Fifty Miles of Elbow Room was written by Herbert Buffum 1879-1939

Af­ter mov­ing with his fam­i­ly to Cal­i­for­nia and be­ing con­vert­ed to Christ at age 18, Buf­fum felt a call to the min­is­try. He held min­is­ter­i­al cre­den­tials with the Church of the Nazarene, and was a ho­li­ness/Pen­te­cost­al evan­gel­ist. He was al­so a prolific song writ­er, with ma­ny songs in­spired by per­son­al ex­per­i­ence; he had 10,000 songs to his cred­it, 1,000 ac­tu­al­ly pub­lished. Ripley's "Believe It or Not" claimed he once wrote 12 songs in an hour. Though a tal­ent­ed mu­si­cian, Buf­fum re­ceived no mu­sic­al train­ing. He sold most of his songs for five dollars or less. When he died, the Los Angeles Times called him "The King of Gos­pel Song Writ­ers."


A classic version is the 1930 recording by Reverend F. W. McGee, Anthology of American Folk Music, Smithsonian/Folkways SFW 40090, CD( (1997), trk# 55 [1930/06/16]

FIFTY MILES OF ELBOW ROOM Carter Family

          Twelve thousand miles its length and breadth
          The foursquare city stands
          Its gemset walls of jasper shine
          Not made by human hands
          100 miles its gates are wide
          Abundant entrance there
          With fifty miles of elbow room
          On either side to spare

               When the gates swing wide on the other side
               Just beyond the sunset sea
               There'll be room to spare as we enter there
               Room for you and room for me
               For the gates are wide on the other side
               Where the flowers ever bloom
               On the right hand, on the left hand
               Fifty miles of elbow room

          Sometimes I'm cramped and crowded here
          And long for elbow room
          I want to reach for altitude
          Where the fairest flowers bloom
          It won't be long before I pass
          Into that city fair
          With fifty miles of elbow room
          On either side to spare