Pastor Brady L. Blade Sr. was born in Shreveport in 1939 to Julia and John Blade. His mother worked at the Lakeside Drug and his father worked for the Texas Pacific Railroad and retired as the head of maintenance at the B'nai Zion Temple. His mother was from Tallula, Louisiana and his father was born in Benton, Louisiana, the last of eight children. Growing up he delivered the Times and Journal newspapers, shined shoes and waited tables at Smith Cross Lake Inn graduating from Booker T. Washington High School in 1957. As a child he began going to Trinity Baptist Church in the Lakeside area of Shreveport, Louisiana and after graduation, attended Wayland Baptist college in Plainview, Texas, graduating from Wiley College. He studied religion and all of the Bible classes offered but also earned a teaching degree for elementary and secondary school. He preached his first sermon when he was fifteen years old at Trinity Baptist Church. He started doing revivals when he was 16 years old beginng at Mt. Zion Baptist Church and continued in west Texas when he was in college. Beginning in 1961, when he was pastoring at Mt. Zion he would do 15 to 20 revivals a year, traveling all over the country. He had a traveling musician, Lawrence Ruben, who played for him. Pastor Blade was the announcer on a radio program on the station KCIJ and changed it from country and western to all Gospel and later added the television program. He also recorded Hallelujah Train. His best memory is of the revival he did at St. John Church in Dallas, Texas in the 1970's when he was in his thirties and over 3,000 people attended every night. Pastor Blade and his wife, Dorothy Gardner Blade have two sons, Brady and Brian and two grandchildren.