Often called southern gospel or country gospel to distinguish it from black gospel, white gospel music has followed a different trajectory during the past eighty years.
Some of its roots are found in the publishing work and “normal schools” of Aldine S. Kieffer and Ephraim Ruebush. It was promoted by traveling singing school teachers, southern gospel quartets, and shape note music publishing companies such as the A. J. Showalter Company (1879), the James D. Vaughan Publishing Company and the Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company.
Southern gospel also drew much of its creative energy from the Holiness churches that arose throughout the south in the first decades of the twentieth century and that created new music, in addition to the traditional hymns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to accompany their new forms of worship.
Some early country gospel artists, such as The Carter Family, achieved wide popularity through their recordings and radio performances in the 1920s and 1930s. Others, such as Homer Rodeheaver, George Beverly Shea or Cliff Barrows, became well-known through their association with traveling evangelists such as Billy Sunday or Billy Graham.
The city of Hartford, Arkansas, was for a time known as an oasis of Gospel publishing, being home to the Hartford Music Company, which employed the talents of Albert E. Brumley (composer of “I’ll Fly Away”) and E.M. Bartlett (composer of “Victory in Jesus”).
Among the best known southern gospel performers are The Blackwood Brothers, the Jordanaires and the Oak Ridge Boys. As in the case of black gospel, the churchgoing audience for white gospel music has not always forgiven its stars, such as the Oak Ridge Boys, who have crossed over to pop music. Other traditional groups, such as The Imperials, helped lead the development of Contemporary Christian Music.
Today, one of the largest collections, and best source of southern gospel music available to online searchers can be found at GEMM.COM. This impressive site features southern gospel music almost from it’s inception to today’s greatest sounds and praises in LP, Cassette, Video, and CD formats. You can use the GEMM Search Box to the right, or you can click on the link in this article.
Be you black, white or whatever, music itself is blind, and does not discriminate. Truely, southern gospel, as well as all music should be appreciated by everyone…according to personal preferences, regardless of what others may say, think, or feel.
Let the music move you; follow your heart and ears…rather than the crowd!
