Bill Gaither
American singer and songwriter
William James Gaither ( GAY-thər; born March 28, 1936) is an American singer and songwriter of Southern gospel and contemporary Christian music. He has written numerous popular Christian songs with his wife Gloria; he is also known for performing as part of the Bill Gaither Trio and the Gaither Vocal Band. In the 1990s, his career gained a resurgence (as well as the careers of other southern gospel artists), as popularity grew for the Gaither Homecoming series. In 2023, he released a secular music album with the Gaither Vocal Band entitled Love Songs.
Early life
Bill Gaither was born in Alexandria, Indiana, in 1936 to George William Gaither and Lela Olga Hartwell. He formed his first group, the Bill Gaither Trio (consisting of Bill, his sister Mary Ann (1945–2018), and brother Danny Gaither (1938–2001)), in 1956 while a college student at Anderson College, to which he had transferred after one year at Taylor University. He graduated from Anderson in 1959 with a major in English and a minor in music, after which he worked as an English teacher. He married the former Gloria Sickal in 1962.
After earning his master's degree from Evangel University in 1961, Gaither entered into the fledgling Gospel Music Association, founded in 1964, and helped organize the first Dove Awards ceremony in 1969.
He tried for a few years to manage both a music career and his full-time teaching job, but he quit his teaching job in 1967 and began working full-time in the Christian music industry.
The public source identifies “Bill Gaither” as american singer and songwriter. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bill, Gaither and American.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q795012. VIAF identifies the subject as 226447116. The Library of Congress control number is n92024119. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 2023, 1945 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bill Gaither” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.