Smith's Sacred Singers

Smith's Sacred Singers were an amateur "shape-note" singing group led by J. Frank Smith, a Methodist teacher based in Braselton, GA. Relatively little is known about this group, which endured many personnel changes in its decade-long recording career, with Smith serving as the main constant. At their first recording session in Atlanta on April 23, 1926, Smith's Sacred Singers recorded a coupling issued on Columbia 15090-D, "Picture from Life's Other Side" combined with "Where We'll Never Grow Old." This became the biggest-selling gospel item in the Columbia 15000-D series, and was the first record to touch off an interest in recording rural gospel music on the part of the major record labels. Smith's Sacred Singers continued with Columbia through 1929, and then moved to Bluebird for another round of records in 1934 and 1935. Altogether, Smith's Sacred Singers made a little over a hundred sides, many of which sold well and introduced to the catalog sacred material that would be recorded again and again by subsequent generations of Southern gospel singers.