Dottie Leonard Miller experienced the hymns of our faith in her early years
while attending Hillcrest United Methodist Church in Wilmington, Delaware, but
her tremendous impact on the world of Christian and Gospel music would not take
place until many years later. As a single mother of two needing any job to make
money to support herself and her children, she took a job with Calvary Records
in Nashville, TN. Dottie began as a radio promoter and developed a love for
Christian and Gospel music along with the communication skills she would later
need to build New Day Christian Distributors and Daywind Music Group, one of
the first female-owned and operated music businesses in the Christian products
arena. Started in her garage in 1981, with a small investment from her parents,
brother, and family friend, New Day and Daywind have grown over the past 36
years into a major source of distribution and original content for the Christian
retail market.
New Day’s offerings began with Christian and Gospel music and New Day
remains true to the format today by distributing exclusively to Christian
retail great independent record labels like Reach Records, Tooth and Nail,
Word/Curb, BMG, Malaco, Tone Tree, Fuel, and Daywind, and many independent
artists, as well as Provident (Sony), Capitol Christian (Universal) and
Integrity on a non-exclusive basis.
While her contributions to the growth of Christian and Gospel music from a
distribution standpoint are significant, perhaps her greatest contribution to
the church as a whole is Daywind Music Group. Daywind Music Group
includes Daywind Records, Daywind Performance Tracks, Daywind Music Publishing,
and Daywind Studios. Co-founded in 1986 by Dottie and the late Ronnie
Drake, Daywind allows Dottie to support ministries through label deals and
provides tools like soundtracks and print music so that every singer and
musician may spread the Gospel through music.
Many of the top artists and songwriters in Southern Gospel music have found
a home at Daywind over the years, impacting millions of people annually through
live performances, music sales, and radio and television on a yearly basis,
including Greater Vison, Karen Peck and New River, the Crabb Family, Jason
Crabb, Legacy Five, Mark Lowry, Gold City, Michael English, the Perrys, Brian
and Free and Assurance, the Nelons, the Blackwood Brothers, Joseph Habedank and
more, along with songwriters Dianne Wilkinson, Gerald Crabb, Ronnie Hinson, Lee
Black, Jason Cox, Chris Cron, Karen Peck, and more.
While supporting these major ministries is a passion for Dottie, her biggest
impact on the Christian and Gospel music likely happens on a weekly basis as
the top songs in Christian and Gospel music are sung by everyday people using
Daywind’s performance tracks in thousands of churches across the world.
Over four thousand five hundred songs, representing the best in all genres of
Christian and Gospel music, have been released over the past thirty years.
These performance tracks enable small and large church members alike to
experience the tremendous songs of Christian and Gospel artists and
songwriters, similar to the way Dottie heard her first hymns in church as a
child.