Gospel Quartet Radio Performances

The Cash quartet from Rockcastle County, Kentucky, formed around 1956 as the result of singing together at the Ottawa Baptist Church. Members included Walter Cash, wife Reba, Walter's sister Joanne, and R.H. Hamm. Like many other amateur gospel groups at the time, they were not interested in commercial recording. They sung only occasionally on the nationally heard Renfro Valley Gatherin'. However they gained a local radio following through their own weekly program, Sinclair Sunday Serenade, over Renfro Valley's WRVK. They were busy as well with frequent appearances at local and regional gospel singing events, something they continued after they stopped radio performing in the late-1960s.

Reual Thomas' singing school teaching resulted in guest radio appearances by school "graduates" from time-to-time. One such group were singers from Casey County's Cedar Springs Baptist Church who sang on the Renfro Valley Gatherin' 1948. Lair depicted the group as an "old-fashioned singing school" despite the fact that they were singing newer seven-shape gospel hymns. Also, perhaps to give the program an old timey feel, the group sings the shapes, a practice common in the older, or "Fasola," shape-note singing (e.g. "Sacred Harp" singing), but one that is somewhat rare in seven-shape, or "Doremi," gospel music performance.