Florida Boys
Southern Gospel Quartet
The Florida Boys were a male vocal quartet in Southern gospel music. The group was founded in 1947 by J. G. Whitfield. Originally named The Gospel Melody Quartet, the group was renamed in 1954. From the 1950s until 2007, the group was led by Les Beasley on lead and bass guitar, Glen Allred as baritone, and Derrell Stewart at piano, and featured many notable tenors and basses. In 1999, the Florida Boys were inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. The group, led by Charlie Waller in its later years, officially retired in 2016.
History
The Florida Boys Quartet was originally called the Gospel Melody Boys and was started by J.G.Whitfield in Pensacola FL.
The original group consisted of J.G, Sue Whitfield, "Pap" Fiveash, Ike Manning, and Ross Ingraham.
The group went through several changes in the first few years, including members already mentioned as well as Roy Howard, Doyle Wiggins, Guy Dodd, Curtis Whitfield, Christine Woolham, Cora Fiveash, "Tiny" Merrill, Buddy Mears, and Livy Freeman.
In 1952, the first of the mainstays of what would become the Florida Boys joined, when Glen Allred, a young man from Monteray Tennesse who had previously played guitar for the Oak Ridge Quartet, would take over the baritone position.
in 1953, Les Beasley, a young Korean War Veteran from the marines joined the Lead position.
“Florida Boys” enters the record as southern Gospel Quartet. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Florida, Boys and Southern can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5461238. VIAF identifies the subject as 137517535. The Library of Congress control number is no98017278. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1954, 2007 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Florida Boys” 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.