Everybody Will Be Happy Over There -- Eugene Monroe Bartlett

 

It was 1921, and this singer, songwriter, publisher, and teacher was really spreading his wings, someone might say. Eugene Monroe Bartlett may have been in a relatively small place in western Arkansas – Hartford, in Sebastian County – but that did not seem to limit his vision with respect to what he wanted to do with the music he loved so much. You might say he saw a much grander location than where he was, a place where “Everybody Will Be Happy (Over There)”, and inhabited by many times the number of folks living in Hartford. He had many reasons to feel upbeat, even ebullient, so that his cup overflowed. Although he found a way to express his emotional state in four verses and a chorus, this one song could not contain all he was feeling. Let’s see what other ways Eugene found to broaden and share what he was too excited to keep to himself.

 

The spiritual overflow that was obvious in Eugene’s personal faith, and which was expressed in the poetry of his song, had many other tentacles that reached out into related directions at about the time that ‘Everybody …’ was published. Eugene and two partners had established the Hartford Music Company just three years earlier, a platform for the emergence of two of the partners’ (Eugene’s and John McClung’s, as well as those of others) musical creations. Since one of Eugene’s business partners (David Moore) was a singing instructor, it was a natural outgrowth of their publishing enterprise when Eugene founded a music institute to teach shape-note singing also. A magazine, The Herald of Song, also arose at the same time to cover the musical groups that helped promote the ongoing activities at Hartford. It’s probably safe to say that Bartlett and all of these ventures were notable fixtures in the Hartford community of about 2,000 people (its population, according to 1920 census data), but these would not be confined to that one area. The publishing enterprise’s output was hundreds of thousands of volumes, if not more, and eventually burgeoned into branches in six other sites in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Texas, from where songbooks were shipped to 35 U.S. states and two foreign countries. Yes, Eugene’s vision encompassed much more territory than Hartford. It was also wider than any map detailing his company’s songbook shipments would show, too, as the words he penned for the 1921 ‘Everybody…’ suggested. He was talking about the ‘great beyond’ (v.1), a place where indeed his company’s volumes could not go, except in the memories of those who purchased them. How many numbered the ‘everybody’ that Eugene could imagine? Incalculable, he’d probably say. The ‘saved of earth’(v.1), family members, and certainly ‘Christians of all nations (alternatively ‘ages’)’ (v.2) were those Eugene could see. Though we know not what explicitly prompted Eugene’s poetic words, he had plenty of blessings, professionally and otherwise, to transport his enthusiasm into musical verse.  

 

Did everything go swimmingly for Eugene every day? If he were here, he could probably tell us about songbook shipments that went awry, or copies that were initially printed with mistakes, songs that just never worked, or students whom he couldn’t motivate.  If one or more of those were true, Eugene would have had an alternative reason for writing this poem – he longed for a better place that would not disappoint. But, since he continued to administer Hartford Music’s affairs into the mid-1930s, we can presume he had many more positives than negatives in his life’s ledger. He might also have said that all that he had while a mortal in 1921 was just a foretaste, that ‘over there’ would dwarf the ‘here and now’. He seemed to be counting on that truism. How about you?   

 

 

See the following for brief biography of the author: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/b/a/r/t/bartlett_em_sr.htm

 

See more biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Monroe_Bartlett

 

See more biography here: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/e-m-bartlett-2660/

 

See here for description of the company that the author founded: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/hartford-music-company-and-hartford-music-institute-2661/

 

Victory in Jesus – Eugene M. Bartlett

Eugene Monroe Bartlett was a very well-known gospel hymnist in the early 20th Century in the South. Besides teaching and writing music for several decades, he also founded the Hartford Music Company in 1918, in Sebastian County, Arkansas. Along with the company that published music , Bartlett formed the Hartford Music Institute that taught voice, piano, piano tuning, rudiments, harmony, and stringed instruments to students all over the South. One of Bartlett’s main objectives was to teach worshippers to sight read a song by using “shape” notes, a debt that many of us still owe him today. (An assigned shape for each tone on an eight-note scale makes it easier for the common person to “read” the music.) Check out many song books, and you’ll still see them with triangles, diamonds, half-moons, etc. dotting the music scores on the pages. Perhaps that legacy was one of the main reasons that Bartlett was inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Association’s Hall of Fame in 2000. When you examine Bartlett’s composition “Victory in Jesus” however, you see he was more tuned into joining another association when he wrote this song in 1939. 

 

 

 In 1939, Bartlett’s health suffered a serious blow when he had a major stroke. He spent much of the last two years of his life bed-ridden, so it’s surprising that he wrote his most well-known song “Victory in Jesus” at that time. Or is it? It’s said that Bartlett missed travelling and teaching, but he could still study the Bible, a study from which he gave us this song, his last. Is it an accident that Bartlett wrote about ‘victory’ in 1939? What was going on then? While much of the earth sat on the brink of World War II, Bartlett looked beyond that, to a victory none of us can know on earth. Though he could see an end to his life approaching, he also noticed something else about ends. Has it occurred to you that victory, though it’s something we strive for in all kinds of venues, can only be reached at the end of something here? A team never wins the game at its start, nor the championship during the season’s first few games. So, if you live for the competition, to play the game, then the end is bittersweet, even if it culminates in triumph and a trophy. Bartlett must have experienced some depression, if he was human like all of us. In fact, it’d be quite impossible to be as productive as Bartlett was, and not miss the life one has lived. But another part must have seen his physical descent as just a temporary blip, a normal part of the human condition.

 

 

 Though an earthly victory comes at the finish line, Bartlett’s 1st and 2nd song verses tell us that he had already experienced his eternal victory well before his earthly end approached. And, thank God that is the one that endures! Do you think Bartlett is now flashing the victory sign with two fingers, like a president we remember? Maybe he teaches shape notes in heaven, whaddya think? It wouldn’t be a surprise, since this method seemed to work here. Still, the only things we know of heaven are in John’s Revelation. He tells me that I’ll sing a new song (Rev. 5 + 14), a Moses song, and that I, as a winner -- a victor -- get to sing it (Rev. 15:2-4). It’s gonna be grand seeing Eugene Bartlett and so many other God-worshippers, with exquisite, perfect, musical bodies given by God, pouring out melodies and harmonies forever. Now that’s a hall of fame I want to be part of…how about you? 

 

 

Information on Eugene Bartlett was obtained from “The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs” by William J. and Ardythe Petersen , Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 2006 

 

Additional information on Eugene Bartlett found at the following website: http://www.musicscribe.com/2005/08/eugene-bartlett-biography.html 

 

 Information on the Hartford Music Company is available at the following website: http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2661