Thomas Andrew Dorsey, composer of over 400 blues and gospel songs, lived here after his birth in Villa Rica on July 1, 1899. At Mt. Prospect Baptist Church he was exposed to shape-note singing, and at home he learned to play a used pump organ, experiences he said “sprang” his career. As a young blues pianist, he moved to Chicago in 1919 during the Great Migration. After his wife and newborn son died unexpectedly on August 26 and 27, 1932, Dorsey wrote Take My Hand, Precious Lord, the world’s most popular gospel-blues song, which has been translated into 32 languages. Aretha Franklin recorded it in 1956, the same year Tennessee Governor Frank Clement recited it. It became the anthem of Fannie Lou Hamer’s Mississippi Summer, and Dorsey’s friend Mahalia Jackson sang it at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral. Elvis Presley’s recording of Dorsey’s second-most-popular gospel song, Peace in the Valley, sold millions of copies. For a time, any new gospel-blues song, regardless of who wrote it, was called a “Dorsey” until Dorsey himself coined the name “gospel.” He died in Chicago on January 23, 1993.