Higher Ground: A Song History

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"Higher Ground," the gospel song also known by its opening line, joins words by Johnson Oatman Jr. (1856–1922) to a tune by Charles H. Gabriel (1856–1932).[1] Hymnology Archive dates both words and music to 1892, a moment when Oatman was just starting out as a gospel songwriter and Gabriel had newly arrived in Chicago from California.[1] Oatman, a New Jersey man who had stepped away from the insurance business, was a Methodist Episcopal preacher; Gabriel was working professionally as a writer and editor of gospel songbooks.[1][2] Hymnology Archive says it is unclear how the two met.[1] Looking back in his autobiography, Gabriel counted "Higher Ground" among the first songs he wrote in Chicago and said he was paid five dollars for it.[1][2]

Asher Durand painting of a broad mountain rising above a valley with a stream and grazing cattle

Asher Brown Durand, High Point: Shandaken Mountains, oil on canvas, 1853. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its title and its high ground; it has no connection to the hymn.

The song was sold to the Philadelphia compiler J. Howard Entwisle, who brought it out in 1898 in three books he co-edited: Praise Hymns and Full Salvation Songs, Gospel Hosannas and Songs of Love and Praise No. 5, made with music editor John R. Sweney and the publisher John J. Hood.[1][2][3] The 1898 date that Hymnary.org gives for both words and tune therefore reflects publication, not composition.[4][5] Its opening lines draw on the Apostle Paul's image, in Philippians 3, of straining toward the goal.[1]

"Higher Ground" quickly became a favorite of the holiness movement: the gospel-song biographer J. H. Hall, writing in 1914, judged no song better at setting a camp-meeting crowd shouting, and the song leader Homer Rodeheaver later recommended it for the moment after a sermon or a call to rededication.[1][2] Hymnary.org indexes the text in 426 hymnals and Gabriel's tune, HIGHER GROUND, in 381, ranging from Alexander's Hymns No. 3 to the African American Heritage Hymnal, the African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal, the 1991 Baptist Hymnal and Celebrating Grace Hymnal.[4][5]

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Sources

  1. Hymnology Archive (Chris Fenner): "Higher Ground".
  2. Discipleship Ministries, The United Methodist Church: "History of Hymns: 'Higher Ground'".
  3. Internet Archive: "Songs of Love and Praise No. 5" (Philadelphia: John J. Hood, 1898).
  4. Hymnary.org: "Higher Ground" (text).
  5. Hymnary.org: "HIGHER GROUND" (tune).