Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me

 I recall I was driving back from an animal hospital when I first heard the piece of music, "Jesus' blood never failed me yet".  My dog was in the back of the car, and she was very ill.

The music was - I think - some way in when I first turned the car radio on.  I remember very clearly the efforts of an old man with a shaky voice repeating the word "blood" a lot and trying to keep above the orchestration - which was growing and growing as he appeared to repeat the lines again and again.  I was amazed - some 20 minutes later - to be still hearing the old man, repeating the word "Jesus", and coming back to the word "blood" as the swell of the music would start again.

Once the track finished, the presenter didn't say much about it - simply mentioning the name of the composer, Gavin Bryars, and saying he played the piece as part of the station's meditation series.

When I got home, I found the words and tune of the old man - and the orchestration around it - repeating itself in my head.  I resolved to find out more.

I knew nothing about Gavin Bryars.  I had never heard of him.  But I knew nothing about modern music more generally.  I discovered that he was what was called a minimalist composer, and that he had written a piece about the Titanic.

I found a recording of the piece.  It started with the voice of the old man singing what appeared to be a kind of hymn, which went

Jesus' blood never failed me yet. 

Never failed me yet.

Jesus' blood never failed me yet.

There's one thing I know.

For he loves me so....

And then back to the first line again - and again, and again.  On it went.  You could hear some voices in the background.  Some 4 minutes in, the strings came in, then built up, getting bigger and bigger.  It was an extraordinary piece of music.  I don't think I'd heard anything quite like it before.

I learnt about the unusual story behind the recording of the old man.  Back in 1971, Gavin Bryars was working with a documentary filmmaker called Alan Power, and they were making a film about people living rough near Waterloo Station and Elephant and Castle.  Alan Power passed Bryars some recordings of such people talking and singing which he was not going to use for the film.  Most of them - under the influence of drink - would sing bits of opera or old songs.  But Bryars concentrated on the recording of the old man - who was not drunk, and didn't drink apparently - singing what appeared to be a religious verse - just the five lines above sung once.

Bryars went home and studied the recording.  He found if he repeated the recording of the man's voice, the last line naturally flowed into the first, making a continuous loop.  So that became the basis of the composition.

He tells a story of making a recording of the repeating loop at the studio of the art college in Leicester where he was teaching at the time.  He went out to make a coffee, and returned to find his students unusually subdued, with some actually crying.  At that point, he realised the force of the music.

After composing and recording the piece around the man's verse, Bryars went back to find him to show him what he had done.  But by then the old man had died.

The final mystery in all of this is the verse itself.  It seems that no one has ever heard it sung or played elsewhere, or come across it at all.  It is probable that the old man simply improvised it, perhaps blending the words and tunes of other hymns or songs. The words do seem characteristic of a Salvation Army hymn - and that might make some sense given his predicament - but I can't find anything like that in their hymn book.

I find it hard to believe - as I listen to the music, and I have kept coming back to it year after year - that the man sang the five lines above only once.  The music around it seems continually to change the feeling in the words, even the meaning.  It is a rich piece of music, and I never bore of it - despite the apparent repetition.

But its original source - the old man himself, where he came from, what his name was, what misfortunes had driven him onto the streets, what drove him to sing about faith - that remains unknown. There is no trace to my knowledge of the documentary film.

So, sadly, all that remains of the man are the simple 5 lines.