Vaughan Quartet

It's a little off target to launch the folk section of the HMR Project with the Vaughan Quartet. This was actually a gospel group which interests weren't secular. Most white gospel in the United States was recorded by folk musicians with broader repertoire such as the Carter Family. The Vaughan Quartet was nevertheless instrumental to the early burgeoning of the white gospel genre as compared to black. As the stage opens onto recording, white folk musicians seemed suitable enough to record gospel, as early white commercial country folk music was highly conservative. Black country folk artists, however, had a tendency to mix gospel into a less angelic repertoire including topics like sex. The initial Vaughan Quartet had been formed by James Vaughan (b 1864/ d 1941) in 1910 to help sell books for the Vaughan Publishing Company founded in 1902.

Eugene Chadbourne at AllMusic has the first configuration of the VQ consisting of James and three brothers. The James Vaughan Museum has the first touring group consisting of Gorge Sebren (manager), Joe Allen, Ira Foust and James' brother, Charles Vaughan. By the time the Quartet made its initial recordings in 1921 for the fledgling Vaughan Phonograph Record Company its configuration had shifted to uncertainty, albeit James' son, Glenn Kiefer (Kieffer) Vaughan born in Texas in the early 1890s, is likely. James Ray Geoff ('Close Harmony') lists Johnny Wheeler, M.D. McWhorter, Adlai Loudy and Herman Walker. Bob Terrell ('The Music Men') lists Hillman Barnard, Kieffer Vaughan, Walter Seale and Ray Collins. The Tony Russell sessionography lists Kiefer, probably Loudy and possibly Seale for what are thought the Quartet's first recordings in 1921 beginning with 'Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray' and 'Steal Away' issued on Vaughan 300. Among other titles gone down in 1921 was 'Look for Me' issued that year on Vaughan 350 per 45Worlds w Vaughan and Loudy's 'Waiting at the Gate' on Side A.

'Look For Me'   Vaughan Quartet   1921   Issued on Vaughan 350

Composition: Virgil Oliver Stamps

The Vaughan Quartet grew into a cluster of quartets by the same name that toured the States, as many as sixteen of them in operation at once at one time in the twenties. Russell traces the Quartet, which also issued on Victor, to as late as 4 Dec 1929 toward 'My Record Will Be There' w 'Forever on Thy Hands' issued on Vaughan 1775. Other configurations associated w Vaughan recorded titles in 1930.

'When All Those Millions Sing'   Vaughan Quartet   Recorded 5 Oct 1928 in Nashville

Composition: O.A. Parris   Issued on Victor BVE-47144

'It's Just Like Heaven'   Vaughan Quartet   Recorded 4 Dec 1929

Composition: W. Oliver Cooper   Issued on Vaughan 1725

'Heaven All the Way for Me'   Vaughan's Texas Quartet   Issued on Victor V-40231 on 2 May 1930

Composition: O.A. Parris

Russell isn't so certain as to the Vaughan connection per the Vaughan Trio in 1932. He comments that groups associated w Vaughan recorded after 1942 when his sessionography ends. Those would have followed James' death in 1941. The huge Vaughan gospel enterprise operated out of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, eighty miles south of Nashville where secular folk music made its considerably better known home.