Meeting In The Air: A Song History
"Meeting in the Air" is a gospel song looking ahead to a reunion of believers with Christ and with figures from the Bible.[1] Hymnary.org credits a song of this title to May Taylor Roberts, dates it to 1925, and lists it in six hymnals printed between 1944 and 1958, five of which give the author as "M. T. R."[1] The lyric sheet of a 1979 Folkways album of Carter Family songs begins with the same first line as Roberts's text.[1][2] It should not be confused with an earlier "The Meeting in the Air" by I. G. Martin, a Church of the Nazarene minister and songwriter, which Hymnary.org dates to 1906 and which has different words and its own tune.[3]
John Singleton Copley, Study for "The Ascension", ink washes, pen and ink, chalk and graphite, 1774. A study for a painting of the Ascension, shown for the gospel song's meeting in the air; it has no connection to the song.
The notes to that album, recorded by the DeBusk-Weaver Family of Oxford, Pennsylvania, date the Carter Family's recording of the song to October 4, 1940, in Chicago, and credit all the album's words and music to the Carter Family; the sources consulted here therefore differ on who wrote it.[1][2] The album shares the song's title and ends with it, and Hal Bruno's notes call it "perhaps one of their greatest songs."[2]
Elwood Donnelly includes it, in DAD tuning, in Such Singing You Will Hear, a 92-page book of 35 Carter Family songs with instructions and notes for mountain dulcimer, backup and voice.[4]
Sources
- Hymnary.org: "The Meeting in the Air" (May Taylor Roberts).
- Smithsonian Folkways: "Meeting in the Air: The DeBusk-Weaver Family" (liner notes).
- Hymnary.org: "The Meeting in the Air" (I. G. Martin).
- Elwood Donnelly: "Such Singing You Will Hear: 35 Songs Of The Carter Family".
- Image: John Singleton Copley, Study for "The Ascension", ink washes, pen and ink, chalk and graphite, 1774. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.