‘The Singing Mormons’ reunite to perform across the globe
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REXBURG — It’s not every day that a group of missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sell records and get rockstar fandom. But that’s just what happened to nine young men in Denmark in the 1960s.
They were known as “The Singing Mormons.”
And this year, a local project has reunited the original members and brought their songs back to life with new singers and a new show. The goal — make it back to Denmark and make a movie.
How the Singing Mormons got started
Cory Sorensen, manager of the Singing Mormons Project, said he grew up hearing stories about his father, Roger Sorensen, and his time with the Singing Mormons.
The story went like this: in 1962, the LDS mission in Denmark was looking for better ways to reach out to people and spread its message. They held a talent show and formed a singing group.
Roger was already a talented pianist. Before he went on his mission there, he learned to perform a very long and challenging concerto. And when he joined the Denmark mission in June of 1962, they quickly realized they could use someone with his talents.
So they formed a quartet, and Roger arranged all their music. He soon found, though, that he would be better suited to focus on piano, so they recruited one more singer. The group became a quartet and an accompanying pianist.
“That began the group, and they started rehearsing,” Cory said. “They would get up, just like all the other missionaries, and they would go out proselyting or knocking on doors for the first part of every day, and then at about 10 or 11 in the morning they’d go back to the church, and they’d rehearse for two to three hours every day.”
The group rehearsed for months. They practiced covers of bands like the Four Preps, the Everly Brothers, and the Lettermen.
Then they performed, and it did really well. So they started scheduling shows in towns across Denmark.
But the first of these shows didn’t go so well. Four people showed up. So they tried a different approach. They decided to seek permission from the Danish government to go sing at schools and drum up interest in evening concerts.
And their first evening concert after this was a huge success. It had standing room only.
“They performed over 150 concerts in three and a half months,” Cory said. “They took the nation by storm, and people started calling them the Singing Mormons. And by the end of their tour, they were so popular that they had multiple talent scouts reaching out to the mission office.”
They got permission from the mission president and the prophet, and they made a record deal. The young men would go on to see their records in shops throughout Denmark next to albums from Elvis and the Beatles. They also had several hits on the radio and once performed at a national music festival in front of 80,000 people.
“We arranged everything from cowboy music to pop music,” Roger told EastIdahoNews.com. “I play the classical piano, so I would usually play the Warsaw Concerto or some of the famous composers like Chopin or Beethoven. We were really well received. In fact, we were so well received we were as popular in Denmark as the Beatles were in England.”
“We could not knock on any door after that without being recognized,” Roger said.
Roger said once that some teenage girls even tore emblems off their jackets, as though it were Beatlemania.
While the Singing Mormons remained a five-member group, as missionaries returned home, they changed members. All in all, the original group included Roger, Mark Petersen, Jim Williams, Gary Gibbons, Mick Bishoff, Paul Robbins, Stephen Poulson and David Sandburg. Occasionally, a Danish boy named Neils Valentiner would also join the group and play a string bass.
The group disbanded in 1964 after the young men were released from their missions.
The revival
Since their time in the Singing Mormons, the original members have held distinguished roles in the church and their communities.
“The amazing thing about the Singing Mormons is every single one of us has become an unusual builder of the kingdom of God after we were released from our mission,” Roger said.
They’ve held roles as temple president, mission presidents, medical doctors, a banker, a temple sealer, a temple architect and a bishop. Now in their 80s, they’re getting the band back together.
Cory said the idea for reviving the Singing Mormons came after his mother passed away. He had dreams of her singing their music. So, he started by getting all the original members back together at a cabin in Ashton.
“I started the Singing Mormon Project, got all the originals back together, three years ago this summer, and that’s what started the ball rolling,” Cory said. “And I said, ‘We’re going to go back to Denmark, so pack your bags.”
Then they auditioned seven new young men from Rexburg and several cities in Utah to join the band and sing their old songs for them at shows. New members of the Singing Mormons include Jarom Huntsman, Nathan McCown, Isaac Ford, Kaden Childs, Cooper Merrill, Joseph Shaw and Will Schank.
Huntsman, a student at Brigham Young University-Idaho, told EastIdahoNews.com that he grew up singing and performing, but never to the level he is now with the Singing Mormons. When he first joined the group, he didn’t think too much about the legacy. He saw it as a chance to go to Europe and sing. But now he sees it as much more.
“It has been an incredible experience for me to learn to be able to perform with a group of great guys and to spread this music and amazing things through our voices,” Hunstman said.
“It’s been humbling to know that I’m a part of something so big,” Huntsman continued.
As the Singing Mormons make their way back to Denmark, they’ll also tour the U.S. They had a kick-off performance in Rexburg in May, and have upcoming concerts in Oregon, Utah, and Nevada. Then in July, they’ll fly to Copenhagen, Denmark.
To document it, he also teamed up with others, including Luke Johnson, the executive producer of BYU Broadcasting, Russ Kendall, the owner of Kaleidoscope Pictures in Provo, and other talented cinematographers. Their goal is to make a feature film about the Singing Mormons in Denmark.
Cory said the Singing Mormons want to return to Denmark to share their music and the gospel message. He said they know that membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints grew during the period they were singing in the sixties.
“That’s the message we’re trying to share with people and the world — is that people who hated the Mormons and hated the missionaries, their hearts were changed because of music,” Cory said. “They were able to bring people to concerts and see that these Mormon missionaries were normal teenage boys singing normal teenage boy music.”