William McEwan

b. 1870 d. 1943

From Mark Thomson’s Low Country Boys website:

The Glaswegian singing evangelist William MacEwan (1870-1943) recorded the first gospel music in the world, for the Columbia Record Company, in London in 1911. He recorded six hymns in one session, one of which was “My Ain Countrie”. MacEwan made 82 recordings from 1911 – 1932, which were issued on a box set of 3 cassettes in the 1980s; a selection later appeared on the CD “The Original Glasgow Street Singer Evangelist” in 1994, on the Lismor label from Glasgow. MacEwan was a megastar of his generation, and his fame took him to America. He recorded six hymns in New York in May 1926, including “In the Garden” and “The Old Rugged Cross”. He recorded again in New York in December 1929, February 1930 and January 1931.