Baptists, music, and World War II.

Southern Baptists have always been a singing people with great diversity in our music.

The types of music used in our churches has varied largely according to their location and tradition--urban or open country, in Texas and Oklahoma, the Carolinas and Virginia, or the border states of Missouri and Kansas. We used and loved the metrical psalms and hymns of Isaac Watts, the evangelical hymns of the Wesleys, the English translations of Latin and German hymns, but we were equally blessed by Fanny Crosby and Ira Sankey. As we moved through the decades leading into the war years, what were we singing?

We were singing "Jesus is all the world to me," "I stand amazed in the presence," "God will take care of you," and other songs from the first decade of the twentieth century. We were singing "In the Garden," "The Old Rugged Cross," and other songs written during the second decade of the twentieth century. We were singing "Great is thy faithfulness," "The Nail-Scarred Hand," "Speak to my heart," and others written during the 1920s. We were singing "Why do I sing about Jesus," "He lives," "Have faith in God," "God of Grace and God of glory," and other songs that appeared during the thirties, the years of the Depression.

Before we take a close look at the music situation in our churches during the war years, let me relate a personal experience. When the first peacetime draft was established, September 14, 1940, I was a junior in college. I registered for the draft indicating that I was a college student and a part-time music and education director for a local church. To my surprise, I was classified as 4-D, a classification reserved for ordained ministers. After my graduation in July 1942, I enrolled in the School of Church Music, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and notified my Missouri draft board of my move. I remained at Southwestern through three semesters and two summer sessions.

In December 1943, I enlisted in the United States Maritime Service and was shipped to the Maritime Base in St. Petersburg, Florida. After basic training, I was made a section leader in the Training Department with Chief Petty Officer Clark Bouwman as my supervisor. When Bouwman learned of my music interests, he mentioned that he was singing in the choir at First Methodist Church. Earl Evans, the minister of music, was a graduate of the Westminster Choir School and, Bouwman assured me, would give me free voice lessons for singing in the choir.

The first Sunday I was in this church, I saw a multiple-choir program in action. The balcony in the sanctuary was shaped like a horseshoe and extended on both sides to the choir loft at the front. With this configuration, Earl Evans Could direct three choirs--children, youth, and adult. Each choir, robed and in place, sang individually in every Sunday morning service. That was my first experience in a multiple-choir program, and I was quite intrigued. I continued singing in the choir and studying voice with Earl Evans for several months.

In the summer, I left the Maritime Base and shipped out on a tanker in the Atlantic, taking aviation gasoline to the Air Force in England. I was in the first convoy to ship into the English Channel after the American troops landed on Normandy Beach, June 6, 1944. In January 1945, I was back in Fort Worth and enrolled for the spring semester to finish my seminary degree. I shared with faculty and students my music experiences at the First Methodist Church, St. Petersburg.

Prior to the war years, a number of ideas were planted that became significant factors in the years to come and influenced the musical activities in our churches in the decades that followed. Without attempting to identify all of these, there are some that we cannot overlook as contributing to what we later saw.

Music education in the United States began in the public schools of Boston in 1838 because of the influence of Lowell Mason, music educator and composer. (1) His basic intention was to improve the congregational singing in the churches. (2) Other cities to follow Boston's example were Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in 1844, Chicago in 1848, Cleveland and San Francisco in 1851, St. Louis in 1852, Lexington, Kentucky, in 1888, and New Orleans by 1892.

All this activity resulted in the founding of two national musical organizations--the Music Teachers' National Association in 1876, (3) and the National Federation of Music Clubs in 1893. (4) The first music club for children was begun in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1902, and by 1925 over 1,200 clubs had been organized. (5) By the 1940s, there were 2,500 children's music clubs in the Junior Division, and the National Federation published the Junior Bulletin to provide courses of study and music information. (6) All of this prepared the way for greater interest and activity in the music in our churches.

In the two decades prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, new ideas were slowly emerging that would have a major impact on our churches. The rank and file of Southern Baptists were largely unaware of these, but eventually they would come to realize their importance.

From Southwestern Seminary came proposals from I. E. Reynolds, who had established the School of Gospel Music in 1915. In addition to his classroom teaching and off-campus speaking engagements, beginning in 1916 and continuing into the 1940s, Reynolds wrote articles that appeared in the Texas Baptist Standard and other state Baptist papers promoting the improvement of music in our churches. In the spring of 1924, a Junior Choir was meeting regularly in the Seminary Hill Baptist Church that met in Southwestern Seminary's Fort Worth Hall. (7)

New Orleans Seminary, begun as Baptist Bible Institute in 1917, employed E. O. Sellers to teach music classes beginning in 1919.

At Southern Seminary in Louisville, R. Inman Johnson began in 1920 giving voice lessons and teaching speech to help preachers in their speaking responsibilities.

Programs of music in public schools and colleges, higher standards of music teaching in the conservatories, extension of music appreciation through radio broadcasts and recordings--all these created a demand for a greater emphasis on music in our churches.

Many requests for musicians for revival meetings, association, state, and convention-wide meetings, full-time church music leaders, and music faculty teachers for Baptist schools were addressed to I. E. Reynolds at Southwestern Seminary. For the years 1924 through 1929, he recorded in a log book 485 such requests. (8) Of course, many of these came from Texas, but other states appeared in his log book: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

At the 1925 Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, I. E. Reynolds presented a resolution for the appointment of a committee of five to bring recommendations "for the advancement of music in the Southern Baptist churches." (9) The committee was appointed; Reynolds was named chairman.

In 1926 at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Houston, I. E. Reynolds presented the report of the committee of five emphasizing:

   the need for improved quality in the music of the churches, more competent
   music leaders, more pastoral concern for church music, full-time musicians
   in the churches, greater emphasis on church music in denominational
   colleges, and a church music department at the Sunday School Board in
   Nashville. (10)

In the fall of 1926, Reynolds offered a similar resolution at the Texas State Baptist Convention meeting in San Antonio supporting a music department in Nashville and "the employment of a field man in the interest of better church music in the churches of Texas." (11)

That same year, 1926, John Finley Williamson, music director at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, Dayton, Ohio, began a choir school and named it for his church. Three years later he moved the school to Ithaca, New York, and in 1932 to Princeton, New Jersey, to increase the possibility of his choir singing with the major symphony orchestras in the New York area. In 1938, the name of the school was changed to the Westminster Choir College. (12)

In 1934, Laurens Hammond and fellow engineer John Hanert obtained a patent for an electronic instrument by which sound is produced by rotating tone wheels. The next year they began manufacturing the Hammond Organ, Model A, an instrument that coupled ninety-one of the tone wheels to two five-octave manuals and a two-octave pedal. (13) The Hammond Organ, and other electronic organs that followed, such as Wurlitzer, Baldwin, and Allen, provided pipe-organ-like sound for a reasonable price for many churches whose only keyboard instrument had been a piano.

Concerning the state of music in Southern Baptist churches in the 1930s, Hugh McElrath has said that few churches had any trained music leadership; many churches had no choirs; what music training there was could be found only outside the churches. Congregational singing was confined to some two dozen gospel songs and a handful of eighteenth-century hymns; and corporate worship in many churches of the 1930s was "without form and void." (14)

In the midst of this situation, the First Baptist Church, Bessemer, Alabama, invited Mrs. Jessie Kaye-Smith to be the minister of music in April 1937. (15) Her salary was $100 per month. She soon had five age-group choirs singing regularly in the church services. T. L. Holcomb, head of the Baptist Sunday School Board, preached one Sunday in this church and was greatly impressed with the music program. He sent Harold Ingraham, editor of the Sunday School Builder, to Bessemer to prepare an article for his periodical. The article in the December 1937 issue described the music program and featured pictures of the five robed choirs. Among the questions Dr. Holcomb raised were these:

* What would it mean to your church if the choir sustained a vital relationship to every organization in the church?

* What would it mean to the worship hours in your church if members of every department or age group were included in the choir?

* What would it mean toward developing an appreciation of church music if the boys and girls were trained and led to participate?

* What would a continuous program of musical training mean to your church?

* What would be the result in interest and attendance if the choir in every church in the Southern Baptist Convention were increased to twice its present size?

* What would be the effect on congregational singing five years hence if every age group in your church should be carefully taught church music?

* Are you willing to read and study these questions prayerfully, and then confer with those most interested to see if you can improve the music of your church?

The visit to Bessemer inspired Holcomb to think of the church music possibilities as never before.

In the mid-thirties, more resolutions or reports were offered at the annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention. A motion made by E. O. Sellers of New Orleans Seminary provided for a committee to make a survey of music needs and make recommendations. (16) The result of this survey released in 1939 revealed:

* Over half of all Southern Baptist churches spent nothing on church music programs.

* Nearly 5 percent of the churches had no kind of musical instrument.

* Only 21.6 percent of the music directors had any type of training, even a two-week singing school.

* While 57.2 percent of the urban churches used a definite order of service, 89.72 percent of the rural churches lacked a definite planned order. Some of this was from the belief that the Holy Spirit inspired spontaneous worship. (17)

T. L. Holcomb had brought B. B. McKinney to Nashville in 1935 to be music editor for the Sunday School Board. During his years at South western Seminary, McKinney had worked part-time as music editor for Robert H. Coleman, a songbook and hymnal publisher in Dallas. With this experience, he was a valuable asset to the Baptist Sunday School Board.

Because of the many songs he had written, he was highly regarded by Southern Baptists. He was a man of the people, they loved him, and their feeling was, "The Sunday School Board can't be all bad if B. B. McKinney is there." Two years after his arrival in Nashville, McKinney published a small collection of hymns entitled Songs of Victory that marked the first publication of two of his best-known hymns, "Wherever He Leads, I'll Go" and "Holy Spirit, Breathe on Me."

In July 1940, Martha Moore Clancy became minister of music at Ingleside Baptist Church, Shreveport, Louisiana. A graduate of Mary Hardin-Baylor, she taught music in the public schools and taught at the College of Marshall (Texas). In her first year at Ingleside Baptist Church, she had organized a Junior Choir and an Intermediate Choir. (18) Martha Clancy was sensitive enough to know that her church would have difficulty accepting a woman on the platform directing congregational singing; so though she had the title and did everything else, she had her husband, Jack Clancy, stand on the rostrum, to lead the congregational singing.

A most helpful contribution to the cause of graded choirs came from outside the denomination through the Choristers' Guild. This activity began in the 1940 as Ruth Krebiel Jacobs prepared a mimeographed newsletter in her home in California and distributed it to those who became members of the Guild. Mabel Stewart Boyter of Atlanta, Georgia, became a nationally known clinician. These two women, while not Baptists, made a great impact on the graded-choir movement in Southern Baptist churches through clinics, workshops, and festivals, beginning in the late forties. (19)

In 1940, The Broadman Hymnal was published in both round and shape notes and was widely accepted. As copies of The Broadman Hymnal were placed in the pew racks of churches, Southern Baptists began to have a common repertoire for congregational singing. Hymnals and songbooks published by Rodehearer, Hope, Tabernacle, Praise Publishing, Singspiration, and others were gradually replaced by The Broadman Hymnal.

The Sunday School Board established the Church Music Department in 1941, with B. B. McKinney as secretary. The 1944 Southern Baptist Convention in Atlanta recommended that a definite program of church music be sponsored by the convention through assignment to the Sunday School Board. This report included the following statements:

1. we can't have better church music until we train our people.

2. We reaffirm our belief in graded choirs.

3. We urge our Baptist colleges, universities, and seminaries to place in their curriculum a Department of Church Music and to require certain definite courses for all ministerial students.

4. We urge states to consider a church music setup equal in scope to the other departments of church activity fostered by our states. (20)

With the new Church Music Department in the Sunday School Board, the nerve center for Southern Baptist church music began to shift from Southwestern Seminary to Nashville. A music week at Ridgecrest, North Carolina, was begun in 1940, directed by I. E. Reynolds, assisted by R. Inman Johnson and E. O. Sellers. Beginning in 1942, the music week was assigned to B. B. McKinney and the Church Music Department at Nashville and became a significant part of the SBC's annual schedule.

Ellis A. Fuller became pastor of Atlanta's First Baptist Church in 1928. He inherited a small volunteer choir and a quartet of paid singers whose attitude toward their role in his services displeased him very much. In his search for help in improving the music program of his church, Fuller happened to read an article based on an interview with John Finley Williamson. In this article, he learned of Westminster Choir College and felt it held the answer to his problem. In his hunt for a Westminster graduate, he met Donald and Frances Winters and was greatly impressed with them. (21) They began their work with Fuller in Atlanta's downtown church of 4,000 members on June 15, 1941. By Christmas, the Winters had enlisted many people, and the choirs were well established.

In May 1942, Ellis Fuller was elected to the presidency of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. From the outset, he wanted to take Donald and Frances Winters to establish a School of Church Music at Louisville. With the approval of the trustees, and with Fuller's encouragement, the Winterses resigned at First Baptist Church, Atlanta, in June 1943. Unfortunately, Donald Winters was drafted for military service and was inducted into the U.S. Army in July. In November, Frances Winters moved to Louisville and began to outline the curriculum, assist the president in the search for suitable faculty, and care for student correspondence and records.

The curriculum was approved in the spring and summer of 1944, and nineteen students were recruited for opening of school in the fall. The first faculty consisted of Frances Winters, Claude Almand, W. Lawrence Cook, R. Inman Johnson, and Claudia Edwards. When Donald Winters received his military discharge, he returned to Louisville, teaching organ and choral music.

Though President Fuller was technically head of the music school, Frances Winters, with his approval and support, was actually running the school. David Carle, in his dissertation dealing with the history of the school, says that Frances Winters

   did not have faculty status, in fact, had no status other than as a direct
   extension of Fuller's authority. She did not have a terminal degree, she
   was a musician in a community in which music was not looked upon as an
   academic subject, and she was a woman. (22)

Frances Winters was an extraordinary woman. (23) She had entered Westminster Choir College for the fall term of 1936. In addition to the music experiences she had at Westminster, she grasped opportunities to learn about the children's choir school in Flemington, New Jersey; the Dalcroze School of Music and St. Thomas Choir School in New York City; and the Chorister's Guild. The Flemington Children's Choir School was organized in 1895 as a community school for training children from five Flemington churches--Catholic, Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, and Presbyterian. By 1927, 200 children of all denominations, fourth grade through high school, were enrolled. Each church's children rehearsed at their own church each week and sang each Sunday. (24)

Anxious to incorporate the ideas and techniques of this school, John Finley Williamson requested permission from Elizabeth Vosseller, the choir's founder, for Ora Hedgpath of his faculty and one student, Frances Winters, to observe during the spring semester. (25)

Frances Winters also worked in several churches during her student days. All these experiences shaped her insights and understanding. She gladly shared her philosophy of church music, touching many Southern Baptist musicians with her ideals. She had married Donald Winters on June 24, 1940. In the years that followed, she had many invitations for workshops, clinics, and other events sharing her skill and insights about children's choirs.

Besides Donald and Frances Winters, other Westminster Choir College graduates began to appear in Southern Baptist churches during the war years. Among these were Alice Berman at Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina; James Berry, First Baptist Church, Austin, Texas; Kathryn Scanland, First Baptist Church, Decatur, Georgia; and Ruth and Harwood Hall, First Baptist Church of Washington, D.C. (26)

The 1942 Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in San Antonio, Texas, received the report from the Sunday School Board that the Church Music Department would offer the churches "a guiding and helpful ministry as regards sacred song and church music," and there was an appeal for churches to launch graded-choir programs. A new study course book, Let Us Sing, by B. B. McKinney and Allen W. Graves, (27) was designed to "challenge the churches to train and utilize in sacred song all the people, from little children on through the ranks of mature men and women." (28)

Wearing robes by Southern Baptist church choirs became an accepted practice in some churches during the 1940s. Strong opposition arose with this practice referred to as "Catholic" or "high church." But some churches were bold in wishing to have men and women in the choir loft, visible to the entire congregation, wearing uniform apparel. Robes solved the problem of clashing colors in women's dresses and the motley variety in men's wear.

Following this trend, Southwestern Seminary's School of Church Music decided to secure robes for the Choral Club. One of the robe companies that rented robes to high schools and colleges offered the seminary used robes at a greatly reduced price. These robes of multiple hues were dyed black, and, because of their many original colors, they turned out to be various shades of black. Choral Club members were very proud of these robes and, even in the face of some criticism from the theology school, they wore them.

In the decade of the forties, a number of state conventions had recognized the value of persons with the skills and personalities to provide volunteer leadership for churches who needed instruction and guidance in their educational programs. These people were known as "state approved workers" in Sunday School, training organizations, and other areas of church life. Some churches, desiring to strengthen their music organization, sought for state approved music workers. These workers were usually reimbursed for expenses, but received little or no remuneration for their work.

Early in 1945, the Sunday School Board advised state conventions that it would subsidize the salary of an individual employed by the state to promote music in the churches of that state. Arkansas was the first state to respond with the employment of Ruth Nininger, who had served for two years as a state approved music worker. (29) She had already set the pattern for state festivals and music schools for children, youth and adults. Oklahoma was second with Ira C. Prosser; Texas was third with J. D. Riddle; Mississippi was fourth with Luther Harrison; and Florida was fifth with Clifford A. Holcomb. B. B. McKinney invited these five state music leaders to meet in Nashville in December 1945, along with Ellis Carnett, head of the School of Music, Southwestern Seminary. These state music leaders, and those who were employed in other states in the following years, played a major role in the advancement of church music among Southern Baptists.

In the 1920s, some churches had struggled with volunteer choirs. Others had a paid quartet that provided choral music for the services. The history of First Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee, mentions that Charles Zehnder became tenor in the quartet in 1920, and five years later became choir director. Upon recommendation of the deacons, the church voted in 1925 to discontinue its paid quartet, but Zehnder secured little response to multiple choir enlistment efforts, a problem that plagued the director for years. As late as 1933, he was soliciting singers in the church paper. (30) The "chorus choir" developed by Zehnder gradually replaced the traditional "quartet choir."

W. Ovid Collins, who became the quartet tenor in the mid-twenties, became choir director in 1933. He was a Methodist, and when his contract expired in 1945, the music committee recommended that the church employ a Baptist music director. Some of the choir members rebelled against this, resulting in an exodus from the choir loft. On the next Sunday morning, instead of empty seats, the congregation rejoiced to see every seat filled. People came to the choir in response to the call of B. B. McKinney, the music committee chairman, who asked them to come and sing for the Lord that day, indicating their loyalty to Christ and his church. McKinney contributed his services as temporary choir director. (31) The church employed W. Hines Sims, a Peabody graduate student, as minister of music, effective September 1, 1945, and he served two years and was succeeded by Charles F. Bryan, professor of choral music at Peabody College.

In 1946, W. Hines Sims became McKinney's associate and later succeeded him as head of the Church Music Department following McKinney's death in 1952.

In the 1940s, the demand for church staff personnel greatly increased for combination persons, qualified in both music and education. Southwestern Seminary developed a combination degree involving both music and religious education. Those pioneering in church staff positions were given a variety of titles. In the twenties, it was common for them to be labeled 'Assistant Pastor" even though they were not ordained ministers. Some with music responsibilities were simply called "Music Director," some "Director of Music and Education." Later, the title "Minister of Music and Education" was widely used. R. Paul Green, who, in the spring of 1945, came to Immanuel Baptist Church, Tulsa, from First Baptist Church, Ardmore, where he had dual responsibilities, was the first full-time minister of music in Oklahoma. (32)

The program design for Southern Baptist church music programs appeared in 1948 and was developed by W. Hines Sims. It was stated in four areas:

1. The Local Church Program

2. Associational Music Program

3. The State Music Program

4. The Role of the Sunday School Board

The delineation of the local church program emphasized:

1. Congregational singing

2. Graded choirs

3. Annual music emphasis week

4. Church music classes for training music leadership

5. Regularly scheduled music activities

6. Periodic hymn sings

7. Annual church music school

8. Church orchestras

9. Summer music schools

10. Adequate music budgets (33)

This program design for church music provided a strong structure on which to base our work.

From the standpoint of half a century, we look back with genuine pleasure at the wisdom and understanding of those who set in place the foundation on which church music in our churches was built. To those who have shared in places of leadership across these decades, we acknowledge our gratitude for their labors and faithfulness in churches, associations, state conventions, the seminaries, and in the Southern Baptist Convention. The sound of our music may have changed some, but it has never ceased. It has continued to "praise God from whom all blessings flow," and proclaim the good news of the gospel. Thanks be to God for our Southern Baptist music heritage and for all who contributed to it.

Notes

(1.) Carol Pemberton, Lowell Mason: His Life and Work (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1985), 114.

(2.) Ibid., 29.

(3.) Oscar Thompson, ed., The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co.), 1949, 1:214.

(4.) Ibid., 1:232.

(5.) Music and Youth, 3 (December 1927): 80.

(6.) Thompson, 1:232.

(7.) Southwestern Journal of Theology (April 1924): 51.

(8.) I. E. Reynolds's handwritten log book, entitled "List of Calls for Singers, Pianists, Choir Directors, Etc.," listed these requests in five columns: Date received, pastor or evangelist, date of engagement, place of engagement, and the name of the person who filled the engagement. This log book is in the I. E. Reynolds material in the Archives, Roberts Library, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.

(9.) Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1925, 103.

(10.) Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1926, 41-43.

(11.) Annual, Baptist General Convention of Texas, 1926.

(12.) David A. Wehr, "John Finley Williamson (1887-1964): His Life and Contributions to Choral Music" (Ph.D diss.. University of Miami, 1971), 72, 80, 84, 86, 108.

(13.) Don Michael Randel, ed., The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1966), 351.

(14.) Hugh McElrath, "The Minister of Music in Southern. Baptist Life," Baptist History and Heritage 21, no. 3 (July, 1986): 18.

(15.) Mrs. H. R. Cook. First Baptist Church, Bessemer, Alabama 1887-1993 (Privately printed; copy in Samford University Library), 67.

(16.) W. Hines Sims, "Music Education, Baptist," Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, 2 (1958): 940.

(17.) E. P. Alldredge, Southern Baptist Handbook (Nashville: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1939), 9-11.

(18.) Letter and materials from Martha Moore Clancy to William J. Reynolds, June 25, 1983. (Reynolds's file).

(19.) William J. Reynolds, "The Graded Choir Movement Among Southern Baptists," Baptist History and Heritage 19, no. 1 (January 1984): 55-61.

(20.) Sims, "Music Education, Baptist," 940.

(21.) David N. Carle, "A History of the School of Church Music of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1944-1959" (D.M.A. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky), 22.

(22.) Ibid., 44.

(23.) C. Randall Bradley, "The Influence of Frances W. Winters on the Development and Philosophy of the Graded Choir Movement in the Southern Baptist Convention" (D.M.A. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1988), 13-22.

(24.) Elizabeth Van Fleet Vosseller, Junior Choirs-More Helps and Suggestions (Flemington, New Jersey: Democrat Printing Office, 1939), 20.

(25.) Bradley, "Influence of Frances W. Winters," 13.

(26.) Hugh T. McElrath, "The Minister of Music in Southern Baptist Life," Baptist History and Heritage 21, no. 3 (July 1986): 13.

(27.) Graves was in Atlanta's First Baptist Church for almost a week during 1941, examining the new music program. This information was incorporated in Let Us Sing (Bradley, "Influence of Frances W. Winters," 16).

(28.) Annual, Southern Baptist convention, 1942.

(29.) Arkansas Baptist (December 6, 1942): 9.

(30.) Lynn E. May Jr., The First Baptist Church of Nashville, Tennessee 1820-1970 (Nashville: First Baptist Church, 1970), 226.

(31.) Ibid. 247.

(32.) William J. Reynolds. Heritage of Praise: The Story of the Church Music Department of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma (Oklahoma City: Church Music Department, BGCO, 1996), 4-5.

(33.) Baptist Messenger (December 11, 1952): 14.

William J. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of Church Music Emeritus, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth Texas..