My Mama's 15 Minutes of Fame

View Standing on the Stage at the Ryman Auditorium
Nashville, TN

In 1948 my mother, Katherine Earlene Harris, was eleven years old.   She was the child of a broken family back when divorce was very unusual.   She lived with her mother in Ashland City, TN and they had very little money.  Her father had taught her to love music and she and her sister Juanita who was sixteen years old had very good voices and could sing harmony. They especially loved gospel music. Juanita had gone to live in Nashville with her Uncle George and Aunt Ruby, because she was prone to being "a little wild."   

Big things were happening in gospel music in those days!  There was an enterprising young man named Wally Fowler who was taking Nashville by storm.   According to the "Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music" by W.K. McNeil, "In 1948 he fused two earlier traditions in gospel the "all-night singing: that for years had been a feature of the old Stamps-Baxter singing schools and the "battle of the quartets,"    He tried his idea first in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium on November 5, 1948; advertisements promised that "25 quartets" would sing nonstop from 8:30 p.m. to 4:00 am.   The result was dramtic; letters poured in, and soon Fowler was taking his new style of show on the road."   

..."there was probably no one in the southeastern United States better at drawing a crowd than Wally Fowler.   He had been doing it since the first time he filled Nashville's Ryman Auditorium on a rainy, icy November night in 1948-the night of the first gospel music all night singing in the South.   A portion of the Nashville all-night singing was broadcast by WSM, the fifty-thousand-watt clear-channel station that broadcast the Grand Ole Opry."   

Wally Fowler

Juanita had heard about these concerts and she started wheeling and dealing to get on the show. It was to be held on the first Friday nights of each month, because the Grand Ole Opry aired on Saturday night in those days. The first one was in November, and she was aiming to get on the show in December.    She also knew Lovie Allen,  from the church who was also going to go with her singing group and helped her with some information.   She gathered up a singing group consisting of my mother, herself, Lavonne Featherstone, another girl and a boyfriend whose names Mama can't remember.   They called themselves "The Singerettes."  Mama wasn't too sure how the boy in the group took to the name they came up with.   She contacted someone and entered their names to be considered to go on stage.   Boy they were shocked when they got the opportunity!  

Because they were so poor, they didn't really have anything to wear, so they borrowed some clothes from a lady named Dorothy Patterson.   Mama remembers how much fun they had dressing up...and she is sure that they overdid their costumes.   She said that she had on nylons that had the seam on the back of the leg and connected to a garter belt.  She said the nylons were kind of turned around her leg funny.   She didn't have any shoes, so George and Ruby, although they were poor took her to a dry goods store she thinks was called Stanley's and was owned by a Jewish man and bought her some cute black flats to wear.   She was so proud of those shoes!  So off they went to the Ryman Auditorium to get ready.

The All Night Singing started at 8:00pm, but WSM would start broadcasting at 11:00.   The Master of Ceremonies was Grant Turner and the sponsor of the radio program was Martha White Flour.

Grant Turner

Sponsor of the All Night Singing
the night the Singerettes sang.

As 11:00 neared, The Singerettes got ready for their cue.  A gentleman told them not to look at the audience, but to look at the balcony so they wouldn't get stage fright.  Mama said that the first thing she did was  look at the audience, and she says it looked huge from up there!   They sang "Silent Night' and opened the radio program. Later my mother found out that her Grandmother who wouldn't be caught dead listening to the Opry, had stayed up late to tune in and hear her grand-daughters sing.  As the program ended, they were surprised when Grant Turner again called them up to "sing them off the radio."   Unfortunately no pictures were taken of the actual event.  Film was hard to come by for poor families.  But these all night singings were big news at the time!

Mama fell further in love with gospel music. One of the groups that she loved so much was the Speer Family. One of their girls was named Mary Tom Speer.   Mama just loved that unusual name and would grow up to name her own daughter Mary Tom.

The Speer Family at the Ryman All Night Singing

Other young people were also being influenced by the All Night Singings.  People like Elvis Presley.  In Flashes of the Southern Spirit:: Meanings of the Spirit in the U.S. South,  Charles Reagan Wilson says, "In the 1940's when promoter Wally Fowler popularized packaged all night gospel singings that soon spread across the region and Memphis welcomed them.  Elvis heard dignified older groups like the Speers and the Chuck Wagon Gang whose songs grew out of shape-note influences, and he heard the soaring harmonies of the Blackwood Brothers, who adapted songs from black quartets such as the Soul Stirrers and the Golden Gate Quartet."  

Bill Gaither also was influenced by the Singings and would grow up to gather the "Homecoming Singers", famous gospel groups who sang at those events, to produce recordings to share with the world.   One of those recordings is called "Ryman Gospel Reunion."

Although Mama didn't become a famous singer, she does pass on her  love of gospel music to her children.. We still sing the old songs anytime we are all together.  Precious Memories how they linger.....