VALDOSTA — Singing the refrain, “I’m gonna walk, I’m gonna talk for my Lord,” the girls dedicated the gospel tune to the songwriters of Brother Colbert and Joyce Croft.

The girls didn’t know it, but the Crofts were sitting in the audience. The husband-wife songwriting team of the Crofts were surprised to hear their song.

Given they have written 5,000 songs, you wouldn’t think they would be surprised at all to hear their songs performed at gospel events. They will certainly be performed Monday during their 21st Annual Labor Day Gospel Sing. The event includes the Crofts, as well as Brother Archie Watkins, whom Joyce Croft estimates has recorded about 24 Croft songs with the Inspirations. The legendary Naomi & The Segos has recorded Croft songs and will perform during Monday’s event.

As songwriters, many people know the songs but don’t associate them with the Crofts. The Kingsmen and Marty Stuart, for example, lead a long list of musicians who have sung and recorded “I Can’t Even Walk (Without You Holding My Hand).” So, for a Marty Stuart fan, “I Can’t Even Walk” is a Marty

Stuart song.

It is, but it isn’t. It’s a Croft song. They wrote it in 1974. The Crofts penned the lines: “I can’t even walk without You holding my hand. The mountain’s too high and the valley’s too wide. Down on my knees, I learned to stand. And I can’t even walk without You holding my hand.”

There are thousands of songs: “Flow Through Me,” “I Believe He Died For Me,” “Come Into the Presence,” “Almost Home.” But “I Can’t Even Walk” has become their signature song.

Joyce Croft laughs recalling one time when she and her husband performed the song. “The pastor’s wife said, ‘That is my favorite song.’ We thanked her and asked, ‘When did you find out we wrote it?’ She looked at us and said, ‘You wrote it?’”



WITHOUT YOU HOLDING MY HAND

Music brought the Crofts together.

Joyce had taken piano lessons in Valdosta since the age of 12. Her high school senior year, Joyce performed in one of her music teacher’s programs. Colbert worked sound equipment, recording the show.

“He used flattery and said he wanted a date with me,” Joyce says. They’ve been together ever since, married for 45 years now. The same number of years they have ministered.

In addition to loving one another, they discovered a natural musical rapport. He would think of a song and sing it. Having studied music, she would pick up the tune immediately and play it.

Early, he told her to write the song down. “We may have sheet music one day,” she recalls him saying. “Little did we know we’d eventually have sheet music for 5,000 songs.”

Soon, they shared creative duties in the songs they created. Word became their music publishers.

“People think if you’re from Jasper, Fla., you can’t write songs,” she says.

The Crofts kept proving them wrong.

“I don’t know if we could have done it if we were not together,” she says of writing songs with her husband.



ALMOST HOME

Twenty years ago, while pastoring at Faith Chapel in Jasper, they started the free Labor Day Gospel Sing in Hamilton County, Fla. Leaving Faith Chapel in 1998, they moved the event to Colbert Croft’s one-time hometown of Valdosta.

A year later, Colbert Croft suffered a debilitating stroke. The event continued with help from Brother Benny Daniels of the long-time gospel radio show “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.”

It has been a difficult time. Physicians have told Joyce that Colbert would never improve. She should put him in a nursing home. She refused.

“Last year, when he was in the hospital and not supposed to live,” she says. “They brought him back to the room after some testing and he had a song.”

During the medical tests at South Georgia Medical Center, Colbert Croft kept repeating the words of a song. A nurse found a pen and wrote the words down as fast as she could, as fast as Colbert could repeat them.

He sang the song again for Joyce. They finished the song by the bedside of his hospital room.

The song: “Could Be Jesus Coming After Me.”

Last May was a time they’d said he’d never be better again. Last July, in the hospital, he found the words for “Could Be Jesus Coming After Me.” Back home, he was not the same. Not the same man who co-wrote all those songs. Not the same man she had married. He was a shadow of himself.

Then, one morning, Joyce Croft went to church. She came home and he was himself.

“He had come back to me,” she says of that morning. “It was a miracle.”

He’s been improving ever since.

“I can’t even walk without You holding my hand. The mountain’s too high and the valley’s too wide. Down on my knees, I learned to stand. And I can’t even walk without You holding my hand.”



GOSPEL SING

The 21st Annual Labor Day Gospel Sing, featuring Brother Colbert & Joyce Croft; Naomi & the Segos; Brother Archie Watkins formerly of the Inspirations; New Tradition; The Johnson Two; Brother Benny Daniels.

When: Monday, with free supper, 4 p.m.; free gospel music, 6 p.m.

Where: Mathis City Auditorium, 2300 N. Ashley St.

Admission: Free.