ABSTRACT
The line between classic country and classic gospel sometimes gets pretty fuzzy-witness the work of the Bailes Brothers, the Chuck Wagon Gang, James and Martha Carson, the Oak Ridge Boys, Jimmie Davis, and others. Until recently, many country listeners’ polls routinely selected as their “favorite gospel group” an act led by Grandpa Jones and called The Hee Haw Gospel Quartet. Though that venerable show has drifted into a state of permanent rerun, the quartet still remains a popular feature: four men and one guitar doing the classic gospel songs of Albert Brumley, Thomas Dorsay, Vep Ellis, and others. But what many younger fans may not recognize is that this quartet is itself a continuation of an earlier quartet, one that in the 1940s made country music history and set the style for a whole generation of groups to follow: the Brown’s Ferry Four.
