Speer Family

Music teacher G.T. Speer first formed this gospel quartet in the early 1920s with his wife, Lena; sister, Pearl; and her husband, Logan Claborn. G.T.’s son Brock, and daughters Rosa and Mary subsequently replaced the Claborns. The Speers started recording in the mid '40s while continuing to maintain their regular radio broadcasts. When G.T. and Lena passed away, the group soldiered on and stuck by their founder’s principles, which insisted on a strict religious repertoire rooted in the southern gospel tradition. Over the subsequent decades, numerous family members would pass through the ranks of the group and keep the tradition alive and well. The Speers won a Gospel Music Association Album Of The Year Dove Award in 1975 for I JUST FEEL LIKE GOOD IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN, and as late as the 1990s members of the group were continuing to make appearances on the southern gospel circuit.