Talk:Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Latest comment: 7 years ago by InternetArchiveBot in topic External links modified

Unsorted text edit

Mholyoke 15:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)mholyoke 14.01.2007 Gavin Bryrs' website specifically says he was making the film in 1971. Did the author have any reason for suggesting it was the 60s?Reply

While the song is often referred to as a Christian song. It seems important to note that in the Catholic Church, Jesus' Blood is represented as wine. The tramp seems more likely singing about his love of excessive drinking than his love of Christianity.

Utter speculation, the article on the website says specifically "and one, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet"." ( emphasis mine ) - 58.110.146.23 12:24, 7 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

spot on! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.246.204.98 (talkcontribs) 10:57, 13 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Jesus' Blood Never Found Me Yet edit

I just listen to this and it sounds like to me he is sing "Jesus' Blood Never Found Me Yet"? Perhaps more appropriate for a destitute tramp? -- 82.31.245.48 (talk) 09:58, 4 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

No, its definatly 'failed'. Ceoil (talk) 10:00, 4 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Missing teeth do not help articulation. Perhaps Bryars chose not to reveal the man's name out of respect for surviving family.Does anyone have a link for the rest of the original hymn ?--— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 14:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

I've wondered that myself in the past, but all I've ever found is other discussions where people ask the same question - I've found no answer. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC
The first hymn in the piece you reverted has the repetition of the phrase "Never failed me yet" which is central to the old man's performance. The royalties question may yield some info but very old hymns are out of copyright. I thought tracing the original(s) would be a doddle -churches and religions keep good records but nothing so far.oh well.funny old wiki wicked world--— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 14:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
Maybe it did contain that phrase, but Wikipedia rules forbid the addition of original research. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:59, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
Maybe I'll stick it in here instead for comparison if it cannot be mentioned on the page--— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 15:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply


The homeless singer may have put two original hymns together "He Never Failed Me Yet" [1] and possibly "The Blood that Jesus once shed for me"[2] as there exists no record of a hymn with the precise phrasing he used.

There is a hymn called "He Never Failed Me Yet" composed by the African American Robert J. Ray, composer,composer of Sacred Music, conductor and clinician, and Professor of Music and coordinator of Keyboard studies at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, but it is not the same song.[3]

It is unrecorded who may have composed the original hymn(s).

Here is a page with some good links for further hunting

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=118126&messages=6 There's one thing I know For he loves me so is from the children's song "Jesus Loves Me" (words Anna B. Warner, Music William B. Bradbury 1816-1868)--— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 15:46, 17 January 2011 (UTC) Another page gives the latter hymn line as" Jesus loves me this I know For the Bible tells me so"-- not quite a match then.Reply

phrases in other hymns that are reproduced in this song edit

I propose the insertion of a new subsection which includes the phrases ""There's one thing I know For he loves me so" and a reference to the hymn it is from and "never failed me yet" and its source hymn. To avoid the whiff of original research one can simply mention their existence-No ? to not do so seems remiss--— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 16:10, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure on this. Generally I don't think it would be a good precedent to set to add "Similar works" sections to music articles based on other works containing the same words or phrases - there appears to be a trend these days against the inclusion of trivia, and unless there are reliable sources to connect those other hymns to this song, I think it would be considered trivia. But if there is an argument that it is more than coincidence, I think the "There's one thing I know For he loves me so" is the only one of the two that would hold water - the phrase "never failed me yet" is too short and too general -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

As it presently stands the article has no information that indicates that the first recording was in 1971. This needs to be addressed.--— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 16:15, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

This needs to be sourced. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
I think it is clear from the sourced quote that Bryars recorded his own tape loops in 1971. But music articles generally don't record when artists first made personal recordings of parts of their compositions - they note the dates of commercial recordings, and we have no evidence of a commercial recording before the 1975 Obscure recording. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
Oops possibly on the hymn wording[[1]] per more reliable looking reference the phrase is NOT exactly the same in this record of it -Mea Culpa.

I still maintain the composing/recording data on the page is unclear and confusing the- 1971 data one should SAY recording and composition and the 1975 one should SAY first commercial or retail or something similar. I have written to Bryars to try to get to the bottom of the original hymn mystery and several other questions -if we are already accepting in the article his personal website as gospel...... if that counts as original research I can always get him to bung it on his website -is that data laundering ? What do you think about a section to mention the short story based on the song ? --— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 19:43, 17 January 2011 (UTC) The biggie would be the name of the singer. I am sure many people deeply affected by the song would like to visit his grave--— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 19:47, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

The singer's name is not known, it was a random field recording. Ceoil 21:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
And yet Bryars knew that the man(unverified that it was a man ? :) ) had died between the recording of the singing and the assembly of the composite-that argues against the "random field theory"--— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 03:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
The unknown singer was unknown to the other tramps, he kept for himself. When Bryars et al. came back (after the record's success?) and asked for him he was simply gone, supposedly dead (it's indeed a rough life). This I remember from a radio documentary sometime in 80's/90's. Thus he was difficult to trace. 90.132.45.102 (talk) 10:47, 24 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, we don't actually have a reliable source that says a recording of the work itself was made in 1971 - all we really know is that Bryars recorded tape loops in 1971, but those were components of it and were not the whole work itself. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:38, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

I suppose the" completion" of a work such as this is like the editing of a film" -it can go through many "finished cuts" Can we regard the first version with the simple piano melody as "cut number one"

Oh, and just another thought - I think it's very unlikely that the tramp would have a grave. People only get graves if there is someone to pay for them, otherwise they're just cremated and thrown away. And if nobody knew his name at the time, nobody is going to know now -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
I hope that London Borough Council will prove kinder than you envisage--— Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 03:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

versions edit

I propose to add: In 1981, choregrapher Maguy Marin used the piece as the score for her Beckett-inspired work May B [4] [5].

By the way, is versions an appropriate name for listing works using this music? Should we list these in a separate section?

  1. ^ http://www.hymnlyrics.org/requests/he_never_failed_me_yet.php
  2. ^ http://www.hymnlyrics.org/newlyrics_b/the_blood_that_jesus_once_shed_for_me.php
  3. ^ http://www.umsl.edu/~umslmusic/bios/ray.html
  4. ^ "The Dance: 'May B' by Marin". The New York Times. 1986-02-19. Retrieved 2013-04-28.
  5. ^ "May B, Théâtre du Rond-Point, Paris". Financial Times. 2012-11-21. Retrieved 2013-04-28.

More reference information:

--Pduhamel (talk) 17:25, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply

External links modified edit

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:02, 22 April 2017 (UTC)Reply