Charles Henry Pace (1886–1963) began his career as a composer, director, and publisher of Black gospel music in Chicago, where he made some of the first recordings of early Black gospel standards with his group the Pace Jubilee Singers between 1926 and 1929. He met and married Frankie (1905–1989) in the early 1930s, and in 1936 they moved to Pittsburgh, eventually establishing their publishing business in the Hill District neighborhood.