Anchored In Love: A Song History

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"Anchored in Love" began as a gospel song, "Anchored in Love Divine," with words by the English-born hymn writer James Rowe and music by James D. Vaughan; the earliest printing Hymnary.org lists is in the 1911 songbook Crowning Praises.[1][2] Its imagery is nautical, picturing a storm-tossed soul that has at last found a calm harbor in divine love.[1] The Discography of American Historical Recordings credits Vaughan and Rowe for the Carter Family's record, while A. P. Carter is credited for the song on the other side of the disc.[2] Credits are not consistent everywhere: a 1979 Folkways tribute album prints a blanket Carter Family copyright line over the song, although Hymnary.org lists it in print seventeen years before the Carters recorded it.[1][3]

Engraving of a woman with hands clasped standing beside an anchor, in an oval within an ornamental border

Nicolaes de Bruyn, Hope, from the Cardinal Virtues, engraving, 1648–56. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Hope, shown with an anchor at her feet; the print has no connection to the song.

The Carter Family recorded it for Victor in May 1928 as matrix BVE-45023, and Victor issued it on V-40036, backed with "I Have No One to Love Me (But the Sailor on the Deep Blue Sea)."[2] Sources differ on the exact day: the Discography of American Historical Recordings gives May 9, while the 1979 Folkways notes give May 10.[2][3] By the Discography's dating it was cut as a female-male duet with autoharp and guitar on the first day of a two-day session that also produced "Keep on the Sunny Side" and "Wildwood Flower."[4] Those sessions took place in Camden, New Jersey.[3][5] The trio had made their first records the previous summer in Bristol, Tennessee.[3] The side was later reissued on Bluebird B-5406.[6]

A 1993 Rounder CD of the group's 1927–28 Victor recordings takes its title from the song.[7] In 1977 the DeBusk-Weaver Family, a sacred-music group with roots near Clinch Mountain, recorded it in Bristol for a Folkways tribute marking fifty years since the Carters' first records.[3]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "Anchored in Love Divine".
  2. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor V-40036 (10-in. double-faced)".
  3. Smithsonian Folkways: "The DeBusk-Weaver Family, Meeting in the Air" (liner notes, FTS 32431).
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Carter Family".
  5. PBS American Experience: "Ralph Peer".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Bluebird B-5406 (10-in. double-faced)".
  7. AllMusic: "Anchored in Love: Their Complete Victor Recordings (1927-28)".