Still testifying — 90-year-old Spencer Taylor Jr. and the Highway QC’s gospel group stay busy live and in the studio

The Highway QC’s, a gospel group formed in Chicago in 1945 that once featured soulful vocalist Sam Cooke, is still going strong. The late Cooke is long gone, but the 90-year-old Spencer Taylor Jr., who joined the ensemble in 1956 and moved to DC in 1964, remains in the group as a vocalist, its spiritual leader and a link to its historic roots.

In December, Taylor and the current incarnation of the Highway QC’s — which includes his sons Spencer B. Taylor III and Lynn Taylor — finished the year with a U.S. tour that made a stop at the House of Praise Church in Northeast DC. The group also digitally released a new song, “He Picked Me Up,” which Spencer B. Taylor III says is getting some radio and streaming attention.

The Highway QC’s and other groups in the early 20^th century pioneered a style of black-church-rooted gospel music known as “quartet” because it features four voice parts — melody, tenor, baritone and bass. This approach often utilizes call-and-response vocals with backing harmonies.

Over the years the Highway QC’s and many other quartet groups have modernized this style, adding more instrumentation. Despite the changes, some gospel radio programmers now consider this approach old-fashioned, with many listeners preferring hip-hop- and rhythm-and-blues-influenced spiritual music by younger artists.

At the House of Praise event, emcee Eric “Bossman” Graham of WYCB-AM radio alluded to this transition several times, noting “many others don’t play quartet, but I do.” While the Highway QC’s may not have quite the drawing power today of younger gospel-rap acts such as Kirk Franklin, there’s a predominantly over-40, African-American audience for whom the QC’s brand of gospel is still a vital means of conveying and rejoicing in devotion.

“I started singing in the house in Mississippi,” the elder Spencer Taylor said. “My mother was a religious woman. We didn’t have television and all that. We started a group that was called the Taylor Family with my brothers and sisters. And as we got older and went our own ways, I was the only one still singing out of the whole bunch.”

Taylor moved to Chicago at age 19, and he soon landed on gospel concert bills with performers that would become legendary. “When I was getting started singing, I knew Mahalia [Jackson] like I knew my kids,” he said, referring to the late vocalist who was widely considered “the Queen of Gospel.”  

“I used to sing on the same programs with her,” he said. “She was down to earth, very nice.” 

Taylor spent two years in the U.S. Army but was back in Chicago with a job at a post office when he was recruited by the Highway QC’s in 1956 — about a decade after Sam Cooke and several other Chicago teenagers formed the group, which by then had a contract with Vee-Jay Records, a prominent label known for its R&B roster. The band’s name reportedly refers to its origins as the “Quartet Crusaders” at Quincy College High School and the Highway Baptist Church.

The group’s 1955 single “Somewhere to Lay My Head” got national radio airplay, which led to bookings for out-of-town appearances around the time Taylor joined the Highway QC’s. He quit his postal position and never got a day job again. The next year, lead singer Johnnie Taylor (no relation to Spencer) left to join an even bigger gospel group — the Soul Stirrers — just as Cooke had done in 1950. At that point, Spencer Taylor Jr. assumed the role of lead singer at the age of 29.

As lead singer, Spencer Taylor Jr. became more active in the group’s songwriting and arranging. He notes that he created many songs and arrangements with guitarist Arthur Crume, who had been in the Swan Silvertones. The QC’s took on a busy road schedule. “There were times we worked seven days a week then. Being young and getting that kind of exposure, I am grateful today that that happened,” Taylor said.

The group had a number of successful records on Vee-Jay, and then joined Don Robey’s Peacock label after Vee-Jay went bankrupt in 1966. In 1975, the group signed with jazz label Savoy and had acclaim with “Oh How Wonderful,” which became a Highway QC’s standard that is still requested by fans at performances.

After leaving Savoy in 1983, the group has been with a number of labels, including the famed Mississippi gospel and soul label Malaco. The group also had some crossover success in the early 1980s when it performed with the Hawkins family of “O Happy Day” fame for three weeks on Broadway in The Gospel at Colonus.

The 52-year-old Spencer B. Taylor III, known as “Boo,” has been singing with his father in the Highway QC’s since 1983, and another son, Lynn “Fuzzy” Taylor, has been with him since 2010. Fuzzy previously spent five years playing keyboard with rap duo Salt-N-Pepa. Pastor Randy Walker, who has been with the QC’s about a year, is now the lead vocalist, and Stanley Richardson is another singer. The vocalists have been working with the same backing band for a number of years now.

Boo says he was pleased to see strong attendance at the group’s recent shows in North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina and New Jersey. In late 2018, the group also wrapped up a video shoot in Dayton, Ohio, for the new song “He Picked Me Up.” 

Boo proudly notes that the gospel Stellar Awards in March 2017 presented his dad, now nicknamed “the Godfather,” with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He says his father still likes the road and relishes the band’s busy schedule. “He travels every weekend with no complaints. He loves it. If we’re off too many weekends, he fusses,” Boo said.

The Highway QC’s are working on a new album that will be released in the spring by Jontee Ruffin’s Ruff Boyz Records of Dayton. Boo says the whole group has played a role in the songwriting.

“Dad has written a couple, Pastor Randy Walker a couple, some with group input, although we’ll take a good song from anybody, he said. 

Some of the album was recorded in the band’s DC studio and some in the Ruff Boyz studio in Dayton. Boo says of Ruffin, “He was hip-hop but always liked the QC’s.” The producer — Ronald Frost, a member of the funk band Zapp — has worked with the group before. Boo is fond of Frost’s approach.

Lately, with longtime local gospel promoter Rosetta Thompson dealing with health issues, some have wondered how often the Highway QC’s and other quartet-style acts will be booked in venues in the DC area. Multi-act gospel quartet gigs — promoted by flier, via Facebook and on WYCB-AM — have drawn hundreds of people in recent years at locations such as House of Praise, on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE in the Deanwood neighborhood, and at Scripture Cathedral on Central Avenue in Landover, Maryland. Thompson, who promoted many such shows in the area for decades, is now ailing and unable to do so. Couple that with the number of African-American churches in DC having dwindled over the last four decades and one might see a problem for the gospel music community.

But Spencer Taylor Jr., who lives in Northeast DC near the National Arboretum, is confident someone will step up. The Highway QC’s themselves helped make the House of Praise show happen via Boo’s own promotional work, and his father’s testifying was a highlight. The Dec. 1 event was billed as a “special tribute” to Rosetta Thompson and a farewell concert for Lee Williams, who was retiring from the Spiritual QC’s, a Mississippi-based group. The roster also included such other national veteran acts as The Sensational Nightingales and The Canton Spirituals, led by Harvey Watkins Jr.

Since Taylor Jr. hasn’t been the lead singer of the Highway QC’s for about 15 years, he spent part of the appearance standing back with the musicians. But when the time came for him to take the lead, he proved he can still wail. The band got quiet, and the thin Taylor Jr. unhurriedly led the other vocalists down the middle aisle of the church into the audience. Wearing a red three-piece suit with blue dress shirt like his Highway QC’s colleagues, Taylor Jr. showed off his vocal range as the other singers harmonized, standing arm in arm behind him.

When Taylor Jr.’s voice reached its loudest and most fervent peak, it was a hair-standing-up-on-the-neck moment. The audience was in the presence of a skilled American artist, still singing spiritually as he has done for decades.