By 1940, they were affiliated with the Stamps-Baxter Music Company to sell songbooks and were appearing on 50,000-watt radio station KMA (AM) in Shenandoah, Iowa.

The move proved to be successful for the group as they began to appear on television station WMCT in coming years.

Blackwood (baritone), Bill Lyles (bass), and Jackie Marshall (piano), won the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts competition on national television with their rendition of "Have You Talked To The Man Upstairs?"

After winning on Talent Scouts, the group began flying to shows with their own private plane due to the demand of their performances.

However, on June 30, 1954, the group was scheduled to perform with The Statesmen Quartet in Clanton, Alabama, during a town festival.

Blackwood and Bill Lyles, along with friend Johnny Ogburn, decided to take a quick ride on the plane around dusk.

Tenor singer Bill Shaw recalled the event saying: "the plane went out its usual way, but then seemed like it got caught in the upward position and could not pull out, and then just fell to the ground and killed everyone on board.

"[1][full citation needed] Members of The Statesmen Quartet also witnessed it and provided aid to the survivors, taking them back to Memphis that night.

's younger brother, Cecil Blackwood (1934–2000), taking over as baritone and former Sunshine Boys Quartet member J. D. Sumner replacing Lyles as bass.

Ken Berryhill, their producer, would later say that it was at about this point in their career that the group first crossed paths with the young Elvis Presley, with whom they became friends.

[1] After the crash, the group went to work forming the Gospel Music Association and also was partially responsible for the creation of the National Quartet Convention.

Sumner (who for many years was unchallenged as the Guinness World Record holder for having the lowest human voice on record, and was only superseded after Guinness started accepting vocal fry as part of the vocal range) is considered the classic version of the Blackwood Brothers Quartet, with Jackie Marshall or Wally Varner on piano.

A replica of the bus can be seen at the Southern Gospel Museum and Hall of Fame at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee[citation needed] The Blackwood Brothers formed a partnership with the Statesmen Quartet (informally known as the "Stateswood" team) to tour as a team in the 1950s, and they were the dominant act on the southern gospel circuit during this time.

This dominance lasted for about a decade until the rise of gospel television shows in the late 1960s began to give competing groups wider exposure.

It won a Grammy Award for Best Sacred Performance (Musical) and was the first of three albums the Blackwoods recorded with Wagoner.

In 2020, the Blackwood Brothers decided to reduce their touring schedule, and as a result Butch Owens left the group and was replaced at bass by Eric Walker.

[1] Johnny Cash formed a strong relationship with the Blackwoods and the two acts performed with each other numerous times.

Their song "I Was There When It Happened" can be heard singing on the radio towards the beginning of the movie Walk the Line (2005)—when Johnny Cash (played by Joaquin Phoenix) was in Memphis.