Appalachian Figures
Every July, Southern gospel fans file into downtown Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, for the James D. Vaughan Quartet Festival. The Crockett Theatre lights up, quartets swap songs late into the night, and vendors sell glossy songbooks that trace their lineage back to a man who started with a shaped note hymnal called Gospel Chimes in 1900.
Walk a block or two from the theatre and you reach the James D. Vaughan Gospel Music Museum on the town square. Inside are battered printing blocks, old hymnals, and photos of quartets who spent long years on two lane roads selling books and singing in schoolhouses. The museum panels tell visitors that Vaughan’s phonograph company and radio station WOAN helped make Lawrenceburg a music town long before Nashville claimed the nickname “Music City.”
For Appalachia, Vaughan’s story matters because his songbooks, quartets, and singing schools helped knit together a gospel sound that ran from Middle Tennessee into the Cumberland Plateau and mountain counties. The same convention books that students bought in Lawrenceburg turned up in Appalachian churches, schoolhouses, and courthouse singing conventions from east Tennessee into Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
Giles County beginnings and the singing school world
James David Vaughan was born on December 14, 1864, near Minor Hill in Giles County, Tennessee, the eldest of four sons of George Washington Vaughan and Mary Eliza Shores. His parents had migrated from the North Carolina Piedmont into Middle Tennessee farmland, and like many families in the region they carried a mix of folk hymns, camp meeting songs, and early shape note tunes.
As a teenager Vaughan attended his first formal singing school and quickly showed a talent for the four shape notes that had spread through rural churches in the nineteenth century. By about eighteen he was teaching his own classes and soon organized a male quartet with his brothers to advertise those schools. The pattern was already in place. Singing schools would train local leaders, and traveling quartets would stir interest, sell books, and keep the business afloat.
Gospel Chimes and a new kind of convention book
At the turn of the twentieth century Vaughan began publishing his own songs. In 1900 he brought out Gospel Chimes, a shaped note hymnal that later printings advertised “for revivals, Sunday schools, choirs, singing schools, and all kinds of religious gatherings.” Surviving copies in the Appalachian State University Shape Note and Songbooks collection show exactly how he positioned the book. The title page and cover read like miniature advertisements that doubled as theology. They promised tunes that ordinary congregations could sing, backed by the authority of revival preaching and the practicality of Sunday school work.
Within a few years Vaughan moved his operation to Lawrenceburg and, in 1903, formally organized the James D. Vaughan Publishing Company. Over the next six years the firm averaged sales of roughly sixty thousand songbooks per month, an astonishing figure for a small town business that drew most of its trade from rural churches and conventions. Those numbers help explain why later writers called him the “father of Southern gospel music.”
Perfect Praise, Harp of Gold, and the Vaughan songbook world
If Gospel Chimes was the spark, Vaughan’s early twentieth century convention books built the factory. Titles like Perfect Praise (1905), Golden Songs of Glory (1906), Harp of Gold (1912), and later Heavenly Voices, Heavenly Praises, Hallelujahs, Gospel Hosannas, and Gospel Choruses appeared in steady succession from his Lawrenceburg presses. App State’s closed Appalachian Collection today holds dozens of these volumes, a near run of Vaughan books stretching from the first decade of the century into the 1950s.
Primary copies of Perfect Praise and Harp of Gold survive in digitized form and in hymnology collections. Their title pages call them “for revivals, Sunday-schools, singing schools, conventions, and general use in all kinds of religious meetings,” language that leaves little doubt about the world Vaughan imagined for his music. The books mix new compositions by Vaughan and his staff with older favorites. Every page also functions as an advertisement for the Vaughan brand.
Look closely at marginalia and typography in a convention book like New Perfect Praise from 1920. There are boosterish lines about “our newest book,” price lists for bulk orders, and often an address in Lawrenceburg to which churches could send payment. Each book doubled as both worship resource and mail order catalog.
Quartets on the road and the Vaughan School of Music
Songbooks alone do not explain Vaughan’s influence. Around 1910 he sent a professional male quartet on the road to promote his books at county-wide and multi-county singing conventions. These quartets sang in courthouses, schoolhouses, and churches, and they sold books directly to the crowd at intermission.
In 1911 Vaughan founded the Vaughan School of Music in Lawrenceburg, which drew students from across the South, including Appalachian counties in Tennessee and Kentucky. Faculty members such as Adger M. Pace and William Burton Walbert, both important composers in their own right, taught theory, harmony, and sight singing. Graduates returned home to lead choirs and singing conventions from Middle Tennessee into the ridges of the Cumberland Plateau and beyond.
To keep those students and readers connected, Vaughan launched a monthly magazine, Vaughan’s Family Visitor, in 1912. The periodical printed devotional articles, new song texts, reports from singing schools, and advertisements for the company’s latest convention books. Most of the run survives today only on microfilm at the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University, where Charles Wolfe’s introductory essay frames it as a key window into the inner workings of the Vaughan enterprise.
For Appalachian historians, the Family Visitor and scattered local newspaper ads help trace how Vaughan’s quartets and songbooks circulated into mountain communities, where “all day singing with dinner on the ground” became a cherished institution.
Records, WOAN radio, and a Southern gospel media empire
Vaughan did not stop with print. In the early 1920s he invested in recording technology and began issuing 78 rpm records on his own Vaughan label. A discographical reconstruction of the Vaughan 300 to 2025 series shows titles such as “Beautiful Harbor Lights,” “My Loved Ones Are Waiting for Me,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and “The Old Rugged Cross,” usually sung by the in house Vaughan Quartet. Surviving discs and modern transfers allow us to hear the tight harmonies that listeners in the 1920s associated with the Vaughan name.
In 1922 Vaughan acquired radio station WOAN in Lawrenceburg, often described in state histories as Tennessee’s first commercially licensed radio station. Broadcasting with a modest 150 watt transmitter, WOAN carried performances from the Vaughan School of Music and quartet programs across a wide swath of the eastern United States, with contemporary reports claiming that listeners as far away as Canada wrote in.
Together, the publishing company, school, quartets, record label, and radio station formed what later scholars like James R. Goff call one of the first fully integrated Southern gospel “industries.” Vaughan’s operation showed how a regional business from a small Tennessee county seat could harness new technologies to shape religious music far beyond its own courthouse square.
Race, the Klan, and the trouble in the songbooks
Vaughan’s legacy is not only one of pious harmony and entrepreneurial ingenuity. In the mid 1920s his company participated in the resurgent Ku Klux Klan culture that swept across much of the South.
Primary evidence for this connection survives in a 78 rpm disc coupling a Vaughan Quartet performance of “Wake Up, America and Kluk, Kluk, Kluk” with pianist Theodore Shaw’s “Hold ’Er Newt (They’re After Us),” issued as Vaughan 825 around 1924. Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library lists the disc in its Ku Klux Klan collection under “Vaughan, James D.,” a reminder that the record was marketed directly to Klan audiences.
Rachel Louise Martin’s essay “Hoods in My Hymnal,” published in Oxford American, uses newspaper reports, discographical data, and church histories to trace how Vaughan’s company and WOAN promoted pro Klan performances in Lawrenceburg during the 1920s, sometimes involving local officials and ministers. At the same time that his quartets were teaching harmony and peddling songbooks across Appalachia, Vaughan was also profiting from and amplifying a white supremacist movement that terrorized Black communities, Jewish communities, and others.
For historians of Appalachian religion, this uneasy mix of heartfelt gospel piety and Klan affiliation complicates any simple story about “old time” Southern gospel as a purely innocent folk art. Vaughan’s business model sat inside the racial politics of its era, and his success helped carry those politics into churches and living rooms along with the songs.
Vaughan’s Appalachia and the shape of Southern gospel
By the time of Vaughan’s death in 1941, his company had printed millions of songbooks, and his quartets had helped normalize a style of four part male harmony that would shape later groups like the Blackwood Brothers and the Speer Family. In Appalachian counties, his books often sat side by side with older shape note tunebooks and newer Stamps Baxter volumes, forming a bridge between nineteenth century singing school traditions and the professionalized quartets of the mid twentieth century.
Appalachian State’s Shape Note and Songbooks guide now reads almost like a catalog of Vaughan’s output, listing Golden Songs of Glory, Gospel Choruses, Gospel Echoes, Gospel Joy, and many more with call numbers and dates. These physical books are primary witnesses to where and how his music traveled. Library stamps and ownership notations testify that mountain congregations and singing conventions bought his titles decade after decade.
Later historians, especially Jo Lee Fleming’s dissertation “James D. Vaughan, Music Publisher, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, 1912–1964,” Stella B. Vaughan’s family history A Heritage to Keep, and James R. Goff’s Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel, use those primary sources, company records, and oral histories to reconstruct how Vaughan’s business grew, diversified, and eventually declined.
Memory in Lawrenceburg and beyond
Lawrenceburg has leaned into this musical inheritance. The Tennessee Encyclopedia’s Lawrence County entry credits Vaughan with transforming the county seat into “the undisputed capital of gospel music in America” during the early twentieth century. A Tennessee Music Pathways marker on the square, unveiled as part of a recent statewide tourism initiative, identifies Vaughan as a key pioneer who blended shaped note hymnody with emerging mass media.
The James D. Vaughan Gospel Music Museum and annual quartet festival extend that story for today’s visitors. Museum exhibits highlight his presses, songbooks, and radio equipment. Local government and tourism sites emphasize that his phonograph company and WOAN helped put Lawrenceburg on the musical map and that his books once sold across the South in numbers that topped eight hundred thousand copies a year.
At the same time, newer scholarship and essays like “Hoods in My Hymnal” ask hard questions about the racial politics embedded in some of those same songs and broadcasts. For Appalachian communities that still sing from convention books or attend quartet festivals, remembering Vaughan honestly means holding both sides of the story together. He was a gifted teacher and marketer whose books and quartets carried shaped note gospel into hollers and mill towns, and he was also a white businessman whose company marketed explicitly pro Klan material during the height of the 1920s revival.
Sources and further reading
James D. Vaughan, Gospel Chimes: For Revivals, Sunday Schools, Choirs, Singing Schools, and All Kinds of Religious Gatherings (Lawrenceburg, Tenn., various printings after 1900). See catalog entries and descriptions in the Appalachian State University Shape Note and Songbooks guide. Home+2Tennessee Encyclopedia+2
James D. Vaughan, Perfect Praise: For Revivals, Sunday Schools, Singing Schools, Conventions, and General Use in All Kinds of Religious Meetings (Lawrenceburg, Tenn., 1905), available in page scans through Internet Archive and hymnology sites. Internet Archive+2Hymnary+2
James D. Vaughan, Harp of Gold: For Revivals, Sunday Schools, Conventions, and All Religious Work and Worship(Lawrenceburg, Tenn., 1912), with digital index and page scans at Hymnary. Hymnary+2Hymnary+2
James D. Vaughan et al., Gospel Choruses: Our Newest 1939 Book for Sunday Schools, Singing Schools, Revivals, Conventions and General Use in Christian Worship and related volumes such as Heavenly Voices, Heavenly Praises, Hallelujahs, and Gospel Hosannas, as listed in the Appalachian State Shape Note and Songbooks finding aid. Home
James D. Vaughan et al., Vaughan’s Concert Quartet Book for Male Voices (Lawrenceburg, Tenn., 1921), digitized in the Sounding Spirit Digital Library with detailed bibliographic information. Sounding Spirit Digital Library
Vaughan’s Family Visitor (Cleveland and Lawrenceburg, Tenn., 1912 onward), available on microfilm at the Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University, with an introductory essay by Charles Wolfe that outlines the magazine’s history and significance. Cambridge University Press & Assessment+2TNGenWeb+2
Vaughan Quartet recordings on the Vaughan label and other companies, reconstructed in discographies such as the Vaughan 300 to 2025 series list and entries in the Discography of American Historical Recordings. Popsike+3series.78rpm.club+3adp.library.ucsb.edu+3
“Wake Up, America and Kluk, Kluk, Kluk” coupled with Theodore Shaw’s “Hold ’Er Newt (They’re After Us)” on Vaughan 825, documented in the Emory University Ku Klux Klan collection and commercial discographies. adp.library.ucsb.edu+4archives.libraries.emory.edu+4adp.library.ucsb.edu+4
“James D. Vaughan,” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, which provides a concise overview of his life, early singing schools, publishing company, quartets, and later ventures in radio and recording. Tennessee Encyclopedia+2Tennessee Encyclopedia+2
Visit Lawrenceburg and Lawrence County government history pages, along with the James D. Vaughan Gospel Music Museum site, which summarize his local impact and describe the museum’s collections. Lawrence County History Trivia+4Lawrenceburg TN+4Visit Lawrenceburg TN+4
James David Vaughan entries in hymn and gospel reference sites such as Hymnary, the Tennessee Hall of Fame’s gospel page, and related biographical notices that list his major songbooks and hall of fame honors. Wikipedia+3tnhalloffame.org+3Ehymns+3
Jo Lee Fleming, “James D. Vaughan, Music Publisher, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, 1912–1964” (Union Theological Seminary, 1972), the foundational full length study of the Vaughan enterprise, widely cited in later scholarship. Digital Commons+3fasola.org+3The Hymn Society+3
Stella B. Vaughan, A Heritage to Keep: History of James D. Vaughan, Music Publisher (Cleveland, Tenn., 1964 and later printings), a family authored narrative that preserves company lore and early memories. Cambridge University Press & Assessment
James R. Goff Jr., “The Rise of Southern Gospel Music,” Church History 67, no. 4 (1998), and Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (Chapel Hill, 2002), both of which situate Vaughan in the broader emergence of Southern gospel as an industry and cultural world. researchgate.net+4Cambridge University Press & Assessment+4Google Books+4
Rachel Louise Martin, “Hoods in My Hymnal,” Oxford American (Summer–Fall 2020), which investigates Vaughan’s Klan entanglements and the longer afterlife of racist material in Southern gospel worship. Oxford American+2Oxford American+2