Happy 161st birthday to the Father of Southern Gospel Music!

James D. Vaughan was born on December 14, 1864, in the waning days of the Civil War. A native of Giles County, Vaughan lived most of his life in Lawrenceburg, where he became a singer, songwriter, teacher, publisher, politician, and philanthropist.

In addition to owning a music school, publishing company, record label, and radio station, Vaughan pioneered the concept of sacred music sung by male quartets, a style which became known as Southern Gospel music.

Vaughan was a skilled marketer; his radio station WOAN was the first commercially-licensed radio station in Tennessee. He wrote more than five hundred songs and printed and sold more than six million song books from his publishing house on the Lawrenceburg Public Square.

As his obituary said, Vaughan “moved to Lawrenceburg in 1902 to enter the song book publishing business. From a very small beginning his business grew to be the greatest business of its kind in the entire country. The Vaughan School of Music came to Lawrenceburg [in 1910], growing out of the business. The first Vaughan Quartet was organized in 1910. The gospel song quartet idea came from the school and the business. There were no other quartets in this country, then, singing gospel songs as a regular work. All the quartets…singing gospel songs owe the idea to James D. Vaughan.”

Vaughan’s school of music graduated thousands of preachers and singers. His radio station WOAN launched in October 1922, powered by two 125-foot steel transmitters. Vaughan published the ‘Lawrence News’ from 1919 to around 1939, and was elected mayor of Lawrenceburg in 1923. From 1927-1933, Vaughan had sixteen quartets traveling full-time, and, in addition to his songbooks, Vaughan established his own record label and sold records of his songs.

Vaughan passed away in 1941. His funeral was attended by thousands, and his legacy was confirmed in 1999 when Senator Fred Thompson introduced a congressional resolution naming Lawrenceburg as the “Birthplace of Southern Gospel Music.” State Representative John White introduced a similar bill in the Tennessee General Assembly in 2000.