Since Jesus came into My Heart

A friend of mine brings me old hymnal/song books from time to time.  The other day she brought me a Baxter/Stamps song  book.  As I was looking through the book, I ran across a old hymn that I  had not heard in a while.   The Stamps-Baxter Music Company was an influential publishing company in the shape note Southern gospel music field. The company issued several paperback publications each year with cheap binding and printed on cheap paper. Thus, the older books are now in delicate condition. These songbooks were used in church singing events, called “conventions,” as well as at other church events, although they did not take the place of regular hymnals. Among the country music and bluegrass “standards” that were first published by Stamps-Baxter are “Rank Strangers to Me”, “Just a Little Talk With Jesus”, “Precious Memories”, “Farther Along”, “If We Never Meet Again”, “Victory in Jesus”, and “I Won’t Have to Cross Jordan Alone”.  Stamps and Baxter operated a music school which was the primary source of the thousands of gospel songs they published. Another major part of the corporation was its sponsorship of gospel quartets who sang the company’s music in churches throughout the southern United States. At the end of World War II they were sponsoring 35 such quartets.  Have you heard of the Stamps Quartet and /or The Baxter Quartet.  The company also had a quartet who sang on radio station KRLD in Dallas, beginning in 1936. This station would boost its transmitting power at midnight, so that it could be heard across the nation. An additional part of the Stamps-Baxter music empire was a magazine, Gospel Music News. Each part of the corporation supported every other part, giving strength to the entire organization.   “Since Jesus came into My Heart” or “What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought” was Author by Rufus H. McDaniel and Music by Charles H. Gabriel, 1914. The hymn  was the instrument used by the Holy Spirit in the conversion of Policeman Fowler during the Billy Sunday Philadelphia [Pennsylvania] meet­ing.  What the apostolic preaching of the great evangelist failed to do, this song of personal testimony did brought about Fowler’s conversion.  More than a hundred policemen were led to Christ by the change wrought in the life of one man by this song.