Inducted 1971
JAMES PARKS WAITS
(1899 – 1973)
James “Big Jim” Waits was a well-traveled, revered Southern Gospel bass singer during the genre’s most formative years, 1930s –1960s.
“Big Jim” Waits became the first inductee into the GMA Hall of Fame in the Association’s inaugural year 1971, a fitting testament to his stature and reputation as one of the premier bass singers of Southern Gospel’s early years. In that inaugural year only two people were inducted; Waits, who was still alive and therefore inducted into the “living” category, and “Dad” Speer who was inducted in what at the time was referred to as the “deceased” category.
Although Waits hailed from Atlanta, his professional singing career started on Broadway in Vaudeville with the Policeman’s Quartet. Beginning in the mid-1930s, his gospel music career spanned several decades and in the pre WWII days helped bring the quartet sound to the forefront of gospel music. His many roles included stints with pioneering groups: the Morris-Henson Quartet, the Electrical Workers Quartet, the Vaughan Radio Quartet, the Stamps Quartet, the John Daniel Quartet, the Homeland Harmony Quartet and the Rebels Quartet. In the 1950s when the LeFevre Trio transitioned away from the three-member sound to the fuller sound of a foursome, it was Waits who became their bass singer. As his career stretched into the 1960s Waits also performed with the Speer Family and was occasionally brought in to add more low-end oomph to some of the Speer recordings.
Many gospel music legends credit Waits as an exemplary member of the gospel music fraternity. Gospel music’s most popular bass singer of all time, J.D. Sumner, compared the voice of Big Jim (as he was called) with that of George Younce, a stellar bass singer from the generation that came after Waits, the same generation that included J.D. “Younce was the closest we had to Big Jim,” in J.D.’s opinion. When asked who the best bass singer he ever heard was, the never shy Sumner stated, “I am.” But J.D. put Big Jim in second place because “he was consistent, he could sing anything, any time,” especially considering Waits didn’t have the opportunity to sing with the more modern and advanced equipment (such as improved microphones) that would benefit later day bass singers. Waits was a genuine character on stage. He would pull up his pant legs and shake them to “get the low notes to fall out”; Sumner mimicked him a lot. He was a showman who had the ability to cover his mistakes on stage, something he no doubt learned on the Vaudeville circuit. If he missed hitting his low note squarely in the middle, he’d growl or yell and shake himself, and no one would know he hadn’t hit the note. Waits was an impeccable dresser; he never went anywhere without a suit and tie and it was joked around that his shined-shoes could be used as a mirror. Following a heart attack in his senior years Waits slowed down some but even after his retirement he would often still be found singing with the top pros in the business. In that later phase of his career the “Big Jim” nickname segued to “Pappy” but nonetheless Waits continued to inspire audiences and other singers well into the 1960s. James “Big Jim” Waits inspired generations of bass singers to emulate the magic of his rich bass voice, affectionately earning him the title “the dean of bass singers.” Note of interest – James Waits was inducted into the Southern Gospel Association Hall of Fame in 1997. Content written by GMA Hall of Fame staff member Jon Robberson Sr. with excerpts from The Music Men by Bob Terrell (published 1990), September 2021.
