The Royal Telephone: A Song History

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"The Royal Telephone" is the work of Frederick Martin Lehman (1868–1953), a German-born minister raised in Iowa who moved to Kansas City in 1911, helped found the Nazarene Publishing House, and wrote hundreds of sacred songs.[1] HymnTime credits him with both words and music and dates the song to 1919.[2] Sources differ on that date, however: Hamp Sewell's Hymns of Glory No. 2, published in Atlanta in 1914, already prints the song with a 1909 copyright notice in Lehman's name and a harmonization credited to Claudia F. Lehman.[3] The same 1909 copyright is printed with the song in the Hall-Mack Company's New Songs of Pentecost No. 3 (1918) and in Rodeheaver's Gospel Solos and Duets (1925).[4][5]

Soft-focus photograph of a wet town street lined with tall wooden poles carrying wires

Clarence H. White, Telegraph Poles, photogravure, 1898. Wire-strung telegraph poles along an Ohio street in 1898, shown as a nod to the hymn's title; the photograph shows telegraph rather than telephone lines and has no connection to the hymn.

Its verses liken prayer to a free telephone line that connects the believer with heaven.[2] An early 78 by the Berge Sisters, a soprano and alto duet with orchestra on the Rainbow label, credits Lehman as writer and is dated 1922 in the Internet Archive's catalog.[6] Decades later the Aboriginal Australian singer Jimmy Little recorded it in October 1963, following an earlier Burl Ives version, and it became his most successful hit of the 1960s, earning him three gold records.[7]

For dulcimer players, Maureen Sellers sets the song in DAD tuning in Simply Gospel, Book Two, a Fingers Of Steel collection of solo mountain dulcimer arrangements, with lyrics printed and a capo called for on a handful of the tunes.[8]

Our book that contains the song "The Royal Telephone"

Sources

  1. HymnTime: "Frederick Martin Lehman".
  2. HymnTime: "The Royal Telephone".
  3. Internet Archive: "Hymns of Glory No. 2" (Hamp Sewell, Atlanta, 1914), No. 128.
  4. Internet Archive: "New Songs of Pentecost No. 3" (Hall-Mack Co., 1918), No. 4.
  5. Internet Archive: "Rodeheaver's Gospel Solos and Duets" (Rodeheaver Co., 1925), No. 97.
  6. Internet Archive, Great 78 Project: "The Royal Telephone" - The Berge Sisters (Rainbow 1058-B).
  7. Australian Dictionary of Biography: "Jimmy Little".
  8. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Gospel, Book Two".
  9. Image: Clarence H. White, Telegraph Poles, photogravure, 1898. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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