Many kinds of gospel and folk music that are thought to be authentic American idioms turn out to have roots in the British Isles or elsewhere in Europe. Not so with Southern Gospel, which is an indigenous American style of gospel music that can be differentiated from mountain gospel, revivalist gospel, rural and country church gospel, and folk gospel. 

 

Its origins go back to the 1930's in the southern states. It was the custom to have a men's quartet in one's church (usually a Southern Baptist, a Pentecostal denomination, or one of the independent Bible churches). The men's quartet was the jewel of the church's music outreach. Four men and a guitar player was the initial authentic ensemble for Southern Gospel music. Later, piano, string bass (then electric bass) and drums were added. 

 

The idiom was characterized by extreme ranges in the tenor and bass, with the top tenor soaring into the soprano range, and the bass descending to basso profundo depths and beyond. This idiom of singing was always miked heavily in order to capture the extreme notes, and to give the quartet a powerful capacity for volume, therefore, sound enhancing equipment was a seminal part of the style and definition of the music. 

 

It wasn't long before quartets began traveling to other churches for "all-night sings," revivals, and a sort of friendly competition with the quartet over at the host church. Churches would swap quartets for a home-and-home appearance. Trips outbound began to lengthen to other southern states. This evolved into a touring situation wherein quartets would use the opportunity on the road to appear at multiple churches rather than just one. 

 

The traveling quartets discovered that they could actually make a living doing this touring and doing concert appearances at an itinerary of churches. They purchased buses, enlisted a booking agent, started making records to sell, and added all of the other accoutrements of a touring musical enterprise. Some groups went overboard with the mercantile aspect of tour. They began to offer all kinds of kitschy stuff for sale in the church lobby, including, as the old joke goes, "autographed copies of the Lord's Supper." You get the idea. 

 

By the 1950's, professional Southern Gospel touring groups were famous in the south, with the likes of The Blackwood Brothers, the Statesmen, and the Rebels. Family groups began to travel, so that now we had mixed voices in the sound, such as the LeFevre Family and the Singing Speer Family.

 

In the 50's and '60's you could count on several concerts a year in a big town, where a line-up of Southern Gospel groups would be featured. By then, they tended to wear gold and silver lamé suits, and sported hair-styles like Elvis. In fact, Elvis and his back-up quartet, the Jordanaires, were heavily into Southern Gospel from the outset of Elvis' fame. The Jordanaires were a discerning musician's SG quartet, with a very sophisticated vocal sound and blend. 

 

The idiom is still strong, and not only in the southern states, but all over the country and the world. Groups like the Cathedrals, the Oak Ridge Boys, and the Florida Boys keep the concert tours lit up. 

 

Below are several selections. Most are pure Southern Gospel tunes, arranged my MR, and sung by him, Jan and other background singers. Diane M. is at the piano, and she is well-versed in the style, having toured with and accompanied a SG quartet in (we like to kid her about this) the deep south of...New Jersey! The fourth song is actually in the idiom that gave rise to SG music: old-time radio gospel. It has been arranged in the SG style, even though the song itself preceded the origins of SG music by perhaps a decade. The astute listener can discern the different, more old-fashioned style of mountain and old-time gospel, while seeing the kinship of this predecessor of Southern Gospel.