The resulting album, Love Will Go All the Way, skyrocketed up the charts at a time when the harder quartet style had been largely usurped in popularity and radio airplay by more contemporary gospel sounds. According to gospel historian Bob Marovich, that led to the group garnering airplay on Memphis’s hallowed WDIA-AM, which led to a deal with MCG Records. In the mid-’90s, the group cut a release produced by George Dean of the Gospel Four. These releases were followed by a long recording drought: the group continued to perform on the weekends while Williams drove a truck for a living. (Williams wrote one of the B sides.) The group’s featured singer then was member Willie Ligon. The songs didn’t make much noise - they can’t even be found on YouTube these days. The idea was to have a product that could be sold at live programs, a common practice in the gospel recording field at the time. ![]() Many of that prolific record company’s releases featured gospel groups who paid for these sessions. In the early ’70s, the group made a trio of 45’s for the Designer label. Like its predecessor, the Gospel Stars, the QC’s were at first a family affair. Sharing a hometown of Tupelo, MS, with Elvis, the group, organized by Williams’s uncle, Mitchell Thornton, started up in the early ’60s. But Williams’s seemingly overnight success was three decades in the making. The group racked up Stellar Awards, gospel’s equivalent of the Grammys. ![]() ![]() But the Black gospel community - radio DJs, fellow artists, and everyday fans - rushed to pay their deep respects to a singer who, along with his group the Spiritual QC’s, almost single-handedly revived the fortunes of the traditional gospel quartet in the ’90s.Īt their height, the QC’s were the dominant live attraction in the quartet field, often found near the top of the Billboard gospel charts. Gospel singer Lee Williams’s death this week at 75 was hardly noticed in the mainstream press. The late Lee Williams - more of a singer than a shouter.
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