Jeff Stice obit

Music Legend Jeff Stice dies due to Covid-related fall

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BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Local music legend Jeff Stice passed away last week due to a Covid-related fall, according to his Facebook page.

The Edmonson County native, known as Mr. Piano man, studied piano at Western Kentucky University. He was famous all around for his Christian music.

After Stice graduated from high school he went on to major in piano performance at WKU.

Stice played with several different award winning quartets.

He was voted musician of the year in 2007 by the Southern Gospel Music Guild. He received the Favorite Musician of the Year award in 2009 and 2012 at the Southern Gospel Fanfare. In 2007 he was voted into the Edmonson County Music Hall of Fame in Brownsville, Kentucky.

In 2010 and 2011 he received Grammy and Dove award nominations for the album Love Came Calling.

Jeff was the son of (the late) Jimmy and Evonia Stice and began playing piano at an early age. He began playing for his father's quartet at the age of 15 and after graduating from ECHS in 1978, he went on to major in Piano Performance at Western Kentucky University. Shortly after, Jeff was offered a job with The Blackwood Brothers, where he played for the next four years. He then joined The Rex Nelon Singers on the piano where he received his first award, "Favorite Young Artist" by the Singing News Magazine.

He would leave the Nelons to help form the award-winning male quartet Perfect Heart in 1990. The group's very first song, "Somebody Touched the Lord," went number one on the Singing News charts and would win "Southern Gospel Song of the Year" in 1990. Jeff would later hire me as a vocalist for the group in 1997. We traveled together until the group disbanded in 1999.

In 2002 he was offered an opportunity from Louise Mandrell to put together a quartet for her theater in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which led to Jeff helping form the award-winning Triumphant Quartet, as pianist, producer, and arranger for 12 years. Jeff also played in Louise’s orchestra on several occasions.

Last Tuesday, Stice passed away due to a bad fall on August 28th. The Jeff Stice recovery fund on his Facebook page says that he passed out due to severe dehydration from covid.

At 61-years-old, Stice died peacefully in his sleep, according to Patton Funeral Home.