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History/Background
The Master's Servants Gospel Quartet

To help you get to know us, here is a little background of our group and what has happened to get us to this point in our ministry.

The group was started in the spring of 1982. We originally started singing as a trio in our then home church at Southside Christian Church in Harrodsburg, Ky. The original group was comprised of Curtis Sims as lead singer, Delmer Warren as baritone, and Billy Montgomery as tenor. We sang only at our home church for most of the first one or two years of our ministry. In the fall of 1982 we added a bass singer and switched from three part harmony to the full four part harmony. The new bass singer was Dick Staten, who was also attending church at Southside with us. In the early part of our ministry we called ouselves The Southside Quartet. In 1984 we decided that we needed to find a name for the group that would best try to describe the direction that we felt the Lord was leading us. Thus "The Master's Servants Quartet" name was chosen for our name. In the following few years we began to branch out and sing at different churches in the surrounding areas. During most of those early years Delmer's wife Phyllis played the piano for us as we sang and at times joined in with her strong saprano voice to sing an occasional song. This was always a delight to the people hearing her sing with us. She needed to devote more time to raising their young children and we started using tracks and have done so since. In 1990 Dick Straten decided to spend more time with his family and left the group. At that time Bob Deyo was also in our church, but was not singing, at least where anyone could here him except for his family. Bobs wife told us that he could sing and that he might be interested in doing it some. Bob came out and tried some songs with us and it was obvious when we heard him that he was the man we wanted. At that time Bob came in and started singing the baritone part and Delmer Warren moved to his more natural bass part. For the next few years the group grew greatly in confidence, brothership, and love for the music that the Lord had put before us. In the fall of 1993 Bill Montgomery was assigned a 6 month work assignment in Japan. During his absence Tom Duckworth generously filled in at the tenor part until Bill's return in the spring of 1994. In 1997 Curtis Sims answered the call to go into preaching ministry and accepted the job as minister of Cornishville Christian Church. With that ministry he felt he could not do justice to both and decided to leave the quartet. It took only one visit to hear Dean Lee sing to know that he was the one we would want to fill in at the lead part for Curtis. Dean was doing a solo ministry and quickly accepted the chance to use his talents in the quartet. Dean's ministry was for only a little over a year before he also had to leave the group. We went for almost another year without a full time lead singer. During that time Delmer's son Greg Warren filled in and did a super job with the lead part time. At times when Greg could not be with us we would go back to a trio ministry with Bob moving to the lead and Delmer going back to his original baritone and Bill continuing with the tenor. In the spring of 1999 we were scheduled to sing at Junction City Baptist Church and were singing as a trio. At that concert their music minister Tim Scott helped us out by filling in at the lead and we sang as a quartet. We did the same the next week at Nicholasville Baptist. After that Tim was hooked and left his music minister position and started as our full time lead singer. Bob Deyo left as baritone in 2000 and we added Bob Williams in the baratone spot shortly after that. Tim Scott had a job opportunity in Florida and moved to the sand and beaches in 2003. Early 2004 we added Maurice Baker to sing the lead and that is where we are today along with two of the original members that are still with us Delmer Warren doing the bass and Bill Montgomery singing the tenor. Over the years we had spread out to different churches, but are now all at one church again The Carpenter's Christian Church except for Bob Williams and he attends Imanual Baptist Church in neighboring Boyle County. We still go out to as many places as possible that the Lord leads us. During 1999 we sang 51 engagements and 2000 we had another 49. We took a hit from health issues with either us our our families for some time, but are back with our ministry now singing around 35 engagements each year. We have sang a few times at the Kentucky State Fair Farm Bureau competition and in 1997 had a third place finish and 2000 had a second place finish. We feel very blessed that the Lord has given us the opportunity to carry on this ministry these many years. Hopefully we can continue serving our Lord for many more years. We had a 20 year celebration in 2002 and are hopeful that the Lord will give us the opportunity to have a 30 year celebration by 2012. We hope that we can get all of our old members and friends to come and celebrate that with us.

Original quartet singing with Phyllis Warren - Pianist; Actual size=240 pixels wide

The early days of The Master's Servants with Phyllis.