Well, this is the strangest thing. I wanted to add a fine Black group I heard fifty years ago to this interesting list, as a way of pushing back the history some more.

I've been searching online, twice now, for information about a Black Gospel Quartet (Quintet?) who were popular in the 1950s and performed in Florida, for sure, but search as I may, I cannot find them. They were called, I was sure, The Rebels, but the only gospel group by that name and that period and that state who I can find is a bunch of white guys - who appear to be good singers as well, but they ain't the guys I heard and saw.

I'm still sure they were called the Rebels. When I was six years old, living on the outskirts of Orlando for a year, I got taken to a gospel concert. I remember it well; it was in a big theatre, in Orlando or Tampa (I never did sort out those two towns as a six year old) and the singers wore red jackets, and sang so beautifully I didn't utter a peep the whole time. Their bass singer had a warm, room-vibrating deep voice. My parents bought one of their records (a rare luxury expenditure that year), we brought it back to Cape Breton with us, and they wore the same jackets on the album cover. That record was around for years before disappearing.

Anybody older'n dirt like me, and possibly living in the Southern States remember these great singers? I'm feeling like I got moved to an alternate dimension around 1965 or thereabouts.