennessee, resident Rambo was on her way to a Mother’s Day concert at a church in North Richland Hills, Texas, following a Saturday night performance in Granite City, Illinois, just outside of St. Louis. She was 74.
Dottie Rambo is perhaps best known as a songwriter. Among her more than 2,500 published songs were gospel classics such as He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need, Sheltered in the Arms of God, Behold the Lamb, Holy Spirit, Thou Art Welcome, and We Shall Behold Him, the gospel music Song of the Year in 1982.
Her songs have been recorded by artists as varied as Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston to Alison Krauss and Rhonda Vincent.
She was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007.
