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Southland Quartet
There were several groups named "Southland Quartet," including groups based in Alabama and Texas in the 1940s and in South Carolina and Oklahoma in the 1950s. The two Southland Quartets described here were managed by men who had been together in the Dixie Four in Memphis prior to World War II. They both organized their own quartets soon after the war.
Brown Carter’s Southland Quartet (1946-1950):
Brown Carter, former baritone with the Dixie Four and the Stamps-Baxter Dixie Quartet in the early 1940s, organized the Southland Quartet in Corinth, Mississippi in 1946. The quartet performed regularly on WCMA radio in the Corinth area as well as traveling on weekends, generally staying in the region. One of the last accounts of Brown Carter’s Southland Quartet was around August 1950 when they were on a road trip performing in southern Indiana and Illinois.
Gene Lowery’s Southland Quartet (1952-1954):
Gene Lowery, who had reorganized his Dixie Four after the war, moved them to Indianapolis in 1946. By 1952, in addition to managing the Dixie Four, he had also begun operating his own Southland Quartet, headquartered in Olney, Illinois. Whether Gene Lowery’s Southland Quartet was a continuation of Brown Carter’s group is not known, but it is possible since they had worked together and had known each other for many years.
Lowery had well-established contacts in the region as manager of the Dixie Four quartet. He soon had his Southland Quartet on local radio in Olney and on television in Bloomington, Indiana. While this full time quartet was rather short-lived, it did boast several well-known quartet veterans including Warren Holmes, Vernon Bright, Doug Jones, and Elmer Childress. Only Lowery was left going into the fall of 1954, so Lowery essentially joined the Pathfinders (Bill Gaither, Charlie Hodge, James Hopkins and Vance Windsor) to form a new version of the Southland Quartet. This group only sang as the Southland Quartet for a few weeks, but Gaither and Hodge would continue with Lowery and two other singers to reorganize the Pathfinders before the end of that same year.