Just Jack (ePub)

I will always have great memories of Jack Campbell. The first song we ever recorded of his was titled Jesus. It became the Rambos first number-one radio song. We enjoyed recording many others, such as Oh What a Happy Day and March Around The Throne. Jack was a great songwriter and a fine Christian gentleman.

Buck Rambo

Jack Campbell was the creator of the nations number one southern gospel song for seven consecutive weeks in 2012: I Know a Man Who Can, as recorded by Greater Vision. Jack was the seventh son in a poverty-stricken rural Swifton, Arkansas, family. His childhood years during the Depression Era were characterized by tragedy, isolation, poverty, and Hand-Me-Downs.

As an orphan, Jack thought he was in a suburb of Heaven when his brother, Bill, moved Jack and his own family to Gideon, in the bootheel of Missouri. Bill would pastor the Assembly of God Church while raising Jack as if he were his own son, rather than as his younger brother.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, gospel radio was filled with his music. Many of the industrys top artists, including the Rambos, the Inspirations, the Speer Family, the Kingsmen Quartet, and soloist, Governor Jimmie Davis, filled their albums with Jack Campbells music. More recently, country legend George Jones recorded I Know a Man Who Can. In his forty-plus years of traveling, he mentored over forty-five teens and young adults. His son, Chris, a great bass guitar player and songwriter, would go on to play for the Happy Goodman Family. A young Gene McDonald, the great bass singer of the Florida Boys (and the Gaithers), would spend time as a part of the Ambassadors, singing tenor.

Gary ONeal,
The Absolutely Gospel Website