Regarded among the founders of Southern Gospel music James D. Vaughan was among the unique pioneers. Born 1864 in Tennessee John was a music teacher, a musician and a songbook publisher. In 1900, he began the John D. Vaughan music writing organization and the Vaughan school of music in 1911 where several gospel performers learned in the coming years. In the season prior 1910, he pioneered the idea of offering songbooks on your way when he assembled the first skilled quartet and sent them on the road. Vaughan also founded one of the very first stereo in Tennessee in 1922 that broadcast Southern Gospel music up until 1930. Additionally, he created Vaughan phonograph documents, which can be the very first documenting business in the south. It is easy to understand why Vaughan is considered the pioneer of Southern Gospel music and why he was inducted to the southern Gospel music Hall of Fame in 1997.

You cannot discuss John D. Vaughan without mentioning Charles Davis Tillman. Tillman can also be regarded among the pioneers of contemporary Southern Gospel music. Created 1861 in Alabama whilst the youngest child of a Baptist preacher, Tillman has been attributed with integrating African-American spirituals into traditional Religious music. As a singer and composer, he was presented to the spiritual "The Old-Time Religion" at a very early age where he wrote their own edition and subjected it to the white churchgoers and southerners to this new form of sound. In doing so this mixture of music eventually turned known as Southern Gospel and affected a era of musicians such as for instance Elvis Presley and Friend Holly. Tillman proceeded to publish dozens of songs certainly one of which being the most popular "Life's Railway to Heaven" that influenced generations. Tillman has been memorialized at the southern Gospel music Corridor of Celebrity and the Gospel music Corridor of Fame melanie leis.

Carrying on the Southern music history will be the Blackwood Brothers. Shaped in 1934 with brothers Roy Blackwood, Doyle Blackwood, Wayne Blackwood, and R.W Blackwood began performing together as a quartet. By 1940, they were currently on the road selling songbooks and performing on the radio in Iowa. The quartet over the years has already established many selection changes of household members and non-family customers but overall has been significant in the Southern Gospel music company for 76 years. They influenced ages of quartets that used them like the Kingsmen Quartet, the Statesmen Quartet and the Walnut Ridge boys.