Thomas S. Cobb › Texts

Thomas S. Cobb (1876-1942), a native Texan, was educated in much the same circles as [Austin] Taylor, and received his music diploma from the Western Normal and College of Music in Dallas. He taught singing schools across Texas and the bordering states, and was particularly noted for the "Cobb Quartet" made up of his four daughters. He was recruited to Firm Foundation by Showalter in 1935.(Finley, 122ff.) Cobb edited only four hymnals for Firm Foundation before his death in 1942, but among these was the significant New Wonderful Songs (1933); at 296 hymns it was part of the trend toward more substantial publications.

Prior to his work with Firm Foundation, Cobb edited hymnals for the Quartet Music Company of Fort Worth, Texas. A search of WorldCat.org shows that he was involved with at least 7 books for this publisher, going back as far as the 1890s when it was called the "Quartette Company." One of these earlier works From the Cross to the Crown (1921?) was subtitled, "Scriptural Songs," and was co-edited with Elder T. B. Clark and T. B. Mosley, one of the most well-known singing school teachers among the Churches of Christ in the southeastern U.S. Mosley was also known as a staunch doctrinal conservative. This gives some idea of the bona fides Cobb brought with him during the era of the "hymnal controversy" surrounding E. L. Jorgenson's Great Songs of the Church. Jorgenson was firmly in the premillennial camp, and was an editor of Word and Work, the primary voice of this viewpoint within the Churches of Christ. Opponents of premillennialism objected to several hymns in Great Songs that supported this doctrine, or were at least questionable. (Most of these were removed or altered in the better-known "No. 2" edition).

Thomas S. Cobb passed from this life in 1942, shortly after the last of the pre-war Firm Foundation hymnals appeared.

--drhamrick.blogspot.com/2012/01/hymnals-published-by-firm-foundation.html