Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)

Subject: mississippi john hurt
From:
Date: 21 May 03 - 08:23 AM

Looking for lyrics and tablature..particularly lyrics to.."Here I Am, Oh Lord, Send Me" as performed by Mississippi John Hurt.

Subject: RE: mississippi john hurt
From: songs2play
Date: 21 May 03 - 08:48 AM

There's a great MJH site here, But sadly not the one you're after.

Subject: RE: mississippi john hurt
From: GUEST,Sorcha
Date: 21 May 03 - 09:29 AM

No luck at all. Just references to it. Sorry.

Subject: RE: mississippi john hurt
From: GUEST,paul0
Date: 21 May 03 - 11:29 AM

You can try asking at Stefan Grossman's forum (you can get to it from http://www.vestapol.com , find the link to the woodshed). There are a lot of die hard MJH fans there that may have it.

Subject: Lyr Add: HARK, THE VOICE OF JESUS CALLING
From: GUEST,roscoe
Date: 30 Jan 07 - 09:02 PM

I found this text below at: http://fuegodedios.com/mission.htm

~Roscoe

------------------------------------
HARK, THE VOICE OF JESUS CALLING

Hark, the voice of Jesus calling,
"Who will go and work today?
Fields are ripe and harvests waiting,
Who will bear the sheaves away?"
Long and loud the Master calls us,
Rich reward He offers free;
Who will answer, gladly saying,
"Here am I, send me, send me"?

If you cannot cross the ocean,
And the distant lands explore,
You can find the lost around you,
You can help them at your door;
If you cannot give your thousands,
You can give the widow's mite;
What you truly give for Jesus,
Will be precious in His sight.

If you cannot speak like angels,
If you cannot preach like Paul,
You can tell the love of Jesus,
You can say He died for all.
If you cannot rouse the wicked,
With the judgment's dread alarms,
You can lead the little children
To the Savior's waiting arms.

If you cannot be the watchman,
Standing high on Zion's wall,
Pointing out the path to heaven,
Offering life and peace to all,
With your prayers and with your bounties
You can do what heaven demands;
You can be like faithful Aaron,
Holding up the prophet's hands.

If among the older people,
You may not be apt to teach,
"Feed My lambs," said Christ, our Shepherd,
"Place the food within their reach."
And it may be that the children
You have led with trembling hand,
Will be found among your jewels,
When you reach the better land.

Let none hear you idly saying,
"There is nothing I can do."
While the lost of earth are dying,
And the Master calls for you;
Take the task He gives you gladly;
Let His work your pleasure be;
Answer quickly when He calls you,
"Here am I, send me, send me."
------------------------------------

Subject: RE: mississippi john hurt
From: Scrump
Date: 31 Jan 07 - 04:58 AM

I'm sorry to hear about Mississippi John's injury - I hope he recovers soon.

:-)

... I'll get me coat.

Subject: Lyr Add: HERE AM I OH LORD SEND ME (John Hurt)
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jul 07 - 10:39 PM

I was at Mississippi John Hurt's grave in 05. Sadly recovery for John is out of the question on this mortal coil.

John Hurt uses the following lyrics in Here am I... it was interesting to see the source hymn "Hark the voice of jesus calling"...

CHORUS: Here am I lord send me X4.

Can't you hear my saviour calling
Who will go and work today
The fields are ripe the harvests waiting
Who will bend the fields away *

If you can not speak like angels
If you cannot preach like Paul
Well you can still tell the love of Jesus
You can say he died for us all.

I have never quite been able to understand this line due to his accent, but I have read this line in other versions. I used to think it was "who will go and bear the way".

---

Please remember to put a consistent poster name in the "from" box when you post a message. Anonymous messages risk deletion.
Thanks.
-Joe Offer, Forum Moderator-

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here I Am Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Apr 08 - 01:45 PM

I believe the lyric in question is:
Who will bear the sheaves away.
... as in "sheaves" of wheat from the harvest.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here I Am Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: PoppaGator
Date: 07 Apr 08 - 05:13 PM

"Who will bear the sheaves away," as you will already have noticed if you have read the entire thread, is a line in the "source-hymn" lyrics added on 30 Jan 07 - 09:02 PM. So it is undoubtedly what Mr Hurt is singing as part of his own shorter spiritual. I'm sure that it shares a biblical reference with another old hymn, "Bringing In The Sheaves."

While we have now established this song's lyrics, no one has yet come up with the guitar tablature. I'm marking this thread "Add To Tracer." I don't have the time to work up this tune right now, let alone to type out text-based tablature, but I might be able to do so sometime in the future.

For a motherload of excellent MJH tabs, check out the website that Frank Delaney maintains on behalf of the Mississippi John Hurt Museum. It includes quite a few tabs, including a couple contributed by me and a another half-dozen or so by fellow Mudcatter Khandu. Unfortunately, this song isn't included ~ yet.

http://www.msjohnhurtmuseum.com/tablature.html

The tablature program used on this site, "Randytab," is freeware that can be downloaded from another page on the same site:

http://www.msjohnhurtmuseum.com/randytab.html

You'll need to download this program in order to access the tabs that Frank has posted. Using it should be very easy and enjoyable for anyone who's already "tab-literate." This program creates a MIDI file of the notes that are transcribed, which is great. If you're learning a song, you can hear the guitar part was you look at the tab, and if you're writing or trying to transcribe something, you can check your work and verify that it sounds the way you mean it to sound. I've heard that there are other programs that do the same thing, but this one is free, it's the first one I found, and it provides access to plenty of Mississippi John Hurt songs!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here I Am Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 05:08 PM

Downloaded RandyTab and tried to play a song in it, but the sound would not play. I tried each of the MIDI settings given but still no sound. Cursor moves, but no sound. No other sound-using programs open at the moment.... speakers on, volume on, but no sound.

???

~S~

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here I Am Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: PoppaGator
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 03:59 PM

Susan:

I can't think of anything to suggest. RandyTab worked for me right from the get-go, and I've had a lot of fun with it.

Maybe something happened during the download, which might be solved by removing the program and trying again.

But first, contact the site from which you downloaded. (If you used the MJH Museum site, you would be contacting Frank, who is good about getting back.) They might check their uploading functions, and ~ if the problem is on the transmission end ~ find the problem and fix it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here I Am Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 04:37 PM

Thanks, PG. I thought I would do that if it's not working after a reboot and if no one had an obvious solution I'd missed (I was having a stupid day).

~S~

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here I Am Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: PoppaGator
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 03:52 PM

Mudcatter Khandu just contributed a large number of Randytab transcriptions of John Hurt songs ~ including this one ~ to the Mississippi John Hurt Museum website. There's a separate thread on this subject, started today, 16 Apr 08. As of this writing, webmaster Frank hasn't yet posted the tabs on the site, but I'm sure they'll appear soon enough.

Khandu has contributed several similar tabs to the same site in the past, and his work has been just-about-perfect, far as I can see.

Subject: Lyr Req: HERE AM I OH LORD SEND ME (John Hurt)
From: khandu
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 10:35 AM

John Hurt's version:

Here am I Oh Lord send me
Here am I Oh Lord send me
Here am I Oh Lord send me
Here am I Oh Lord send me


Don't you hear my saviour calling
Who will go and work today
Oh the fields are ripe (white?) and the harvests waiting
Who will go bear those sheaves away

Here am I Oh Lord send me
Here am I Oh Lord send me
Here am I Oh Lord send me
Here am I Oh Lord send me

If you can not speak like Peter
If you cannot preach like Paul
Well you can tell the love of Jesus
You can say that he died for us all.

Here am I Oh Lord send me
Here am I Oh Lord send me
Here am I Oh Lord send me
Here am I Oh Lord send me

Hark the voice of Jesus calling
Who will go and work today
Oh the fields are ripe and the harvests waiting
Who will go bear those sheaves away

Kk

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 11:27 AM

Hearing it now..... oh THAT one!

Our version will conflate all the verses/versions above... and maybe go a tad further as well.

~S~

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: PoppaGator
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 03:15 PM

Susan ~

Are you "hearing it now" because you acquired a recording, or have you gotten Randytab to work for you?

Tom

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 03:26 PM

A recording materialized. :~)

I'm going to put my guitar-playing husband on the trail of RandyTab on his work computer. Hopefully he'll be able to use it.

~S~

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: wysiwyg
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 03:37 PM

Let me try to say this respectfully, because I do not in any way want to suggest that MJH was not a tunesmith in his own powerful right. But I can almost hear, in an alternate tune called Ripley at the Cyberhymnal, a diatonic version that MJH's blues version may have improved upon in his version. Or maybe it was the other way around, in MJH's time or an earlier time. CLICK to go to the page, click the alternate tune, and tell me what y'all hear.

I say all of this somewhat trepidatiously (sp?!?!) because my research with spirituals has shown time after time that, at this late date, it is often virtually impossible to tell the chicken from the egg.

Also my MIDI software is not happy at the moment and I do not read tab, so I can't really SEE whether the melodies have a relationship, for myself, at the moment.

Just curious,

~Susan

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: PoppaGator
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 01:54 PM

John Hurt had such a wonderful, and highly individual, style, both as a vocalist and as a guitar player, that it almost doesn't matter whether or not his melodies were "original" ~ HE was an absolute original, which is what's most important.

One of my favorite MJH songs is "Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me," which shares a melody with Jimmie Rodgers' "Waitin' For a Train." Despite the essentially-identical melodies, however, the two songs are both pretty unique.

Those two guys were both Mississippians, and they made their first recordings at about the same time. Without looking up their respective birth dates, I think it would be fair to say they were contemporaries. Jimmie was widely successful much earlier than John, of course, and he died young, many years before John's "rediscovery" and second career.

Did one of these great original artists "copy" the tune from the other? I doubt it ~ I prefer to believe that each adapted, or half-consicously stumbled upon, a pre-existing "folk" melody, and each used that melody as the setting for a different lyrical message...

By the way, Susan (& anyone), if you manage to get Randytab working, and can simply watch the screen while listening to the MIDI, you'll probably find it quite easy to learn how to understand and read tablature, even the non-enhanced, non-"Randy," plain ink-on-paper variety.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 06:04 PM

I find it odd that the title is listed this way when Hurt himself names the song "Don't you hear my savior calling" just before performing it at Oberlin. (The Best of MJH, Vanguard)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 07:34 PM

Well, song titles are a moving target. Looks like this song has lots of titles. On the Vanguard Best of Missippi John Hurt CD (first cut), Vanguard calls it "Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me." The first line is "Don't you hear my savior calling," and religious songs are often identified by their first lines.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: PoppaGator
Date: 05 Jun 09 - 12:57 PM

Looks like some hacker hijacked this thread.

I find this somewhat offensive, but on the other hand I'm glad to have re-read this resurrected thread, and am glad it reappeared, even if for a "wrong" reason...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Jun 09 - 09:03 PM

Fwiw, the "If You Can Not Speak Like Peter" verse found above is also used for the spiritual "There Is A Balm In Gilead." My church choir in New Jersey used these words:

If you can not pray like Peter
If you cannot preach like Paul
You can tell the love of Jesus
And how he died for all.

-snip-

Also, for what it's worth, I have no knowledge at all of the spiritual that is the subject of this thread (meaning I've never heard it sung in my church or in any other church or on any religious recording). This is reflective of my sense that only a small number of African American spirituals are still sung in many African American churches-at least in the North. Note that this is just my opinion-and I limit that opinion to the North since I know very little about other regions of the USA. But I wouldn't be surprised it that wasn't true throughout the USA since at least the 1980s.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Here Am I Oh Lord Send Me (John Hurt)
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 25 Nov 14 - 01:01 PM

"John Hurt had such a... highly individual style, both as a vocalist and as a guitar player...." I disagree with that. I think his repertoire, usual playing styles, and usual singing style are all unsurprising if you're given the information that he was a black man born in the South in about 1892. The soft-spoken approach to singing in particular may not have been the _norm_, but there were lots of black guys and a good number of white guys total who sang like that (Clarence Horton Greene comes to mind as an example of a white guy, and hmm says here he was born in 1894, so there you go, a contemporary).

Hurt was about 36 or 37 when he became aware of Jimmie Rodgers' work. "Mermaids Flirt With Me"'s melody was based directly on "Waiting For A Train." ("Mermaids"' lyrics, like the lyrics of "Richland Woman Blues," were by a man named William Myers, who had corresponded with Hurt after hearing him on record.) "Mermaids" is not typical of Hurt's repertoire, which he generally learned before 1920.