Introduction

Biography

Isham was the hus­band of Lu­ra Hawk.

He at­tend­ed the Nor­mal Sing­ing Schools run by Hen­ry Sho­wal­ter and John Her­bert (1902–03); Mis­sis­sip­pi Col­lege (1905–06); Moo­dy Bi­ble In­sti­tute (1907–08), Ch­ic­ago, Il­li­nois; Sie­gel-My­ers Uni­ver­si­ty Cor­res­pon­dence School of Music (BM 1918) and the Chi­ca­go Mu­sic­al Col­lege (1920). In 1942, he re­ceived a MusD de­gree from the Sou­thern School of Fine Arts in Hous­ton, Texas.

He was a mem­ber of the Cum­ber­land Pres­by­te­ri­an Church and lat­er the High­land Bap­tist Church in Birm­ing­ham, Ala­ba­ma. For about a de­cade start­ing around 1905, he was a sing­ing ev­an­gel­ist un­der the aus­pic­es of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Bap­tist State Mis­sion Board and the Sou­thern Bap­tist Home Miss­ion Board.

Works

• Select Gos­pel Songs, with Jack Scho­field & Earl Wol­sla­gel (Dal­las, Tex­as: Ro­bert H. Cole­man, 1916)
• Practical Church Mu­sic, 1923
• Je­ho­vah’s Praise (Ft. Worth, Tex­as: South­west­ern Press, 1925)
• The Min­is­try of Mu­sic in Re­li­gion, 1928
• Church Mu­sic, 1935
• The Choir in the Non-Li­tur­gi­cal Church, 1938
• Music and the Scrip­tures, 1942