James D. Vauhhan. Founder of Southern Gospel Music. Lawrenceburg, TN - May, 1910

America had been torn asunder by the Civil War. Atlanta lay in smoldering ruins and General William Tecumseh Sherman and 60,000 Union troops were approaching Savannah, cutting a fifty-mile-wide swath through the Georgia countryside from Atlanta to the sea. The entire South was devastated by the war. On the evening of December 14, 1864, with Sherman only a week out of Savannah, a baby boy was born to George Washington and Eliza Shores Vaughan in Giles County, Tennessee. The boy's parents named him James David Vaughan. His life spanned 77 years, ending February 9, 1941, ten months before Pearl Harbor.

What happened to James D. Vaughan between the burning of Atlanta and the bombing of Pearl Harbor was significant in the annals of American music. He helped develop and popularize a new folk form of American music known today as Southern Gospel Music.

While James D. Vaughan was yet a baby, something happened up North that would have tremendous effect on his life. Ephraim Ruebush, a Union soldier, rescued a bright young Southern musician, Aldine S. Kieffer, from a Union prisoner-of-war camp. Later these two became brothers-in-law and business partners. They founded the Ruebush/Kieffer Publishing Company and began printing sacred and Gospel songs. Until that time, Southern sacred songbooks had been written in a four-note system known today as "Sacred Harp." Ruebush and Kieffer created a seven-note scale (known today as shape notes) that provided a completely different style of harmony and certainly a different sound. Then, they began publishing songbook written on this new scale.

In 1874, Ruebush/Kieffer created the Ruebush Kieffer Normal School to teach the new shape-note style of music. In 1883, James D. Vaughan became a pupil. After school, Vaughan formed a quartet with his brothers, Charles, John and Will. Charles sang the high part, the alto line, James sang soprano, Will sang tenor, and John sang bass.

Although Vaughan supported his family teaching school, he could not get Southern Gospel Music out of his mind, so in 1902 he took the biggest step of his life. He packed up the family, moved to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and opened the James D. Vaughan Publishing Company. The company grew slowly. In 1909, the Vaughan Music Company sold about 30,000 songbooks.

Then, Vaughan came up with an idea that he felt would really put the company on the map. "Why not form a traveling quartet to promote the book?" So, in May 1910, the first professional all-male Southern Gospel Quartet in America hit the road. In their first year out, the Quartet doubled the sales of songbooks to 60,000. The next year they sold 75,000 and in 1912, they sold 85,000. Along the way the Quartet was growing more popular. Next, Vaughan started the famed Vaughan School of Music in 1911. That was the birthplace of most groups, styles and harmonies that still exist today.

In 1921, Vaughan opened a new branch of the James D. Vaughan Music Company - Vaughan Phonograph Records. Early Vaughan recordings were made under the Vaughan custom label and advertised as the first and only Southern records in the American market-place. Therefore, a year before the first country music recording was cut, a Vaughan Quartet recorded the first Southern Gospel Quartet record ever.

The business grew and became so good that Vaughan opened branch offices in Mansfield, Arkansas; Laurel, Mississippi; Greenville, South Carolina; and Jacksonville, Texas. He sent a man names V. O. Stamps to run the Texas office. From this event would come the famous Stamps/Baxter Music Company, currently affiliated with the Benson Company division of the Zondervan Corp, owned by Harper-Collins Publishers. By the middle twenties, Vaughan had sixteen full-time Southern Gospel Quartets on the road.

Today, industry officials estimate there may be as may as 8,000 amateur and professional Southern Gospel groups singing in all 50 states and many are touring foreign countries.