The Hallelujah Side: A Song History

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Johnson Oatman Jr. wrote the words of "The Hallelujah Side," and Hymnary.org dates the text to 1898.[1] The earliest printing indexed there is as number 100 in Songs of Love and Praise No. 5, a songbook of that same year that names J. Howard Entwisle as the composer.[2] Entwisle was one of that book's compilers, alongside John R. Sweney, Frank M. Davis and H. L. Gilmour, for the Philadelphia publisher John J. Hood.[3] Oatman, born near Medford, New Jersey, in 1856, was licensed to preach in the Methodist Episcopal Church but served only as a local preacher, making his living first in his father's mercantile business and later in life insurance; a 1914 biographical dictionary of gospel writers credited him with more than three thousand hymns.[4]

A dark wooden melodeon on curved cabriole legs, with a keyboard, an ornate scrolled music rest and a pedal lyre underneath.

Taylor & Farley, Melodeon, wood and various materials, 1867. An American melodeon of 1867, a small reed organ of the kind heard in churches and homes in the decades before Johnson Oatman Jr. wrote the hymn's words; the instrument has no connection to the hymn.

Hymnary.org indexes the song in many later hymnals, as recent as Sing His Praise (1991).[1] It also reached records early: the Discography of American Historical Recordings lists a Victor recording by Ernest V. Stoneman with the Dixie Mountaineers, made in Camden, New Jersey, on September 21, 1926.[5]

Maureen Sellers sets it in DAD tuning for Simply Gospel, Book One, a 56-page Fingers Of Steel collection of 24 easy arrangements that she offers as a starting point for players' own versions.[6]

Our book that contains the song "The Hallelujah Side"

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "The Hallelujah Side".
  2. Hymnary.org: "Songs of Love and Praise No. 5, #100: The Hallelujah Side".
  3. The Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania): "Entwisle, J. Howard".
  4. Hymnary.org: "Johnson Oatman".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-36504. Hallelujah side / Dixie Mountaineers ; Ernest V. Stoneman".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Gospel, Book One".
  7. Image: Taylor & Farley, Melodeon, wood and various materials, 1867. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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