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Biography
Among the best gospel quartets from the postwar period, the Harmonizing Four were also a member of family anomaly of the time; as their contemporaries raced to modernize their audio, rejecting the original jubilee style and only the intensity from the burgeoning “hard gospel” motion, the Four continued to be true with their origins, focusing instead around the spirituals and hymns of a period eliminated by. For all their renown, little is well known concerning the group’s formative years — their innovator and supervisor, Joseph “Gospel Joe” Williams, forbade the users to consent to interviews unless these were paid beforehand, and for that reason, the anecdotal info that will exist is usually sketchy and imperfect. Records possess indicated that this Four produced their formal debut in a sentence structure school within their indigenous Richmond, VA on Oct 27, 1927; founding users included Thomas “Goat” Johnson and Levi Handly, with Williams putting your signature on on in 1933 and Lonnie Smith — the daddy of jazz pianist Lonnie Liston Smith — becoming a member of four years later on. The Harmonizing Four produced their documented debut on Decca in 1943; in all probability they found the label in the behest of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whom they often times supported both on record and in concert. After Globe Battle II, they got on the small Coleman label; contained in the roster during a lot of this era was Tommy Ellison, later on from the Particular Gospel Singers. A short tenure on Gotham adopted, and after 1952, the Harmonizing Four cut only 1 record, an individual for the Spiritual Recordings label, ahead of coming to Vee-Jay in 1957. There, the group — Williams, Smith, Thomas Johnson, and Jimmy Jones — finally started earning the popularity long credited them, honing their close tranquility design to mellow excellence; Jones, specifically, gained renown as possibly the biggest basso in gospel background, his canyon-deep tone of voice distinguishing strikes like “Motherless Kid.” After departing Vee-Jay through the early ’60s, the Harmonizing Four documented for Nashboro, gradually easing into pension within the years that implemented.
