Just When I Need Him Most: A Song History
The words of “Just When I Need Him Most” are by William C. Poole (1875–1949), who grew up in a Methodist family on a Maryland farm, graduated from Washington College, and became a Methodist pastor in and around Wilmington, Delaware.[1] Poole wrote some five hundred hymns as a pastime alongside his church work, and in 1913 he was superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League of Delaware.[1] The tune is by Charles H. Gabriel (1856–1932), who grew up on an Iowa farm and learned the family reed organ on his own, settled in Chicago in 1892, and edited a long run of songbooks for publishers including Rodeheaver, Hope, and E. O. Excell.[2] Gabriel’s output is estimated at around seven thousand pieces, some issued under pen names such as Charlotte G. Homer, and his gospel songs reached a wide public through the urban crusades of Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver.[2]
William Luson Thomas, The Child's Prayer, from Illustrated London News, wood engraving, February 1, 1862. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the hymn.
Hymnary.org dates Poole’s text to 1907.[3] The song appears as No. 44 in The Victory, a 1908 collection of Sunday school songs, where the page carries a copyright notice dated 1908 in Gabriel’s name.[4] Hymnary.org indexes the song in 142 hymnals, among them the Baptist Hymnal of 1991.[3]
Larry Conger includes it in Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer, a book of sixteen gospel hymns arranged for the chromatic mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[5]
Sources
- Hymnary.org: "William C. Poole".
- Hymnary.org: "Chas. H. Gabriel".
- Hymnary.org: "Just When I Need Him Most".
- Hymnary.org: "The Victory, No. 44: Just When I Need Him Most".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: William Luson Thomas, The Child's Prayer, from Illustrated London News, wood engraving, February 1, 1862. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.