2005

Ministry or Entertainment?

One of the most persistent controversies in the long history of gospel music has been is whether its primary purpose is to minister or to entertain audiences.  It remains an issue today for many in gospel music. This article will not necessarily answer that question, but its intent is to shed some light on the history of this issue and perhaps assist in the reader making that decision for him or herself.

From the beginnings of the tradition we have come to call southern gospel music in the mid-nineteenth century, the purpose of music in church has been a subject of debate and discussion. The complete study of the origins of professional gospel music is outside the focus of this article, and deserves an article of its own. For the purposes of this article, I will summarize the consensus of all the stories of the beginnings of those traditions.

The rise of the Pentecostal movement and the consequent establishment of singing schools and singing conventions in the mid-nineteenth century were the main impetus for specialty singers of gospel song. The pioneering efforts of men such as Aldon Kieffer, Ephraim Roebush, and A.J. Showalter initially were the agents that began a gospel music industry, with their popularization of the shape-note method of singing and their publishing of song books that popularized those techniques.

James D. Vaughn

Enter James D. Vaughan, a Tennessean who, as a boy, became fascinated with music and the shape-note method of singing. When he turned 18, he began the first of many singing schools bearing his name and products, and in order to help sell his song books and other musical products to people, he established a quartet of men to sing the songs in his books, an demonstrate the virtues of his singing methods. Out of this came the first professional gospel singing groups, since the material in Vaughan's books consisted of religious music of the day.

Quartets began to form in the various places where Vaughan had conducted singing schools, and by 1910, Vaughan happened on the idea to form a travelling professional quartet to help his burgeoning music publishing business grow. The great success of the original Vaughan Quartet and other quartets under his sponsorship convinced anyone paying attention that there was money to be made in performing gospel songs before audiences.

V. O. Stamps

The quartet craze began to sweep the South, and soon other intrepid people began to rise up from the Vaughan organization and establish publishing empires of their own. Probably the most successful Vaughan alumnus was Texan Virgil O. Stamps, known by his initials, V.O., a fine singer himself, and a restless, visionary businessman.

By the 1920s, this method of using travelling quartets to sell religious music to people had caught on so successfully, the competition in the songbook field began to get intense. With the help of his brother Frank, also a fine singer and manager of a prominent quartet, and his business partner, J.R. Baxter, Jr., Stamps' Stamps-Baxter Company became the leading music publishing company in the South.

For quite some time, Stamps-Baxter quartets competed with Vaughan quartets at singing conventions, fairs, and whatever venues they managed to appear at. Because of the desire to outsell the competition, quartets from both organizations worked as hard as they could to entertain the audiences as best as possible, and with Frank Stamps' quartet also getting into the brand new field of records, there was another medium that the various singers and their companies would try to conquer to establish loyal followings.

Although it was certainly true than men like Vaughan, Stamps, Showalter, and Homer Rodehaver were motivated to assist churches and other ministries of the time musically, clearly the focus of their work was on maintaining a business, and doing it as successfully as possible. Arguably their work was their way of contributing to ministry in their individual ways. Nevertheless, the focus remained on the businesses, and whatever made them most successful was utilized.

Along with all this activity, the new medium of radio was beginning to be used to establish new singers…people from all stations in life intent on making a living through the singing of gospel songs. Groups like the Speer Family from Alabama, the Blackwood Brothers from Mississippi, and the LeFevre Trio from Tennessee (and later Atlanta) aligned themselves with music companies and radio stations to establish themselves, and travelled where they could to promote themselves and their singing.

Chuck Wagon Gang circa 1938

Around that time, a group from Texas began to attract attention with their simple, heartfelt renderings of traditional and new gospel songs. They were not affiliated with any of the music companies, and like many of their contemporaries, didn't limit their repertoire to solely gospel songs. The Chuck Wagon Gang, led by Dave (Dad) Carter and featuring his children, were endearing themselves to audiences on radio, first in Lubbock, and later in Dallas over powerful station WBAP. Initially they did mostly western songs, with only occasional gospel material thrown in, but as listener response indicated that their gospel material was better liked, eventually they began to incorporate gospel more and more into their repertoire, until by 1940, the group had eliminated all of the western and folk material they had been singing, and stuck to strictly gospel thereafter. That same year, the Chuck Wagon Gang signed the first of many contracts with Columbia Records, an alliance that would last some four decades.

But ask Dad Carter if he was doing a ministry or entertaining, and he would say, "This is the way I make my living. I am an entertainer."

No doubt most professional gospel singers of the day saw themselves in the same way. Although many of them were raised in churches, and sang the songs they were singing because they loved them and thought people needed to hear the message in them, the attitude at that time didn't appear to allow for the singers of those days to think of themselves as anything but singers entertaining people with good, inspiring songs.

Blackwood Brothers circa 1937

But as groups like the Chuck Wagon Gang, the Blackwood Brothers, the Speers, and the LeFevres gained popularity, and thus exposure, it was a portend that changes were nigh in the gospel music industry.

Next month, I'll examine the rise of the Statesmen Quartet, and how the changes they affected in gospel music helped further to establish the lines in this alleged conflict between ministry and entertainment in gospel music.