For decades, Alvin Slaughter has been remembered as one of the powerhouse voices to emerge from the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir before becoming an internationally known worship leader.
But behind the big voice, packed churches and successful recordings was a much messier story.
In a remarkably candid new conversation with 4Him's Andy Chrisman on the 1 Degree of Andy podcast, Slaughter opens up about bankruptcy, the collapse of his first marriage, years of insecurity, the painful cost his touring career exacted on his relationship with his children-and why, after nearly two decades without a new solo album, he is unexpectedly heading back into the studio.
The episode, released August 13, finds Chrisman introducing Slaughter as one of Brooklyn Tabernacle's most celebrated vocalists and someone who profoundly influenced him as a young Christian artist.
But Slaughter's journey to Christian music success was anything but straightforward.
He reveals that he married young and had three children, only for the marriage to eventually fall apart. The experience shook his faith so badly that he began questioning the point of prayer and pulled away from church.
His sister eventually persuaded him to visit Brooklyn Tabernacle.
Slaughter initially sat anonymously in the balcony-and says something about what he encountered there kept drawing him back. Eventually, he auditioned for the choir, where Carol Cymbala gave him a song called "I'm Clean."
The title couldn't have been more personal.
Slaughter says he had returned to God believing he wasn't "good enough" or "clean enough," making the song an expression of his own testimony. It became his first Brooklyn Tabernacle solo.
Then came the unlikely beginning of his solo career.
Slaughter wasn't sitting around plotting how to become a Christian music star. In fact, he says he loved being part of the choir and never really intended his outside singing engagements to become a career.
Then someone told him he needed to make a cassette.
There was one small problem: he had no money.
A man Slaughter worked for offered him an astonishing $10,000 to make the recording. To Slaughter, that might as well have been a fortune.
"I never seen that much money in my life," he recalls, adding that he wasn't sure he was even earning $10,000 a year at the time.
And the story gets better.
Slaughter and his musicians traveled to Indianapolis to record-apparently without realizing they were arriving during the Indianapolis 500.
Hotels?
Forget about it.
Slaughter recalls that accommodations for miles around were packed. Fortunately, Bill Gaither came to the rescue, allowing the group to stay at his guest house and use his studio for a drastically reduced rate. Legendary arranger and producer Lari Goss then drove up from Nashville and produced the project for free.
What began as a homemade cassette suddenly had some serious Christian music firepower behind it.
Within roughly a year, Slaughter says he was traveling across America. Don Moen eventually heard about him, Integrity Music signed him, and his music began reaching audiences around the world. Television appearances followed, including extensive exposure on TBN.
It sounds like the dream.
Except Slaughter now admits that success came with a painful price.
Just before his touring career took off, he went bankrupt.
"We lost our house. We lost everything we had," Slaughter reveals.
Then, almost unbelievably, his ministry career began exploding just as his financial life had collapsed.
Suddenly he could afford another home. He could buy clothes for his children instead of relying on hand-me-downs. He could afford a reliable car.
But because Slaughter remained convinced that the success couldn't possibly last, he says he accepted virtually every opportunity that came his way.
And that's where the regret enters the story.
"I wasn't there for a lot of my kids' things," Slaughter admits.
He recalls attending only one graduation and missing birthdays, Christmases, Thanksgivings and New Year's celebrations because he was somewhere on the road singing.
"I said yes to everything."
Slaughter now recognizes what was driving him.
Fear.
After experiencing bankruptcy and financial instability, he was terrified that the opportunity to make a living through music would disappear as suddenly as it had arrived. Looking back, he describes himself as "chasing my fear of failure."
His family relationships would later face another painful chapter.
Slaughter reveals that following his divorce, his adult children were angry with him and stopped talking to him for a number of years.
Initially, he felt defensive. Eventually, however, he realized that his children's experience of what happened could be very different from his own.
He apologized.
Today, he says they have a great relationship.
Slaughter eventually found love again as well.
After believing he would never remarry, he met a Canadian woman. The relationship developed slowly, and the pair ultimately married. Slaughter says they now have a blended family of six children and 12 grandchildren.
And after all those twists and turns, there's another surprise coming.
Alvin Slaughter is recording again.
Slaughter says he hasn't recorded a solo album since 2008 and wasn't particularly looking to make another one. But after participating in an updated version of "Holy Holy Holy" for StowTown Worship and recording with Sing Church in Brazil, the veteran worship leader says he's now writing and preparing new music of his own.
The plan, according to Slaughter, is to release something next year through the StowTown Worship label.
For longtime fans, that's quite a comeback.
Nearly four decades after the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir helped launch his ministry, Slaughter is still traveling, still singing-and apparently preparing for another recording chapter he never expected to have.
But these days, the man behind the voice seems far less interested in appearing successful.
"I don't ever want to learn from someone who doesn't have scars," Slaughter tells Chrisman.
It's a striking statement from someone who now seems perfectly willing to show his own.
Bankruptcy. Divorce. Family estrangement. Career insecurity. Missed milestones. Second chances.
And now, at an age when many of his contemporaries might be winding things down, Alvin Slaughter is getting ready to make new music again.
