Gospel Music Hall of Fame member Ben Speer died in Nashville on April 7 at age 86.

He was a mainstay of the legendary Speer Family, the music director of the popular Gaither Homecoming video series, a prominent gospel music publisher, a co-worker with both Elvis Presley and Hank Williams, a recording studio owner and a record-label executive.

The Speer Family was known as “the first family of gospel music” due to its astonishingly long career and its many breakthroughs and innovations. The group was formed in 1921 by Ben’s parents George Thomas “Dad” Speer (1891-1966) and Lena Brock “Mom” Speer (1899-1967) along with Dad’s sister Pearl and brother-in- law Logan Claborn.

At the time, white gospel acts in the South were almost always exclusively male. The Speers made history by featuring female singing. Indeed, Lena and Pearl were the powerful, dominant voices in the group.

When the Claborns dropped out in 1925, the founders’ oldest son Brock Speer (1920-1977) and daughter Rosa Neil (b. 1922) were recruited to join the act at the ages of five and three, respectively.

During the 1930s, daughter Mary Tom Speer (1925-2014) was added to the group. Ben Speer, born in 1930, was the youngest child. He was singing with the family by the end of the decade.

In 1941, The Speer Family became popular on WSFA radio in Montgomery, Alabama. Their morning gospel program was followed by one performed by newcomer Hank Williams. Ben and his family were scandalized when Hank arrived for his show after all-night carousing in honky-tonks.

The Speers moved to Nashville in 1946, just in time for the post-war explosion in popularity of Southern-gospel music. That same year, the family’s youngest member formed The Ben Speer Music Company at age 16. Ben’s firm was the first to publish Southern-gospel music in sheet-music form.

The Speer Family began recording in 1947. During the next 50 years, the group recorded for such labels as Bullet, Columbia, RCA Victor, Starday, Benson, Sing, Heart Warming, Skylite, Vista, Riversong and Homeland. More than 75 Speer Family albums have been marketed.

In 1948, Rosa Nell left the group for marriage and motherhood. Brock Speer’s wife Faye replaced her.

Nashville’s WSIX radio featured The Speer Family on weekly weekend gospel shows for eight years in the 1950s. In 1954, the group became a gospel pioneer on television. For the next six years, it was familiar to a generation of Nashvillians as a fixture of daily, early-morning local TV on Channel 5. This was the first gospel daily TV show in history.

Due to her marriage and a desire to start a family, sister Mary Tom departed around 1954. Ben, Brock and Faye pressed on with Mom and Dad.

Both Mary Tom and her “retired” sister Rosa Neil occasionally returned to sing with the family and/or worked in the Speer business office on Music Row.

In 1956, Ben, Brock and tenor singer Gordon Stoker were recruited to sing backup on recording sessions by RCA’s newest signee, Elvis Presley. As a result, Ben Speer sang on such early Elvis hits as “Heartbreak Hotel,” “I Was the One” and “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.”

Next, The Speer Family became national TV personalities as regulars on the syndicated Singing Time in Dixie weekly show beginning in 1964.

After Dad and Mom passed away, Ben and Brock became the leaders of The Speer Family. They took it to new heights, and Ben became the act’s lead singer.

The brothers adopted a series of Speer “sisters,” several of whom went on to have successful solo gospel careers. Ben Speer’s sons Stephen and Darin, and Brock’s children Suzan, Marc and Brian all became Speer Family participants as well.

Beginning in 1967, the Speers became regulars on the syndicated TV series “Gospel Singing Caravan” and were signed by gospel’s most prominent record companies. The exposure magnified the group’s popularity enormously.

Among the songs associated with The Speer Family are “Standing By the River,” “My Lord Will Lead Me Home,” “Heaven’s Jubilee,” “I’m Building a Bridge,” “Saved to the Uttermost,” ”He’s Still in the Fire,” “The King Is Coming,” “What Sins Are You Talking About” and “I’ll Meet You in the Morning.”

The group’s 1977 hit “I’m Standing on the Solid Rock” — published by Ben Speer — reportedly holds the record as the longest-lasting No. 1 song on the gospel charts. Its 1984 hit “City Coming Down” made history as gospel’s first concept music video.

During the 1970s and 1980s, when Ben and Brock were guiding The Speers, they won 14 Dove Awards from the Gospel Music Association and were nominated for seven Grammy Awards.

Ben Speer retired from the group in 1993, but continued to be a prominent figure in the gospel-music business. He became the general manager of the Stamps-Baxter School of Music and opened his Ben Speer Recording Studio. As music director of the Bill Gaither Homecoming gospel video series, Ben endeared himself to dozens of veterans of that genre who sang on the shows.

Brother Brock Speer finally folded The Speer Family in 1998, after its unprecedented, unparalleled and unsurpassed 77-year career. The durable group had gone from traveling via horse-and- buggy to Model T Ford to customized tour bus.

The Speer Family was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1998, following the individual inductions of Dad (1971), Mom (1972), Brock (1975) and Ben (1995). Ben Speer is also a member of the Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.

The gospel-music legend is survived by sister Rosa Neil Speer Powell, by wife Rebekah Long Speer, by sons Stephen and Darin and by several grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

The family will receive friends on Monday, April 10 from 4-7 p.m. at Woodlawn-Roesch- Patton Funeral Home at 660 Thompson Lane.

The visitation there on Tuesday (April 11) from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. will be followed by a Celebration of Life service at The First Church of the Nazarene, 510 Woodland Street. Interment will follow at Woodlawn Memorial Park.

Serving as pallbearers are Dave Clark, Gene McDonald, Tim Reid, Mike Allen, Brian Speer, Marc Speer, Tom Powell, Shannon Fontaine and Per Norstrand.

Rock-music founding father and powerful country-music influence Chuck Berry passed away on Saturday, March 18, at age 90.

In addition to being an inaugural inductee into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, Berry became a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame four years earlier. His song catalog not only serves as a cornerstone of rock ‘n’ roll, it has been tapped by dozens of country artists for more than six decades.

Such members of the Country Music Hall of Fame as Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Marty Robbins, Elvis Presley, Buck Owens and Ernest Tubb all scored major hits with Chuck Berry songs. Berry’s fusion of blues and hillbilly idioms – plus his lyric emphasis on cars, girls, school, clothes, parents and other teen concerns — made him a pluperfect rockabilly artist. Fittingly, he was also an inductee into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

Born in St. Louis on Oct. 18, 1926, he was a largely self-taught musician who began performing locally around 1952. His bands performed a mix of r&b, swing, pop, blues and country tunes. He recalled that black audiences particularly loved dancing to his hillbilly numbers.

Berry’s band was soon the biggest attraction in St. Louis. Encouraged by his local renown, he traveled to Chicago to earn a recording contract with Chess Records.

“Maybelline,” based on the country tune “Ida Red,” launched his hit-making career in 1955. Marty Robbins instantly recorded the song for the country market and scored a top-10 hit with it. Similarly, in 1956 Ernest Tubb covered Berry’s 1955 hit “Thirty Days” and turned it into a country top-10.

Chuck Berry then embarked on a barrage of late-1950s pop and/or r&b top-10 smashes that included “No Money Down” (1955), “Roll Over Beethoven” (1956), “Too Much Monkey Business” (1956), “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” (1956), “School Day” (1957), Rock & Roll Music” (1958), “Sweet Little Sixteen” (1958), “Johnny B. Goode” (1958), “Carol” (1958), “Memphis Tennessee” (1959) and “Almost Grown” (1959). These hits made him a leader of the rock ‘n’ roll revolution. Indeed, he is arguably the artist who most clearly defined the genre — as a songwriter, as a guitarist and as a “duck-walking” showman.

At the peak of his early fame, he was jailed on a morals charge. But Berry returned to the charts with such iconic tunes as “Back in the U.S.A.” (1959), “Too Pooped to Pop” (1960), “Nadine” (1964), “No Particular Place to Go” (1964), “C’Est La Vie (You Never Can Tell)” (1964) and “Promised Land” (1965). Berry’s final chart hits were “My Ding-A-Ling” (1972) and “Reelin’ & Rockin’” (1973), yet he remained a vital live performer for decades to come.

In addition, his songs continued to be recorded. The Beach Boys famously co-opted his “Sweet Little Sixteen” melody for their 1963 hit “Surfin’ U.S.A.” The first Rolling Stones single was a 1963 version of Berry’s “Come On.” The Beatles covered both “Roll Over Beethoven” (1964) and “Rock & Roll Music” (1965).

Country artists were particularly enthusiastic about recording Berry’s songs. In fact, several became bigger hits on the country charts than they had been for Berry on the pop hit parade. These included Buck Owens’s chart-topping 1969 version of “Johnny B. Goode,” Waylon Jennings’s 1970 remake of “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” Freddy Weller’s 1971 rendition of “Promised Land,” Elvis Presley’s 1974 recording of “Promised Land” and Emmylou Harris’s 1977 revival of “C’Est La Vie (You Never Can Tell).”

Other significant country hits of Chuck Berry’s tunes included Freddy Weller’s 1974 top-10 success with “Too Much Monkey Business,” Linda Ronstadt’s 1978 version of “Back in the U.S.A.,” the George Jones and Johnny Paycheck 1979 duet of “Maybelline,” Freddy Weller’s 1979 reworking of “Nadine” and Fred Knoblock’s 1981 rendition of “Memphis Tennessee.” The last-named has also been recorded by Lonnie Mack (1963), Waylon Jennings (1964), Elvis Presley (1965), Buck Owens (1965), Flatt & Scruggs (1965), Karen Black (1975) and Toby Keith (2011).

Conway Twitty (“Maybelline”), Ronnie Hawkins (“Thirty Days”), Carmol Taylor (“Back in the U.S.A.”), Jerry Reed (“Promised Land”), Johnny Cash (“Brown Eyed Handsome Man”), Jerry Lee Lewis (“Sweet Little Sixteen”), Ronnie Milsap (“Johnny B. Goode”), Lyle Lovett (“Brown Eyed Handsome Man”), Elvis Presley (“Too Much Monkey Business”) and Roy Clark (“Johnny B. Goode”) have all covered Chuck Berry tunes over the years. In 1965, Bluegrass Hall of Fame members Jim & Jesse recorded an entire LP of Chuck Berry songs, Berry Pickin’ in the Country.

Meanwhile, the rock ‘n’ roll patriarch soldiered onward. In 1969, he played Central Park in New York and the big Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival festival. President Jimmy Carter invited him to play at the White House in 1979.

Chuck Berry was jailed again, this time for income-tax evasion. But he garnered increasing acclaim from such admirers as Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jerry Reed, Johnny Rivers, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, The Dave Clark Five, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Steve Miller, Merle Haggard and Keith Urban.

In 1984, Berry was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Recording Academy. He was honored with a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987.

An all-star concert celebrating his career was filmed in 1987 as the movie Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll. During his lifetime, Berry also appeared in the films Rock! Rock! Rock! (1957), Go, Johnny Go! (1959), Mr. Rock and Roll (1957), The T.A.M.I. Awards Show (1964) and American Hot Wax (1978). He published Chuck Berry: The Autobiography in 1988.

In 1995, Berry performed at the grand opening of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame’s museum in Cleveland, Ohio. The following year, he began performing once a month at Blueberry Hill, a bar/restaurant attraction in his hometown of St. Louis. He was named a Kennedy Center honoree in 2000. Despite his advancing age, he toured Europe in 2008.

Chuck Berry continued appearing regularly in St. Louis until last October. He revealed at that time that his final album would be released by the Nashville label, Dualtone Records.

Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Prominent Nashville session vocalist Hurshel Wiginton has died at age 79.

As a member of The Nashville Edition, Wiginton sang on hundreds of hits in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s and was familiar to millions via the group’s long tenure on TV’s Hee Haw from 1969 to 1988.

Wiginton sang backup on records by a who’s-who of Nashville’s country recording artists, including Hank Williams Jr., George Jones, Brenda Lee, Tammy Wynette, Ronnie Milsap, Waylon Jennings, Eddy Arnold, Mel Street, Gary Stewart, Gene Watson, Johnny Cash, Hank Snow, Charlie Rich, Johnny Paycheck, Tom T. Hall and Merle Haggard. The Nashville Edition also backed such pop stars as Henry Mancini, Elvis Presley, Bobby Goldsboro, Nancy Sinatra, Dave Loggins, Tommy James and Bobby Vinton.

The group sang on more than 12,000 recordings during its heyday. Among the many hit titles where the vocal ensemble can be heard are Charley Pride’s “My Eyes Can Only See As Far As You,” Dottie West’s “Country Sunshine,” Marty Robbins’ “El Paso City,” Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn,” Lynn Anderson’s “Rose Garden,” Freddie Hart’s “Easy Lovin,’” Barbara Mandrell’s “The Midnight Oil,” Melba Montgomery’s “No Charge,” Steve Young’s “Seven Bridges Road” and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”

Hurshel Wiginton was The Nashville Edition’s bass singer. Group member Joe Babcock believed that Wiginton was the best bass vocalist in the music industry.

Wiginton was born Jan. 28, 1938 in Hamilton, Alabama. His earliest singing was at the Poplar Log Free Will Baptist Church, which was next door to his family’s home.

After his high school graduation, he made his way to Muscle Shoals, Alabama. One of the earliest hits he sang on was 1966’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” by soul singer Percy Sledge. Following a brief stint on the Memphis recording scene, Wiginton moved to Nashville.

He and Babcock became founding members of The Nashville Edition, along with Dolores Edgin and Ricki Page. The quartet stepped into the slot vacated by the mixed-voice backup group The Anita Kerr Singers, who had disbanded when leader Kerr departed Nashville.

By the mid-1970s, The Nashville Edition was performing on four recording sessions a day. The group won Superpicker Awards from the Nashville chapter of The Recording Academy in 1975, 1977 and 1978 due to its prominence on Music Row recordings.

The Nashville Edition was so successful with recording-session work that Wiginton had to persuade the others to take the Hee Haw television job. It turned out to be a long-running and lucrative sideline for the quartet.

Hurshel Wiginton died on Monday, March 6, following several years of declining health. His survivors include wife Doris, son Barry and daughters Jo Swafford, Anna Wiginton and Tina Goodrow, plus two grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Also surviving are brothers James and Roger and sister Adgil Marie Lovett.

Arrangements are being handled by the Hamilton Funeral Home in Alabama. The funeral service will be conducted in the singer’s boyhood church, Poplar Log Baptist.

Ilene Berns

Ilene Berns, the force behind Bang Records and Web IV publishing, has died at age 73.

The label launched the career of Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member Paul Davis. The publishing company included iconic works by the executive’s late husband Bert Berns, as well as such Music City songwriters as Davis and Monty Holmes.

Bert Berns was the writer of the rock and soul standards “Twist and Shout,” “Piece of My Heart,” “Tell Him,” “Here Comes the Night,” “Cry to Me,” “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” “A Little Bit of Soap,” “I Want Candy,” “Cry Baby” and “Hang on Sloopy.” He formed Bang Records in 1965. The label made stars of Neil Diamond and Van Morrison, but Bert died of a heart attack in 1967 at age 38.

His widow Ilene Berns was a former model and dancer at The Peppermint Lounge in Manhattan. At age 24, she became the head of her husband’s fledgling enterprises. She soon became one of the most successful female independent label chiefs of all time.

She moved Bang Records to Atlanta in 1970. She rebuilt its catalog with the Paul Davis hits “I Go Crazy,” “Sweet Life,” “Ride ‘Em Cowboy” and “Do Right.” Others on the roster included Brick (“Dazz”), Derek (“Cinnamon”), Nigel Olsson and Peabo Bryson. She also hired future hit Nashville producers Ed Seay and James Stroud.

Bert Berns and Ilene Berns

She sold the label’s masters to CBS in 1979, but retained the company’s song-publishing firms Web IV Music and Sloopy II Music. During the early 1980s, she continued to operate Bang as a CBS imprint. She also bought several country and r&b radio stations.

Ilene Berns moved her businesses to Nashville in 1993. She pitched a country version of “Piece of My Heart” to Faith Hill, who had a No. 1 hit with it in 1994.

Bang II Records was located at 1707 Division Street. The label signed Miguel Salas as a country artist and charted three country singles by Monty Holmes in 1998 – “Why’d You Start Lookin’ So Good” (written by Paul Davis), “Alone” and “Leave My Mama Out of This.” The company also issued r&b records out of its Atlanta office.

Ilene Berns later promoted the 2014 Bert Berns biography Here Comes the Night, campaigned for her husband’s 2016 induction into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, appeared in the 2016 documentary film Bang: The Bert Berns Story and spearheaded the forthcoming Broadway musical Piece of My Heart.

Ilene Berns died on Monday, Feb. 20. Funeral arrangements are unknown at press time.