Oh Happy Day

The Edwin Hawkins Singers, 1969

Oh, for a world again in which a prodigy can thrive!

I’m looking at a sketch in the April-May 1779 issue of London Magazine. It’s titled “The Musical Phenomenon.” Somebody is seated at the pipe organ at the queen’s castle. He’s been performing before audiences for almost half of his lifetime. He’s three and a half years old, and his name is William Crotch. His mother and father (who was a master carpenter) encouraged his fascination with music, and all the singers and musicians of Norwich would come to the house, and little Will would get their tunes by heart, “and in the midst of them would strike out little airs of his own in harmony.” In performances, his mother would put an open book in front of his eyes atop the organ, not with the music in it, but with something he’d enjoy looking at, and the boy himself often looked round at the audience when he was playing, and chattered to them. But in between songs he’d fool around, and they’d have to bribe him with an apple or an orange, but, says the reporter, “it is nine to one if he plays the tune you desire,” unless you tease him by telling him he’s forgotten it or he doesn’t know it. Boys!

Well, Crotch composed his first oratorio when he was 14, was a professor of music at Oxford at age 21, and among his pupils was our second prodigy of the day, a fellow named Edward Francis Rimbault. This time we’re not talking about a little child, though Rimbault was the organist at the Huguenot church in Soho when he was sixteen. What set Rimbault apart was his devouring interest in the history of English and European music. At age 22, in 1838, he began what would be a lifelong career in lecturing everywhere about old musical instruments and their construction and development, folk songs, sacred music, madrigals, ballads, and so on — his knowledge was encyclopedic. When Rimbault died, his tremendous library, containing both books and artifacts, was auctioned off, and a large portion of it was bought by an American book collector and music collector named Joseph William Drexel. Yes, it’s that high-society Drexel family from Philadelphia. Joseph was a partner with J. P. Morgan, but he retired from that business when he was 43, to devote himself entirely to charity and civic work. He donated what he bought from the Rimbault sell-off to what eventually became the New York Public Library. If you go there and to view the Drexel Collection, you can see what he got from Rimbault. Here’s one, for instance: a book put together just after Shakespeare’s death, including the full music for songs from the dramatists of the time, with one from the Bard’s The Winter’s Tale.

In case you’re wondering, the answer is yes: Joseph W. Drexel was the uncle of the educator Katherine Anne Drexel, canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

One of the melodies Rimbault himself wrote was a refrain for an old hymn by Philip Doddridge, which begins with this stanza:

O happy day, that fixed my choice
On thee, my Savior and my God!
Well may this glowing heart rejoice
And tell its raptures all abroad.

Here’s the text of Rimbault’s refrain:

Happy day, happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away!
He taught me how to watch and pray
And live rejoicing every day.
Happy day, happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away!

And finally, that brings us to our third prodigy, and our Hymn of the Week, the second best-selling gospel record of all time, “Oh Happy Day,” by Edwin Hawkins and his choir. And it’s certainly a fit for what I said yesterday about the word happy and its wide range of meaning. For what can bring hope and good cheer to our hearts, if not to know that we are blessed as fully and finally as a human being can be blessed? Think of all that you’ve done wrong in your life, and you can’t make up for it, you can’t repay the people you’ve hurt, since what’s done is done — except that the Lord who made all time has paid the price, and in his grace will bring good even out of our sins, which he has washed away, in his blood.

Well then, Edwin Hawkins, who passed away in 2018, was born into a deeply religious and fabulously musical family. They had their own family gospel band, and Edwin played the piano and the organ for them — at age 7. As a young man, Edwin founded the youth choir for the Ephesian Church of God in Christ, in Berkeley, California, and as part of a national choir competition, they cut an LP in 1968. They came in second place, but by the time they got back to California, they heard that somebody in San Francisco had gotten hold of the LP, and had played the song “Oh Happy Day” on what was then an “underground” hippie radio station, KSAN-FM. If you grew up in those years, no doubt you heard it on the radio or on television, and not only in the United States, but all over the world.

What Hawkins did was a work of genius. He took Rimbault’s refrain and the basic musical motifs in it, and turned it into a work of “urban” gospel music, five minutes long. He arranged the music, played the piano, and sang, but the lead singer was Dorothy Combs Morrison, who is still very much with us and is still a gospel singer — and her voice is lower than alto, to my ear — she’s a tenor at least! What Hawkins did was to split up the refrain by having the lead singer pause while the choir echoed her, or vice versa, sometimes singing the same words, but sometimes, in the middle of the piece, what the lead sings is something a bit different, as in a polyphonic motet or a polyphonic round. (By the way, if you want to try out something with your kids to show them a little of what polyphony is like, have the boys sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” while the girls are singing “Are You Sleeping?” — it really works wonderfully.)

It’s hard to find the exact words that the lead interjects at about 3 minutes into the song; possibly they were improvised, and here the internet doesn’t help, because what I’ve seen ranges all over the place, and often the people writing down the lyrics don’t seem to know what they’re talking about, as they make some obvious and egregious mistakes. But I’ll give you what I’m sure of. It is grand, just grand. Another thing: when “Oh Happy Day” came out in a single, the B-side of the record was Hawkins’ version of Jesus, Lover of My Soul — by Charles Wesley. The faith is for everyone, everywhere.

Oh happy day,
When Jesus washed my sins away!

He taught me how to watch, and fight, and pray,
And live rejoicing every day.

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Please help us continue our mission to share good things every day by joining us as a free or paid subscriber.

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