SPOTLIGHT ON HISTORYSPOTLIGHT ON HISTORY
L
ike solo gospel singing and the blues, gospel
quartet singing draws on a secular anteced-
ent: the barbershop quartet. Probably origi-
nating in informal African American group singing
in the 1800s, by the early twentieth century the bar-
bershop quartet had become popular among both
blacks and whites. Barbershop is a style of four-part
singing for men (and occasionally women) in which
a lead voice carries the melody, higher and lower
voices (tenor and baritone) add harmony lines, and
a bass voice provides harmonic underpinning and
occasional countermelodies. Though its popularity
had waned somewhat even before World War II, in
the 1940s a revival movement led to a resurgence of
both amateur and professional interest, and today
the Barbershop Harmony Society, the largest of sev-
eral such organizations, has about 30,000 members
in North America.
Barbershop harmonizing also infl uenced a new
form of white gospel music that arose with the huge
urban revivals of the early 1900s, led by charismatic
preachers like Billy Sunday. Unlike the older gos-
pel hymns described in chapter 7, the newer gospel
songs from around 1910 featured jaunty, march-
like rhythms with some ragtime-style syncopation;Barbershop Quartets and White Gospel Music before
World War II
optimistic texts stressing salvation and the joys of
heaven; and the four-part texture of the barbershop
quartet. Charles Gabriel, whose “Will the Circle Be
Unbroken” was one source for the Carter Family’s
similarly titled song, was one of many composers
whose gospel songs of this type were published by
Homer Rodeheaver, Billy Sunday’s music director.
Urban gospel songs found a ready audience in
the rural South. They found their way into southern
hymnals, especially by means of the newer seven-
shape notation that in the late 1800s came into use
alongside the older four-shape notation of The Sacred
Harp (see chapter 3). The most important publisher
of seven-shape gospel music was the Stamps-Baxter
Music Company of Dallas, Texas, which, beginning
in 1924, supplied written music for southern singing
schools and conventions. Stamps-Baxter promoted
its publications by sponsoring gospel music radio
programs and by sending professional male vocal
quartets on tours throughout the South to familiar-
ize audiences with the latest gospel songs in their
catalogue. By the end of the 1930s, the sound of the
white male gospel quartet, performing either a cap-
pella or with a ragtime-infl uenced piano accompa-
niment, was a common feature of southern radio.watts, ten times the legal maximum in the United States—signals that could be
heard all the way to Canada and even, when the weather was right, around the
world. Before they were fi nally shut down by the Mexican government in the
1980s, border blasters, or “X stations” (their call letters began with the letter X),
were notorious for their characteristic programming blend of quack medicine
peddlers, crackpot preachers, and country music (and later, rock and roll). From
1938 until they disbanded in 1943, the Carter Family took up residence in Del
Rio, Texas, crossing the border twice daily to perform on XER A, owned and
operated by “Doctor” John Romulus Brinkley, who used the station to advertise
his goat gland cure for impotence. Border radio extended the audience for the
Carters and many other country musicians far beyond the rural South, bringing
them increased profi ts, if not cultural prestige.
Motion pictures offered another way for country musicians to reach a wider
audience. Movies were a primary medium for the spread of new types of countrymotion pictures172028_14_332-360_r3_ko.indd 342 23/01/13 8:37 PM