His Eye Is On The Sparrow: A Song History

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"His Eye Is on the Sparrow" pairs a text by Civilla Durfee Martin (1866–1948) with music by Charles H. Gabriel (1856–1932), and both date from 1905[1][2]. Martin, a schoolteacher with some musical training, wrote gospel songs for revival meetings alongside her husband, the minister Walter Stillman Martin[3]. The song's first appearance in print was in Revival Hymns (Chicago: Bible Institute, 1905), compiled by Charles M. Alexander, music director for R. A. Torrey's revivals, who held the copyright; that edition named Gabriel as author of words and music alike, an error Alexander's later books put right by restoring Martin's name[1]. Hymnals know the tune as SPARROW[2], and Martin later said it was first sung in public at London's Albert Hall during the Torrey-Alexander revival[1].

Audubon print of a chipping sparrow perched on a broken branch beneath sprays of leaves and white blossoms

John James Audubon, Chipping Sparrow, hand-colored etching, aquatint and engraving, ca. 1830. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for the sparrow of the title; it has no connection to the hymn.

What we know of the song's inspiration comes from Martin herself, and her accounts vary. In the version printed in 1941 in Phil Kerr's series "Famous Living Hymn Writers" in The Defender Magazine, she placed it in Elmira, New York, in the spring of 1905, when she and her husband befriended a couple named Doolittle, she bedridden for almost two decades and he using a wheelchair[1]. Asked how they stayed so hopeful, Mrs. Doolittle answered with the phrase that became the title[1][3], and Martin recalled that the hymn came together that same afternoon[1]. A 1916 telling, quoted in Gabriel's The Singers and Their Songs, sets the scene instead at the bedside of a single bedridden believer in Elmira[1]. The imagery draws on the Gospel sayings about God's care for sparrows[3].

The Hymnology Archive dates the first solo recording to around 1925, by the Rev. William McKinley Dawkins for Sunshine Gospel Records[1]. Ethel Waters (1896–1977) was among the first to bring it wide attention: she named her best-selling 1951 autobiography after it[4][1], sang it in the 1952 film of The Member of the Wedding (she had starred in the 1950 stage version)[1][4], and sang it at Billy Graham's crusades, where she was a frequent guest in the 1960s[1][4]. Mahalia Jackson's version is often counted the definitive one; the nationally syndicated radio show she hosted with Studs Terkel in 1954 took the song's title, and NPR's "NPR 100" series singled out her recording[5]. Others who have recorded it include Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Marvin Gaye, Shirley Caesar and Kirk Franklin[3].

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Sources

  1. Hymnology Archive (Chris Fenner): "His Eye Is on the Sparrow".
  2. Hymnary.org: "His Eye Is on the Sparrow".
  3. Discipleship Ministries (United Methodist Church), C. Michael Hawn: "History of Hymns: His Eye Is on the Sparrow".
  4. Encyclopædia Britannica: "Ethel Waters".
  5. NPR (Deborah Williams): "His Eye Is On the Sparrow".