Janis Lewis
Janis Lewis Phillips is a singer and the youngest daughter of Roy "Pop" Lewis and Pauline Holloway Lewis of Lincolnton, Georgia. She sang with the Lewis Family, the bluegrass gospel group her family formed in 1951 and billed as "the First Family of Bluegrass Gospel." Her sisters Miggie and Polly and her brothers Wallace, Talmadge, and "Little Roy" were also in the group, and later so were her son Lewis Phillips and her nephew Travis Lewis. The Lewis Family made its first recording in 1951. From 1954 to 1992 it hosted a weekly television program on WJBF-TV in Augusta, and it began recording for Starday in 1957. The group toured the United States and Canada and performed at the Smithsonian Institution and Lincoln Center. It entered the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1992 and IBMA's Hall of Honor in 2006, and it won several Dove Awards. The family retired in 2009 and played its farewell concert in Lincolnton that fall. Late that year, she formed Lewis Tradition with her son and Travis Lewis, and the group released its debut album, Precious Memories, in 2010.
In the newsletter
- No. 1 September 1994