What Others Have to Say

Coming from Texas, the Chuck Wagon Gang were a way of life. I was ten years old in 1936 when they first started on WBAP in Fort Worth, and I've been a fan ever since. I loved their singing and I loved their songs. They sang about Jesus. That's where it's at!

- Ray Price, Country Music Hall Of Fame Member

 

In Oklahoma, we were too poor to buy any records, but if we could have, we'd have bought the Chuck Wagon Gang's. I first heard them on WBAP out of Fort Worth, Texas. I never saw them until after I came to Tennessee in 1955. It was such a thrill to see AND hear them! I've been a fan ever since.

- Jean Shepard, WSM Grand Ole Opry Star & Country Music Hall of Fame Member
 

When I was fifteen years old, I left home and started working for Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys. Later there were stints with J.D. Crowe and The New South, and Boone Creek. Many times it would be Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shows, so I missed a lot of Church services as a result. One thing that would take me back home in my heart and soul was when we could pick up "The Mull Singing Convention radio show, and hear the great gospel sounds of The Chuck Wagon Gang. It made me think of Mom and Dad because they loved them, too, but more important it made me think of Jesus. Many of their songs had a three-minute gospel message in them, and believe me, I needed to hear it.

They were the very best at what they did. Their harmonies were perfect. Even today with all the tuning devices that are used to make records, nothing comes close to the perfection of The Chuck Wagon Gang. With just a guitar for rhythm and those beautiful voices, they brought down the sounds of Heaven to the earth.

I'm sure thankful for their music. It was a source of inspiration for me at a time when I really needed it, and it still means the world to me today.

- Ricky Skaggs,WSM Grand Ole Opry Star

I grew up on a farm in Northeast Texas, near Taylortown. My mom and dad taught us about God, how important it is to work for a living, the benefits of going to school, and how to sing. The only music we listened to was Gospel music, or music that was done at school or community events. We listened to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights, and on Sundays we listened to the Stamps Quartet on KRLD out of Dallas, and the Chuck Wagon Gang on WBAP in Fort Worth.

We did not have electricity in my boyhood years, so we had to save our battery life for radio shows that were approved by our family. News, weather, the Opry, the Stamps, and the Chuck Wagon Gang. I learned all of their songs from those radio shows. My family taught them to us.

In the mid-50s, the Chuck Wagon Gang appeared at my school, Cunningham Public School, and filled up the gym. They were the biggest stars I had ever seen in person. I loved their simple, four part harmonies, their message, and their guitar player, Howard Gordon. Later in life, I was asked to perform Farther Along at Howard's funeral in 1967. I also bought the house owned by Howard and Anna Gordon. After I married Norah Lee Stuart, who sang with the Chuck Wagon Gang briefly in the 1960s and ‘70s, all of our children and grandchildren were raised in that house.

The Chuck Wagon Gang and their music helped frame my dreams of being in a harmony singing group. To me, they will always be superstars. I am blessed that I got to know them, and that they became some of my dearest friends.

- Duane Allen, The Oak Ridge Boys
 

Back in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Dad listened to the radio a lot. He listened to KAMO in Rogers, Arkansas, KOAM in Pittsburg, Kansas, a station in Coffeyville, Kansas, and KWTO out of Springfield, Missouri. Most of these were 5000 to 10,000 watt stations. Anytime the Chuck Wagon Gang came on, he'd stop and listen. He loved them!

Anna Gordon was Dad's favorite singer. He considered her to be one of the greatest singers there ever was. He wrote some songs with her in mind like I'm Bound For The Land Of Canaan, and I Walk In The New Jerusalem Way.

They were the biggest thing on Columbia, and he was so proud of them. They probably recorded more of my Dad's songs than anyone. He always said the Chuck Wagon Gang were the ones that put I'll Fly Away on the map.
- Bob Brumley, son of the late Albert E. Brumley

 

Son of my fondest memories about music in my youth, goes back to growing up in Paris, Texas with our family of seven kids, and along with my mother and father, we all sang in the Free Holiness Church. At home, if my mother heard the Chuck Wagon Gang come on the radio, she'd hush all of us kids and tell us to stop, listen, and pay attention because that was Gospel music at its best.

The music of the Chuck Wagon Gang was one of the most recognizable sounds we knew back then. We used to sing ALL their music! When you talk about Gospel Music, it just didn't get any better than the Chuck Wagon Gang. As far as I'm concerned, they're still probably responsible for more Gospel music being sung in churches and on Christian radio than anyone else.

The Chuck Wagon Gang was so recognizable that anything they did, they just made it their own. They gave it their own style with original arrangements, and no one else could do it like that. They were so gifted in that respect – just some of the finest singers you will ever hear.

- Gene Watson

 

When I was a kid, the radio stations always played a gospel song along with the country music. The Chuck Wagon Gang was featured quite often, and were played a lot on the Sunday gospel music shows that were so prominent in that period. So I became familiar with them early in my life. We didn't have a record player at home in the early days, but my daddy's brother Marvin bought the old 78rpm records, and I remember hearing them at his house.

I was raised in pretty rural parts of North Carolina and we didn't get many concerts but I know the Chuck Wagon Gang did play some he state, and some of my family who lived in different parts of the state went to see them.

They are one of the first gospel groups I ever remember hearing, and there was no mistaking them. From the very first note, you knew you were listening to the Chuck Wagon Gang.

- Charlie Daniels, WSM Grand Ole Opry Star

 

I was born in 1935. My very first musical memory was around the time I was four to five years old. There was a radio program broadcast every day at Noon, and everyone listened to 'The Chuck Wagon Gang.' These daily radio programs were as much a staple in our lives as Grandma's pinto beans and cornbread. My memories of that time are vivid. Every house up and down Coin Street in the west end of Houston had the radio on and the windows open. You could walk down the street and never miss a word they were singing. The blending of their voices was mesmerizing. These were the post-depression years, and times were hard, but their music made life a little brighter. If our life had been a movie, the Chuck Wagon Gang broadcasts would've been the soundtrack to my youth.

Johnny Bush

 

There are certain things that one never forgets – the smell of bacon frying; the taste of a GOO-GOO; the sound of a bull elk trumpeting to a full moon. These are some of the things that I will never forget. But in the "sound department," there is another one that is right there at the top, the sound of Dad, Anna, Rose, and Jim – the Chuck Wagon Gang. Their hauntingly beautiful, perfectly in tune, pristine sound, was not JUST unique. It was anointed by the Holy Spirit of ALMIGHTY GOD, and as I just listened to On The Jericho Road, I was taken back to my childhood – to the first time I heard that sound — and at the same time, I was uplifted by that sweet Holy Spirit. HALLELUJAH!!

- Larry Gatlin, The Gatlin Brothers

 

The Chuck Wagon Gang has had a special meaning to me for most of my life. Dating back to the mid '30s, it was a daily habit in our home "the Panhandle area of Texas to dial in this marvelous singing group * they performed on radio station WBAP, out of Fort Worth, Texas. Accompanied by the simple sound of a single guitar, D.P. 'Dad' Carter and his children Jim, Rose, and Anna, allowed those memorable minutes to become so precious on our old Philco radio because they had the ability to present their songs in a manner that left an impression they were actually in our living room, singing especially to us! Although their voices were studies in absolute perfection, the close harmony of the Chuck Wagon Gang reflected a simplicity that could never be copied.

After becoming a country music disc jockey, I found music by the Chuck Wagon Gang fit perfectly in the format I was following, receiving so many requests for their many outstanding recordings on various radio stations. Eventually, I had the supreme honor of meeting Dad Carter and the original group. When I moved to Fort Worth in 1963, I was destined to spend over thirty years as an all-night DJ on WBAP, the same radio station that served as the initial outlet base for the Chuck Wagon Gang during their beginning years as superb professional performers. Like so many others who refer to them as their favorite gospel singing group, the Chuck Wagon Gang will always have a special spot in my heart.

- Bill Mack, Country Radio Hall Of Fame Member

 

Growing up on the farm in Spalding, Nebraska my brothers Tompall, Chuck, and I used to listen to the Chuck Wagon Gang on a Fort Worth radio station. We loved gospel music, and you couldn't help but notice what they were doing. Their harmonies were unique, their voices so clear and always in tune... there was no one like them back then, and there's no one like them today.

- Jim Glaser, The Glaser Brothers