SG History 101

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Our series on the great individual portions of gospel quartets (the primary performance unit of southern gospel music) continues this month with a look back at the genre’s great instrumental accompanists.

When one looks at a picture of a typical gospel quartet, one doesn’t see just the four singers, but usually one sees five people, the four singers and an accompanist, usually a pianist, since the piano has been the primary musical instrument used in gospel quartet music. For many years the piano was the only musical instrument used to accompany gospel quartets, partly because of its’ ready availability in churches and concert halls, and partly because it provides a greater degree of musical color and versatility that most any other instrument.

So then, with a few exceptions (the early Blackwood Brothers, the Rangers, and the Swanee River Boys) , gospel pianists have been the musical “stars” of gospel quartets. The pianist has usually been the most musically proficient member of the full gospel quartet, responsible for the arrangements used by a quartet and to a lesser extent, an extra vocalist when needed.

But even more so than the quartet’s bass singers, the pianists have been responsible for the gospel quartet’s entertainment value to audiences, whether for sheer musical virtuosity or comedy within the quartet from onstage. The great gospel pianists have been the ones that have defined the quartet musically and held it together, so to speak, in addition to giving it that “something extra” that makes audiences remember the particular quartet as distinct from all the other musical units.

As in the previous installments, we’ll highlight the outstanding gospel quartet musicians in more or less chronological order.

In fact, it can be said that the genre’s first popular performers were gospel pianists. The first professional quartets were not so much Christian entertainers as they were product salesmen, there to get people to buy the songbooks that the sponsoring publishing companies were offering in personal appearances.

But since there were a number of quartets, and two main publishing companies sponsoring them (the Vaughan company and the Stamps-Baxter company) , it followed that inevitably SOME quartet would do something to set itself apart from its’ competitors in some wat.

Perhaps the man who can be considered the “father” of gospel quartet piano styling was Dwight Brock, who played with the 1927 Stamps Quartet led by Frank Stamps. He was the first man hired by a quartet to accompany a group without doubling on a singing part. Previously, one of the quartet’s singers doubled up on the piano accompaniment as well.

But that was not the only claim to fame for Brock. Hw was a pianist whose musical skill went beyond merely that of a regular church pianist, and it was his piano style that has remained the basic gospel quartet piano style to this very day.

Brock’s style was a rhythm piano that was jazz-based, and his typical approach to a song was to play the first line or two of it and then without stopping, would go directly into the melody and the quartet would join him, on the fly, so to speak. Then at the end of a verse, Brock would play a brief interlude, and after it, the quartet would resume the song, all of this without stopping, as was the style of the day.

This technique became known as the “turnaround”, and it became the basis of the southern gospel quartet style to this day. Brock’s piano technique was as big a part of the Stamps Quartet’s ascension to popularity among fans of music as was the singing of the quartet.

This development was one of the keys to the development of gospel quartet music as a primary performance art in American music, and led the genre out of the solely songbook-selling business into the world of professional entertainment.

James D. Walbert

Anthony Burger

Roger Bennett

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