Steve Mauldin
Steve Mauldin has worked in the Southern Gospel industry as a producer, arranger, and orchestrator. He is the brother of Russell Mauldin whose career followed a similar path as a church choral music arranger and orchestrator. They are the sons of songwriter Horace Mauldin.
Mauldin began his career performing with his family group, The Mauldin Family. In 1972, he began working at Mark Five recording studios in Greenville, South Carolina as a studio musician. After relocating to Nashville, Tennessee in the early 1980s, he began working with many of the top secular acts ranging from Chet Atkins to Richard Marx. He continued working in the gospel field as well, producing some of Gold City's top albums among others. He has also scored for film including work on several major motion pictures like Ernest Goes To Jail (1990) and War Room (2015).
Mauldin is also infamous for a purposely bad vocal recording. In 1990, Mauldin and sound engineer Kevin McManus goofed around in the recording studio one night with Mauldin singing the Christmas classic "Oh Holy Night" over a track he had arranged for Christ Church Choir and (then) soloist Guy Penrod. Copies were made and shared; Mauldin would later say it happened without his knowledge. In 2007, seventeen years after the recording was first made, it was uploaded to the "noveltysongs" channel on YouTube where it was labeled the "worst rendition ever." There it became a viral sensation logging views in the multi-millions.