Paradigm Music Productions

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How did a business major with an MBA become one of the country's leading Gospel songwriters? Lanny explains in his own words..... I was born and raised in a middle class family in Columbus, Ohio. My father, Pearl, a railroad engineer, was not a churchgoer. My mother, Precious, was the daughter of a Methodist preacher. Any music that was in my genes came through her. She sang and played guitar in revival services while still a teenager, traveling all across the Midwest and the East. Along with my mother, brother Larry, and sister Sharon, I faithfully rode the city bus to church every week during my growing up years. Because churches in my denomination didn't have paid ministers of music, I never even considered a career in music when I was growing up. At age 9, I began taking piano lessons from Frank Meier. One of the rudest awakenings of my life was the day I graduated to John Thompson's Book Two and realized that I hadn't learned how to read notes when I was in Book One! When I was 11, two significant things happened that dramatically affected the rest of my life: 1) Mr. Meier moved, my lessons stopped and I started improvising and teaching myself by ear; and 2) I gave my heart to the Lord, was baptized and received His Spirit. I never actually had any formal piano lessons again after that until I started studying at San Jose State University many years later. Two people helped nurture my love for music in general, and gospel music in particular: Ruth Morgan, my junior high school music teacher, and Lois Newstrand, a pastor's wife who played piano and organ, sang, directed choirs and allowed me, as a teenager, to play piano for the camp choir. In high school, I was the top-ranking male in my class and was the class speaker in my graduating class. I also received a scholarship to Ohio State. I was just good enough at art and math to make it very difficult to decide where to devote my vocational energies. Although my love for music was paramount in my heart and mind, I felt that I didn't have enough classical training to enter the School of Music at OSU, so I actually threw music out as a possible career, and decided to study architectural engineering, since it seemed to be a logical combination of my other main aptitudes. After one quarter in architectural studies, I concluded that being an architect would consume my life and, all factors considered would not be in my best interest.. So I switched to business education, figuring that I would enjoy teaching, and if the economics of being a teacher didn't work out well enough for me to support a family, I would use the business training to work in the business arena. In 1963, three major things happened: 1) I got married, 2) graduated from OSU later that year with my degree in Business Education, and 3) I got my first real job, teaching math and business at Crestview Junior High School in the Columbus Public School System. A year later I was transferred to Whetstone High School, where I taught business law, typing and bookkeeping.

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