People have enjoyed southern-style gospel music for many years, and for many reasons. This month I’ll examine one of the more curious historical phenomena about why people enjoy this particular genre of gospel music.

It seems to me that if you ask the so-called “average” gospel music fan why he or she enjoys this music so much, their answer often would cite the aspect of quartet singing (still the most predominant and distinctive style in the genre) that spotlights either a particularly high tenor or a particularly low bass singer, or both.

And why is that? What is it about the extremes of the highs and lows that endear them to gospel music fans (or any other fan of music, for that matter)?

I would imagine that in part, it has to do with our inclination as people to appreciate or aspire to the biggest, or most, or highest, or lowest, or best that we can find. We tend to appreciate that which meets those feelings and desires in us.

Yet, while thinking of gospel music, as much as we can appreciate the brilliance at tenor of men like the late Denver Crumpler or David Phelps, fans tend to be drawn even more to the genre’s many fine low bass singers. Many fans tend to judge their favorite quartets solely on their bass singers, their personalities, or how low they can actually sing. This is a phenomenon that really doesn’t exist in any other genre of music. (You might cite in country music the Oak Ridge Boys and the appeal of their fine bass singer Richard Sterban, but as is well known, the Oaks are really a gospel quartet that moved to the country genre rather than a country group per se.)

But why is the bass part (a support part, and not usually the featured part of a given song) given such attention by gospel fans? And why are many of the genre’s most beloved performers its’ bass singers? We’ll look at this from a historical perspective.

Perhaps it has something to do with the notion that for men, one of the most appealing attributes is that of a deep voice. And when it comes to singing, the ability to sing as low as one possibly can is desirable, in fact, something to aspire to, something that most men cannot do.

But how did this phenomenon of ultra-low singing in gospel music develop? Is it a function of the music itself?

Looking back at the earliest examples of quartet singing in gospel music, that would not appear to be the case. In those days, singing was more for enjoyment and edification than entertainment per se, and the music was written for as many people to be able to sing it as possible.

This began to change when gospel quartets began to take to the road, and essentially become traveling religious entertainers. When gospel singing began to evolve into a way to make a living, it only followed that entertainment techniques would become a staple of the growing gospel music business.

Enter one James Parks Waites, soon to be known to gospel music fans as “Big Jim”. Waites was an ex-vaudeville entertainer who happened to have a rich, expressive bass voice. Waites was also an outgoing man with a colorful personality that loved to entertain people with his singing, and he used every show business technique he had learned in his vaudeville days to endear himself to fans of gospel music. He began attracting a following in gospel music in the 1930s with a number of top quartets.

Waites would blow through his fist as though he were playing a trombone(something used in later years by bass singers Billy Todd and Ken Turner). He would also grab his pant leg and shake it, as though he were shaking his low notes out in that way….he would also go through audiences and greet the people as he was singing. He made a concerted effort to “sell” himself and his singing to his audiences, and the enthusiastic response he got from them was proof that he was a very successful salesman of songs to them. He sang with many, many quartets during his long singing career, and when he finally called it a career after a fill-in stint with the Rebels Quartet in 1965, he went down as one of the most, charismatic and popular gospel singers that ever lived.

For all Waites’ talent, he was not known for singing particularly low(at least by the standards of his successors), although he proved late in his career that he certainly could. That distinction would go to one of his near-contemporaries, Arnold Hyles, longtime bass singer for the legendary Rangers Quartet.

Hyles was the brother of the Rangers’ lead singer Vernon Hyles, and he had a rather gruff voice that was not particularly low in pitch, but he was a master of tone placement…to the extent that he sounded a lot lower than he was. So successful was he with this approach to singing that he was billed for some time as the “lowest bass singer in the world,” and for many, he certainly sounded as though he was.

The Rangers were a most professional sounding quartet, and Hyles’ singing style was no small part in the recognition they earned. Like Waites, Hyles was a great “salesman of song,” and he and the Rangers had many, many fans.

A 1951 automobile accident curtailed Hyles’ singing, he never really recovered from the injuries he suffered, and when he finally retired from singing in 1956, it was not only the end of the Rangers Quartet as most people would know it, but of an era in gospel singing in which Hyles was a standard bearer. He was another bass singer who captured the fancy of gospel fans, and was immensely popular.

Another bass singer that emerged in the 1940s would capture admiration and affection of gospel music fans for several decades, in fact, Georgia native Jim “Big Chief” Wetherington is still loved by gospel music fans today. Wetherington first attracted attention as part of the Melody Masters Quartet that was based in Florida and later Nebraska. His good looks and versatile singing ability earned him a place in the Statesmen Quartet in 1950, when he replaced another bass singing legend, conservatory trained and big-voiced Aycel (A.D.) Soward.

Wetherington was dubbed “Big Chief” by another gospel music star, Lee Roy Abernathy, in honor of his Indian heritage, and his ability to sing rhythm bass like no one before him or since along with his aforementioned looks and innate stage presence made him one of the most popular and identifiable gospel singers of all time. He was also a prolific songwriter and gifted arranger who did as much as anyone other than quartet leader Hovie Lister to make the Statesmen one of the very top quartets in gospel music in the 1950s and 1960s. His untimely death from a heart attack in 1973 took one of the most beloved and gifted talents from the gospel music stage. His singing was as distinctive and as good as any bass singer who ever was involved in gospel music.

Bass singers by that time had begun to attract the attention of gospel quartet fans, but none before or perhaps since made the impact upon gospel singing like that of of one John Daniel Sumner of Florida.

Sumner had an extremely low voice well suited to singing quartet music, and at an early age developed a love and affinity for singing gospel music quartet style. After getting established with local Florida quartets, he joined the renowned Sunshine Boys in 1949 and quickly attracted attention with his singing.

Sumner’s career really took off when he joined the famous Blackwood Brothers in 1954. At that time, Sumner’s songwriting began to flourish, and he became a personality on stage. With a natural gift for comedy, he began to endear himself to audiences with his sense of humor and his fine original songs.

But what Sumner began to do with the Blackwood Brothers vocally changed the whole emphasis of bass singing forever, and his influence is still preeminent today. With the encouragement of leader James Blackwood and the enthusiastic audience response to his unusually low voice, Sumner began to experiment with the lower part of his range…on some songs going down as low as he possibly could. On recordings like 1958’s “Wonderful Love” and “Hide Me, Rock Of Ages”, Sumner’s unprecedented vocal depth had the same impact on gospel bass singers that Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs in 1927 did on baseball sluggers, showing what could be done if one tried. Other bass singers had hinted at what Sumner was doing, but when Sumner himself met and exceeded those boundaries, others felt led to follow in his path.

Sumner himself continued on that same path on recordings such as “I’ve Got To Walk That Lonesome Road” and “There’s A Light” (both 1963), and seemed to get lower and lower during his years with the Blackwoods. Sumner moved to the Stamps Quartet in 1965, but kept raising(or better, lowering)the bar for bass singers on recordings like 1965’s “Rainbow Of Love” and 1967’s “Blessed Assurance”, where he ended a phrase on a double low C (three octaves below middle C) earning him recognition in the “Guinness Book of World Records”. Needless to say, Sumner inherited Hyles’ old billing as “lowest bass singer in the world”, which the Blackwood Brothers began billing him as in the early 1960s.

Unlike other gospel singers, Sumner got secular fame for his work (with the Stamps) singing vocal backup for Elvis Presley beginning in 1971. The larger music world got to hear the same subterranean low notes that gospel music fans had heard for many years, and this type of bass singing, focusing more on low notes than aspects like rhythm and blend became the vogue for most gospel bass singers that followed him.

Not all bass singers followed that path. Notable exceptions were Armond Morales of the Weatherford Quartet and later the Imperials, and George Younce of the Blue Ridge Quartet and later the Cathedral Quartet. While both men (especially Younce) could hit low notes, their emphasis was on blend and harmony more than just rattling walls. In addition, both men featured melodic solo voices that stood out in their time amidst all the other bass singers who chose to follow Sumner’s lead and drag bottom as often as possible.

Of those who followed Sumner’s lead, London Parris was perhaps the most noteworthy. Upon joining the Rebels Quartet in 1955 to replace the ailing Jim Waites, Parris realized he had the vocal prowess to hit those ultra low notes consistently, and by 1958 was doing so for the Rebels. His versions of “I Can Tell You Now The Time” and “After Awhile” were prominent examples of Parris’ ability to consistently hit those notes that seemingly only Sumner otherwise could. In addition, Parris was an engaging personality from the stage that could charm and delight almost any audience, ably following in Waites’ footsteps in that regard.

In fact, Sumner and Parris (good friends) became rivals in the world of gospel singing over that ability. One of the hottest debate topics among fans of the late 1960s and 1970s was who was lower, Sumner or Parris? While the consensus seems to lean in favor of Sumner in that regard, even Sumner conceded in his autobiography that he felt his most persistent rival in hitting the ultra low notes was Parris, and most fans tend to choose one or the other on the question of who was the lowest.

In subsequent years, due to the influence of both Sumner and Parris, the question of who the lowest is is still a hot button topic among fans of gospel quartet music. In the 1970s, the Inspirations’ Mike Holcomb became mentioned in that respect, in the 1980s, Tim Riley of the Gold City Quartet became a prominent figure in that aspect, as did Gene McDonald of the Florida Boys by the 1990s, and even Paul David Kennamer of Valor in most recent years has attracted attention for his low note prowess.

Who is the lowest? Well, on a given night, it could be any one of the above men, since voice quality and ability to reach all the notes one is capable of varies on a day-to-day basis. But this much is for sure, the bass singing position in gospel quartets has brought us some of the most gifted and unique individuals in the annals of music, and their appeal is one thing that has made southern-style gospel music such an interesting and appealing genre of music.

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