Did he test out this song on his wife Goldie? Or, was it maybe some other family member, like his father-in-law, Joe? Perhaps one of them helped Albert Edward Brumley locate a scrap of paper on which he’d scribbled some of the words of “If We Never Meet Again” in his house in Powell, Missouri. Someday, we might be able to also ask Albert if he had someone special in mind when he crafted his poem, someone who had played an especially important role in his life, like maybe Eugene Bartlett. It was wartime in 1945, when Albert’s song was on his mind, so was he pondering how many folks were trying to handle premature mortality across the world, or particularly in his community? What prompted this 40-year-old future Gospel Music/Oklahoma Music/Nashville Songwriters Hall of Famer to pen these stirring words put to music?
There’re more than a few questions that the curious person could ask someone like Albert Brumley to answer, but you might not get many certain answers from this fellow. He had a reputation for disorganization, frankly, and whatever notes he might have made with the answers to the who/what/when/where/why of what he did might have been lost or hopelessly misfiled in his office-home. But, that habitual jumble of Albert’s music life did not prevent him from thinking clearly about what he’d compose, and upon whom he could rely as his sounding boards. His wife Goldie had a musical ear, and apparently was someone who would often listen to Albert’s tunes to size them up. His father-in-law Joe likewise reportedly evaluated Albert’s poetry for scriptural accuracy. So, perhaps Goldie and Joe played a significant role in ‘If We Never…’, although the exact setting for the song’s development is unknown. His long-time mentor and friend, Eugene Bartlett, had died four years earlier; could that have been a catalyst for Albert’s poem-song, as he reflected on the passage of someone so significant? Mr. Bartlett was, as someone else has written, Albert’s ‘good Samaritan’ (see link to the lengthy biographic sketch-obituary, below) when the dirt-poor Albert sought a start in the music business as his life’s calling in the late 1920s-early 1930s. Was Albert also considering the passage of so many others in the latter stages of World War II, as he wrote of ‘…this world and its strife’ (refrain); ‘storm clouds’ (v.2); and ‘sorrow’ and ‘pain(ful) benedictions’ (v.3)? We can only guess about the circumstances, but Albert’s state of mind is obvious. He was in what most people would consider mid-life, 40 years old, but could Albert have known for certain that he had another 32 years before death would take him? He says ‘Soon’ as the very first word of his poem, as he contemplated the end of life. And yet, he didn’t think in morbid terms ultimately, but with various phrases looked ahead to eternity. With ‘bright city’ and ‘beautiful shore’ (v.1); ‘sweet by and by’ (v.2); and ‘charming roses…forever’ and ‘separation comes no more’ (refrain), Albert infused the song with hope.
We can thank Albert someday, that he refused to look the other way when evidences of mortality invaded his life. This fellow, who wrote hundreds of songs in his life to articulate his convictions, met death head-on, and didn’t blink.Instead, he made musically clear, with a granite-like faith and trust, that he believed the eternal heaven his maker promised is true. One could say that Albert spent a lifetime to overcome life’s endpoint. In fact, it’s not an end, Albert says. It’s a transition, a passage to somewhere else. How do a person’s life relationships look when he goes around saying ‘If we never meet again’? Somebody might say he’s afflicted with melancholy. If that was all Albert had said, that somebody might be right. But, Albert didn’t stop there, did he? He didn’t want anyone else to finish there, either.
See a brief biography of composer here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/b/r/u/m/brumley_ae.htm
And here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_E._Brumley
Also here: https://hymnary.org/person/Brumley_Albert
See a very good personal biography of the author here: https://www.therestorationmovement.com/_states/tennessee/brumley.htm
See biography on composer in Our Garden of Song, edited by Gene C. Finley, Howard Publishing Company, West Monroe, Louisiana, 1980.
No comments:
Post a Comment