Gospel music has been an important of the lives of the Coston family for at least four generations.
It all started in Calhoun County with James Gaston Coston who married Mary Elizabeth Oliver in 1895.
Married at Gaston Springs, they lived there for a while, and then later moved to Rocky Branch.
They had 11 children, eight girls and three boys. The girls were Freddie Elma, Abbigale, Earleen, Oma Irene, Leola Marie, Glennie and Mavis. The boys were Rufus, Ottis and Doyle.
The youngest, Mavis Evonne, born September 2, 1926, lived three months and is buried at Gaston Springs Cemetery.
Coston was a farmer who, in 1927, opened a General Store in Bruce, just south of the railroad tracks, which he operated three or four years.
For entertainment the Costons would sit out on the porch when visitors came by and sing gospel songs. When the children were young they did not have a piano and would just sing without any instrumental accompaniment.
After they got a piano, different ones would play, and they would sing for hours.
Deacon Utley and The Smile-A-While Quartet. Rufus Coston was a member of this Macon, Ga., based quartet which made some records in the 1940s. Other members of the group were, from left, Roosevelt Miller, Oochie Sanders, Rufus Coston, Dempsy Rainwater, Deacon Utley, and Deacon Utley’s son Lynn at the piano.
Mrs. Leola Stribling, one of the sisters, remembers many visitors playing the piano while they sang. One was Burgess Bell, who played and sang for the Hartford Quartet. “He could really tear a piano up,” she said.
Others who came to their home over the years were: Claude Murphree from Pittsboro, who sang with the Hartford Quartet and taught singing school at the Hartford Music Company in Hartford, Ar.; E.M. Bartlett, who wrote “Victory In Jesus” and J.A. McClung, who wrote, “Just A Rose Will Do,” both of whom were associated with the Hartford Music Company; Albert E. Brumley and Luther Presley, two of the most popular song writers in their day.
Mrs. Glennie McKibben, the youngest sister, recalls those who came to visit would usually spend the night and all the family would gather around the piano to sing for entertainment.
In the early years Rufus, who the family and close friends called ‘Bud’, sang with his three younger sisters, Abbigale, Earleen and Oma Irene for the family and at church.
Rufus sang with the Hartford Quartet until 1926, when his younger sister, Mavis, died, and he came home to be with his family.
In 1941 Rufus went to Macon, Ga., to sing with “Deacon Utley and the Smile A While Quartet.” They sang locally and performed on WMAZ radio in Macon at 5:30 every morning.
They also recorded on 78 rpm discs. One of their most popular songs was “I’m Winging My Way Back Home.”
After the war Rufus, Ottis and Doyle, the three brothers, started singing together, joined by Burl Parker who played the piano, and Hulett Spratlin and Sharon Hamilton.
After singing together for a while, they came to be known as “The Bruce Quartet.”
Rufus suffered a fatal heart attack at his home on September 19, 1978, 11 days before his 78th birthday.
After moving away from Bruce for several years, Doyle and his wife came back to Bruce and just recently moved to be near their son.
Ottis has recently moved to the Bruce Nursing Home where he says he enjoys the company of good friends.
In the late 1950s, Glennie and her older sister, Leola, along with Leola’s daughter, Janice Jarrett, and John Henry Spencer, sang at Ellard Baptist Church, where they all attended.
Singing at many functions and events they came to be known as “The Ellard Quartet.” Ann Sanders, who later married Paul Downing, played piano for them for a while.
Ann sang with The Speer Family for several years before she met and married Downing, a great bass singer with the Dixie Echoes. After they married they put together their own group called “The Downings,” A very popular group in the 1970s.
After Ann, Linda Ward became pianist for the Ellard Quartet.
Mrs. Leola sang also and played for the Gospel Aires Quartet from Corinth, in the early 1970s.
The Gospel Aires recorded an album in 1974 called “Sing Unto Him,” which included old favorites as “Father Along” , “In the Cradle of the Stars” and “I’ll Meet You In The Morning, written by Albert E. Brumley, a visitor in the Coston home many years earlier.
Many say they have been blessed by listening over the years to the singing Costons, but members of the family say they were the ones to be blessed by parents who loved them and taught them to be Christians.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was first published in 1997.