Angel Band: A Song History

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"Angel Band" began as a poem by Jefferson Hascall (1807–1887), a Methodist preacher from Thompson, Connecticut, who later served as a presiding elder in the Worcester Conference. The text first appeared in J. W. Dadmun's 1860 collection The Melodeon.[1] In it a dying believer calls on a band of angels to carry him home on their wings. The words have been sung to more than one tune, among them one by Dadmun, but the setting found in most of the hymnals that print the text is by William B. Bradbury and is dated 1862.[1][2] Bradbury (1816–1868) was born in Maine and attended Lowell Mason's singing classes in Boston. He edited about sixty music books and also wrote the tunes for "Jesus Loves Me" and "He Leadeth Me."[3]

Painting of a band of winged angels with harps singing together

Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Gloria, gouache over graphite, 1884. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

Different tunes brought small changes to the refrain. Hymnary.org notes that the words differ slightly depending on whether they are sung to Bradbury's tune or to Dadmun's, and that the description of the angels' wings apparently shifted through folk processing in some recordings.[1] The hymn has been printed in more than 240 hymnals. Bradbury's setting appears in gospel and church songbooks of recent decades, including Voices Together (2020).[1][2]

Carter and Ralph Stanley, as the Stanley Brothers, recorded it for Mercury on December 19, 1955, with Art Stamper on fiddle, Curley Lambert on mandolin and Bill Lowe on bass. The recording came out on the LP Country Pickin' and Singin' (Mercury MG 20349).[4][5] Nearly half a century later, the same 1955 recording was the final song on the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000).[6][7] That album won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2002.[7][8]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "O Come, Angel Band".
  2. Hymnary.org: "[My latest sun is sinking fast] (Bradbury)".
  3. Hymnary.org: "William B. Bradbury".
  4. Clinch Mountain Echo: "Angel Band – The Stanley Brothers" (Mercury CD discography).
  5. SecondHandSongs: "Angel Band by The Stanley Brothers and The Clinch Mountain Boys".
  6. Lost Highway Records: "O Brother, Where Art Thou? (CD)".
  7. Wikipedia: "O Brother, Where Art Thou? (soundtrack)".
  8. Recording Academy (GRAMMY.com): "20 Years Ago, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ Crashed The Country Music Party".