Gladys Wrenn Cauthen was born in Courtland, Mississipps in 1894. She attended Mississippi college for Women, and studied seven summers with Ernest Hutchison at the Chautauqua Summer School in New York, two summers under Arthur Schnabel at the University of Michigan and a year at the Cincinnati Conservatory. She began twenty-five years of study with her principal teacher, Theodor Bohlmann at the Bolmann School of Music in Memphis in 1918. The Bohlmann school was one of the independent Memphis music schools that merged in 1933 to form the Memphis College of Music of which Miss Cauthon served as president. In 1943 the Memphis College of Music became the Southwestern Music Department with Miss Cauthon its dean. She served as dean until her retirement in 1962 and continued to teach until just before her death at 88 in October, 1982. She received the prestigious Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award from the College at commencement 1978. In making the presentation of the award, President James H. Daughrill, Jr. described her as "the soul, the heart and the working hands of the music department," adding that "her interest in he field remains as fresh as when she began her career."