As you already know, Singing News is celebrating it's 40th Anniversary this month. The history of the magazine has been written numerous times, but on the occasion of our 30th Anniversary in 1999, Southern Gospel music historian Jim Goff wrote an exhaustive commentary about the magazine's earliest days.
Since many of our newer readers did not have the opportunity to read Dr. Goff's comments, I'm taking this opportunity to shine the spotlight on what took place in the late 1960s...
There had been earlier publications. Most had been music publishing company monthlies like the Vaughan's Family Visitor and the Stamps-Baxter-owned Gospel Music News. Those publications were influential but they served a singular function - to promote the work of a particular company and thus only the quartets that represented that company. After the 1930s, Gospel quartets became increasingly independent of the control of the publishing companies and, as a result, there was little about them in the pages of company papers.
The first publication to focus just on the major groups and their music independently of the publishing companies was Lee Roy Abernathy's Gospel Music World, which appeared in 1950 and ran for several years. Along the way, a few others appeared though they tended to have short life spans. The most ambitious effort was put together by a gospel music fan from Atlanta, E . Batson, Jr. Batson was a writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and, from 1954 through 1958, his Gospel Singing World was a sterling example of quality and fairness as he sought to cover the activities of all the major quartets.
By the 1960s, regular newsletters and a few small publications also began to appear from the groups themselves though there was little attempt to cover the industry at large. Among the best known were the Blackwoods-Statesmen production, Skylite-HiLites, and the LeFevre-inspired Sing. But, by far, the most successful and influential publication in gospel music history would prove to be Singing News.
Over the past 30 years, Singing News has been the passion and accomplishment of several very special, very talented individuals. The first of those individuals was the magazine's innovative founder, Jesse G "J.G." Whitfield. Born in 1915, J.G. Whitfield had already made his mark in gospel music, founding the Florida Boys Quartet and the Dixie Echoes, as well as becoming one of the most important concert promoters of the 1960s. He had also played a part in expanding Southern Gospel on television, playing a crucial role in both the Gospel Song Shop and the Gospel Singing Jubilee television programs.
By 1969, JG saw a need for a consistent publication to advertise his all-night singings. The genesis of the idea, for Whitfield, came as so many ideas in Southern Gospel - from the work of J.D. Sumner.
J.D. was serving as second vice president of the Gospel Music Association in 1968 and part of his work involved putting together a small short-lived tabloid newspaper called Good News. In addition to several articles on recent developments in Gospel Music, the newspaper also listed upcoming singing dates for the major groups in the industry.
When Whitfield received his first copy in July of 1968, he thought to himself, "Hey, this is good for the business." He then called J.D. to tell him what a great job he had done: "J.D., this is good. This is good for the business and I think that you ought to continue to do this. I think you ought to write this paper every month. In fact, you ought to get all the names from W.B. Nowlin and Lloyd Orrell and the names I've got—all the names you can put together—and mail this every month to the fans so they'll know what's going on."
J.D.'s response, however, was less than enthusiastic: "Boy, you stay down there in Florida. I don't want to hear your taunts no more." J.D. then explained that he had no intention of getting into the regular paper business or expanding the scope to include such huge mailing lists. Undaunted, Whitfield reminded his friend, "Well, it's still a good idea."
Whitfield, of course, refused to drop the matter. The concept stuck in his brain and he began to work out the details of how he might actually pull this off himself. He was already operating a fairly impressive promotion business out of Pensacola with mailings going out each week to advertise his upcoming sings. He realized that a single publication could take the place of all those promotional brochures and that other promoters could use it as well. He decided early on that he wanted to call this new monthly Singing News because the title expressed so closely what he intended his new publication to be.
The name had actually been used more than a decade earlier as the title of a small four-page newspaper formed in March 1952 by the American Youth Singers, an organization headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama. Whitfield, however, had no knowledge of that earlier publication and actually got the name from the annual program published for several years in association with the big outdoor sing in Bonifay, Florida. He contacted the organizers of the event and received their permission to use the name.
The next order of business was the mailing list—and Whitfield was in a position to come up with a pile of names. He gathered all the names from the mailing lists that he had collected in promoting sings in various cities across the South. He then combined those with a list from songbook sales that he had promoted in conjunction with the Gospel Singing Jubilee. The first issue of Singing News went out to each of the people on that Jubilee songbook list as well as Whitfield's own concert list—a total of 90,000 gospel music fans.
Over the next couple of years, Whitfield added to his master list, making a deal with promoters W,B. Nowlin and Lloyd Orrell to send issues to all the names on their concert lists as well. Nowlin, who promoted concerts in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, and Orrell, who promoted concerts in the North, both recognized the value of such publicity. Soon, gospel music fans across the country were receiving Singing News; some by subscriptions but many others an occasional issue because they had simply attended a Gospel concert and ended up on some promoter's list. Years later in a 1996 interview, Whitfield remembered, "I thought I had to get together a list of almost every gospel music fan. But I probably could have started with a lot less numbers and saved myself some dollars."
Still, in hindsight, it's appropriate that Singing News started with such ambitious numbers. No publication in gospel music history would ever dream so large and accomplish so much.