Jazz, blues and gospel aficionados will converge on Villa Rica this weekend to pay tribute to the music made famous by the late Thomas A. Dorsey, a Villa Rica native widely recognized as “The Father of Gospel Music.”

The 14th annual Thomas A. Dorsey Birthplace and Heritage Festival begins Friday at Gold Dust Park with the U.S. Army Ground Forces Jazz Guardians from 7:30-9:30 p.m. The festival continues Saturday with a 3 p.m. performance by the Thomas A. Dorsey Birthplace Choir, followed by Lee Williams and the QCs at Mt. Prospect Baptist Church on Thomas Dorsey Drive.

On Saturday, the music moves to Gold Dust Park with a 5:30-7:30 p.m. performance by Crescent Blue featuring Jerry Allen, followed by the Heaven Davis Blues Band from 7:30-9:30 p.m. Fireworks will close the festival after the Heaven Davis performance.

The Jazz Guardians are an 18-member group whose primary mission is to maintain and promote jazz, a unique American art form. Under the direction of First Sergeant Lonnie Seal, the Jazz Guardians pay tribute to the big bands of yesterday by performing the music made popular by such greats as Ellington, Basie, Miller and Herman. Demonstrating their versatility, the group also performs the latest and most innovative sounds of today’s most popular composers.

The Jazz Guardians have been featured at numerous jazz festivals around the United States, performing with such notable artists as Louis Bellson, Cab Calloway, Bill Watrous, Conrad Herwig, and Jamey Abersold. Given their broad talents and diverse repertoire, a concert by the Jazz Guardians will entertain any audience.

Jerry Allen, who performs with Crescent Blue, is also a well-seasoned accomplished musician who has performed on stage with the likes of Barbara Mason, Joe Simon, The Tams, BB King, George Benson, Clarence Carter, and The Thunder Thieves.

For more than three decades, Lee Williams & the Spiritual QCs have made music for little more than love -- love of the gospel message, memorable melodies, sweet harmony and a beat that just refused to let feet sit still.

Lee Williams and the QCs first built a strong local and regional following around Tupelo, Miss., but became nationally renowned in the mid-1990s with the release of “Learned to Lean.”

Atlanta singer Heaven Davis is described by event promoters as someone who loves to sing. In 2006, she released “Steamy,” a CD of blues and soul, which received critical acclaim from around the world.

Through her early years, Davis performed in a number of funk, R&B and pop bands, discovering she loved all types of music. In 1993 she took the suggestion of a friend and answered an ad in a local newspaper for a blues vocalist that led to her fronting Atlanta Blues Band “Blue Heaven.” Not having a lot of knowledge about the blues, she soaked up all she could find about the music. The effect of her love of the genre began to show in her performances, and it wasn’t long before offers started to come to perform outside of Atlanta.

The Thomas A. Dorsey Birthplace Choir is made up of 43 members who have performed at churches throughout the South. In 1999, the choir was inducted into the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses, an organization founded by their namesake.

Attendance to each performance is free and everyone is invited to attend.

All of these performances are meant to honor Dorsey, who was born in Villa Rica on July 1, 1899. He died in 1993 at the age of 93, but not before shaping the musical landscape in America.

As formulated by Dorsey, gospel music combines Christian praise with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. His conception also deviates from what had been, to that time, standard hymnal practice by referring explicitly to the self, and the self’s relation to faith and God, rather than the individual subsumed into the group via belief.

Dorsey was the music director at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago from 1932 until the late 1970s. His best known composition, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” was performed by Mahalia Jackson and was a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and “Peace in the Valley,” which was a hit for Red Foley in 1951 and has been performed by dozens of other artists, including Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.

The works of Thomas A. Dorsey have proliferated beyond performance, into the hymnals of virtually all American churches and of English-speaking churches worldwide.