Oh Happy Day

I. Precursor

The popular gospel choir song “Oh Happy Day” by Edwin Hawkins (1943–2018) is based loosely on a nineteenth-century campmeeting refrain, HAPPY DAY, which first appeared in print, uncredited, in the Wesleyan Sacred Harp (1854). The refrain was based partly on a song called “Happy Land” by Edward Rimbault (1816–1876), and it is closely associated with the hymn “O happy day that fixed my choice” by Philip Doddridge (1702–1751). For more details regarding the history of the text and tune, see the linked article.

II. Adaptation by Hawkins

In May 1967, Edwin Hawkins assembled a youth choir made up predominantly of singers from COGIC churches and called it the Northern California State Youth Choir. In a little over a year, the group had gained some measure of notoriety, having appeared on television and performed in several concerts and services at colleges, auditoriums, and churches. The group secured a record deal with Century Records, and in June 1968, they gathered at the Ephesian Church of God in Christ in Berkeley, California, to record their first album, consisting entirely of new songs and arrangements by Hawkins. Hawkins evidently had been raised around hymns, because three of the songs were new arrangements of classics, such as “Jesus, lover of my soul” by Charles Wesley, “I heard the voice of Jesus say” by Horatius Bonar, and “O happy day that fixed my choice” by Philip Doddridge. “To My Father’s House” was based on an old gospel/spiritual song. Hawkins would later remark in an interview, “My mother had an old hymnal and I had a knack for rearranging hymns.”[1] 

The album was intended mostly to raise money for the group to attend the COGIC Annual Youth Congress in Washington, D.C. Said Hawkins: “We were going to hand-sell the album in the Bay Area. We ordered 500 copies. Lamont Bench, a Mormon guy, recorded that album on a two-track system. All 500 copies sold.”[2] Hawkins had not intended to go into the music business; at the time, he was studying interior design at Laney College in Oakland. But the following spring, a couple of DJs in the Bay area started playing “Oh Happy Day,” and the song became a smash hit. The San Francisco Examiner documented what happened next:

A record company has paid a high price to get religion. Reliable sources say Buddah Records paid $35,000 front money plus percentage to Century Records for their master of “Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord,” an album by the Northern California State Youth Choir. The purchase was the finale of a wild Easter weekend of bidding, with seven record labels involved. Money men from Buddah, White Whale, Atlantic, Motown, Bell, Uni and Knapp flew in from New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles. One label reportedly paid Lamont Bench of Century $500 to hold off making a decision until their man could get into the action.

The Youth Choir album first gained attention when Vince Cosgrove of Chatton Distributors in Oakland took it to radio stations because he liked the sound. KOIT and KSAN, San Francisco FM stations, began playing the cut “Oh Happy Day.” According to Gary Schaffer, director of music at KYA, cuts from “Let Us Go” are being played in Miami, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago.

Buddah will release “Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord” on the Pavilion label. One of the finest and freshest things to happen in music for years, it is the masterpiece of Edwin Hawkins, pianist, arranger, and director of the choir, its director Betty Watson, and many beautifully blended voices.[3]

The contract was signed on the evening of Easter Sunday, 6 April 1969. Hawkins’ cut from the deal was $5,000. “Coming from the projects of Oakland, California, that was a lot of money to me,” he later recalled.[4] When the album was reissued on the Pavilion label (BPS-10001), the group was rebranded as the Edwin Hawkins Singers. Pavilion also released a 45-rpm single (PBS 20,001) featuring “Oh Happy Day” and “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” Hawkins’ copyright registration for “Oh Happy Day” was entered on 21 April 1969.

Reception

“Oh Happy Day” won a Grammy award in 1970 for Best Gospel Performance. In spite of its popularity, it was not universally accepted among Christian churches, because Christians sometimes have an uneasy relationship with secular-sounding music, even if it carries a Christian message. This was true also of Christian forays into rock and hip-hop/rap. Hawkins offered his perspective:

We preach, and the Bible teaches, to take the gospel into all the world, but when it all comes down, we don’t want to do that with our music. . . . And the church world is quick to criticize that. . . . I think sometimes that it is out of jealousy. Someone has succeeded, and people don’t like it. A lot of that goes on.[5]

Another member of the choir, Adrienne Kryor, once remarked on some of the pushback:

When “Oh Happy Day” broke, the church was upset about it. . . . We were part of the Pentecostal movement. You didn’t drink, you didn’t dance, you didn’t go to clubs. So we were persecuted. It was very humiliating, but we felt like the world needed “Happy Day.”[6]

A contemporary of Hawkins, gospel musician Andraé Crouch, faced many of the same challenges. Nevertheless, the overall reception was enthusiastic, leading to millions of album and single sales. One reviewer of the time wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it, but she knew it was good:

“Oh Happy Day” is a hymn, pure and simple. Whether you want to dance to it or not is, I suppose, a matter of personal discretion—that is, if you can dance to it. But it brings up an interesting and relevant thought about the state of music in general today, and its importance in the lives of those who not only listen, but buy records.

When a song, straight out of church, without commercial hyping, becomes the most requested song on a top-30 station, something is happening. (Somehow it seems almost sacreligious to call such a heavy gospel hymn a “hit.”) What it seems to imply is that the listener’s (and record buyer’s) ears (and heads) are open to anything. “Oh Happy Day” is a song that is full—it is full of love, full of very beautiful voices and harmony, full of a message. And the message is nonsectarian. It is the music that is important, the sound the voices make and the feeling that one gets listening to Dorothy Morrison’s delivery.[7]

In spite of the challenges, Hawkins had a long and successful career, and he would go on to be nominated 18 more times for Grammy awards. Dorothy Combs Morrison (1944–), the soloist on “Oh Happy Day,” also found success in her own right, releasing the album Brand New Day with Buddah in 1970, leading to a long career in music. Another member of the group, Tramaine Davis (1950–), later married Edwin’s brother Walter Hawkins and also had a long and successful singing career.

In 1992, Edwin Hawkins directed a reunion album, Oh Happy Day (Intersound CRD 7005) with original members of the group, recorded at the Ephesian COGIC church where it all started. On that album, the solos for “Oh Happy Day” were supplied by Edwin Hawkins and Shirley Miller.

Interpretation

Although the song essentially replicates the text from the older campmeeting refrain, “Oh Happy Day” includes one notable change: the word “fight.” In 1968, the country was in the throes of a tempestuous civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed on 4 April 1968, just two months before this recording, and controversial activist Malcolm X three years before that, on 21 February 1965. King’s death led to riots in several places, including Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City.

How did Jesus teach us how to fight? He taught us who our true enemy is:

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication (Eph. 6:11–18, ESV).

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7).

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Pet. 5:8).

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matt. 5:44).

III. Publication

After the group’s induction into Buddah/Pavilion, “Oh Happy Day” was published as sheet music via United Artists Music (Fig. 6), in piano/vocal form. The copyright registration for this score was entered on 5 May 1969. Unfortunately, having been transcribed and engraved in a rush, the sheet music was scored inaccurately, with only the first two phrases of the verse shown in proper alternation between solo and choir, and some chords were written incorrectly (the A7 at measures 11, 13, and 15 should be minor, for example).

From the outset, the song was printed in compilations, such as 71 Giant Hits (NY: Robbins Music, 1969). It was gathered among other popular gospel songs and hymns in The American Country Hymn Book (Nashville: Canaanland, 1975 | Fig. 7). Among denominational resources, it was included in the National Baptist collection Free Spirit (1979 | Fig 8.).

Over the next four decades, the song was not granted a pride-of-place position in major denominational hymnals. If anything, it spurred the preservation or inclusion of Doddridge’s original hymn in collections intended for African American churches (often listed in indexes as “Oh Happy Day,” as if it were by Hawkins), until Hawkins’ arrangement was included in One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism (Chicago: GIA, 2018).

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
9 September 2022

Footnotes:

1. Bill Carpenter, “Oh Happy Day—The Edwin Hawkins Singers (1968),” Library of Congress (2005): LOC

2. Bill Carpenter, “Oh Happy Day—The Edwin Hawkins Singers (1968),” Library of Congress (2005): LOC

3. Tom Campbell, “Religious Music Becomes Hot Disc,” San Francisco Examiner (8 April 1969), p. 25.

4. Bill Carpenter, “Oh Happy Day—The Edwin Hawkins Singers (1968),” Library of Congress (2005): LOC

5. Bill Carpenter, “Oh Happy Day—The Edwin Hawkins Singers (1968),” Library of Congress (2005): LOC

6. Dan Gentile, “The legacy of ‘Oh Happy Day,’ Oakland’s most popular and most controversial gospel song,” SFGate (San Francisco, 16 July 2021): SFGate

7. Kathy Orloff, “Association Cops the Loew’s Award,” Akron Beacon Journal (27 April 1969).

Related Resources:

Pete Johnson, “‘Happy Day’ for Gospel Youth Choir,” Los Angeles Times (27 April 1969), pp. 32, 39.

Gwendolyn Sims Warren, “Oh Happy Day,” Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit (NY: Hanry Holt & Co., 1997), pp. 311–315.

Marc Myers, “When He Washed My Sins Away,” Wall Street Journal (22 Nov. 2012): WSJ

Cedric Hayes & Robert Laughton, Gospel Discography 1943–2000, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Canada: Eyeball, 2014): Eyeball

Neil Genzlinger, “Edwin Hawkins, known for the hit ‘Oh Happy Day,” is dead at 74,” New York Times (15 Jan. 2018): NYT