Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet' by Gavin Bryars

Very few people know about the tape composition called A Must for all Sibelians (30'). It was composed by Gavin Bryars for System exhibition held in Amos Andersson Art Museum, Helsinki Finland, in November 4-30, 1969.

After the Sibelius work, Bryars composed much more well-known pieces The Sinking Of The Titanic and Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet. The following text is about the Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet. Here is some information (and speculation) about the piece and it's background.

[I]
Bryars says in the booklet of a Point Music release of the piece (2003) that the voice was recorded in 1971, and in the booklet of a Virgin release (1998) he says that it was in 1970. The composition was made in 1971, and the first recording was released in 1975 with The Sinking Of The Titanic on the other side. The Virgin release is a re-relase of the original version. The Point release was recorded in 1993, sporting alternate versions with, for example, Tom Waits joining the hobo.

[II]
Gavin Bryars in the Point Music relase:

"In 1971, when I lived in London, a friend, Alan Power, was making a film about people living rough in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station. He asked me to help him with some of the audio tapes from the film and during the work I came across the original source of this piece. In the course of being filmed, some people broke into drunken song -- sometimes bits of opera, sometimes folksongs, sometimes sentimental ballads -- and one old man, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song, "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" (Alan recalls that during the filming he played a game of swapping hats with the film crew). The footage, however, was not ultimately used in the film and I was given all unused tape, including this extract."

The original version dates from the same year, though the instrumental combination was never absolutely set. The first single-LP-side recording was released in 1975 (Brian Eno's Obscure label), the big (bloated) later full-CD one in 1993.

[III]
Jesus' Blood never Failed me yet, original version - 1971
First full orchestrated version, recorded on Brian Eno's Obscure Records Label - in 1975

All of the versions that he had made were limited in their duration by physical factors: the maximum duration of a single side of a vinyl lp, the length of a reel of magnetic tape for 16mm film. When the possibility arose of making a cd version he resolved to reconsider the piece for this extended medium. Which is where Tom Waits makes an appearance, having contacted Bryars because he lost his version of the original recording of Jesus' blood.. apparently it was Waits' favorite recording.

The version on point music label (on CD) 1993. The man's voice was found on some film footage that did not make it in to Alan Power's film about people living in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station in London (the footage was shot in 1971). The man died before he could hear what Bryars had done with his singing. What is interesting in the liner notes to the CD is that nowhere is the identity of the "old man" revealed, nor does his name appear in the credits of

[IV]
folks in general were less interested in attribution back then, but Bryars' own notes give little enough credit to the man (real singing human soul, not merely a 'tramp') whose singing is the heart of the entire composition. I have always felt that this piece exists exclusively because of that man's voice, not because of Bryars' latecoming work, and there is so little attribution or even documentation of the effort to find out who he was that it's a sorry. If there's a good side to the hardening of the intellectual property rules, it's that such powerful and exquisite voices as this man's will not be swept up in credit to the composer, the mere arranger of this man's genius.

[V]
the power of the piece has a lot to do with the sense of anonymity, or even universality of the tramp. He had no artistic importance and had never been observed by anyone to be a reflection of the complexity of a person until his voice was transformed into a kitschy, slurpy requiem oozing a mystery in the total nobody it designates.