Now in her 90s, McKee still attends the same church and recalls that Boyce would sing the lead part and his wife would sing the harmony in her clear alto voice. Carmel Baptist Church where Boyce was a deacon and song leader when the song was written. Nell McKee, a retired educator who lives in the Buchanan area, attended Mt. “I believe,” she said, “they worked all morning on the music at the piano, and it rained hard all the time they were working on it.” He walked across the road to the barn to find the solitude he needed to write.ĭean Boyce, Franklin’s wife, remembers how her late sister-in-law, Nanny Lou, talked about helping her father put down the music for the song. The songwriter’s son, the late Franklin Boyce, recalled in a 1996 interview that his dad said he couldn’t concentrate in the house because of noise made by the children. Later, the song would be republished in Vaughan’s Favorite Radio Songs.īoyce wrote “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” while the family was living on a dairy farm in the Plainview community, about two or three miles from what is now the Interstate 24 Buchanan Road Exit. In 1940, the Vaughan Company published Boyce’s song “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.” The song was printed in the company’s song-book, Beautiful Praise. Vaughan was another major publisher of shape note hymnals. Vaughan Publishing Company, which was founded around 1900. As did many others from across the Southeast, Boyce later traveled to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, to attend one of the annual music normal schools conducted by the James D. Showalter Company, one of the early publishers of shape note hymnals. In 1911, the young couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary and saw Boyce’s song “Safe in His Love” published by the A.J. “My sister Nanny Lou (Taylor) would play, and we would sing way into the night.” “The neighbors would come in, and we’d all gather around our family piano,” Boyce’s daughter said. Eads remembers singing as a great source of entertainment for their family. Only one daughter, Willie Ruth Eads, remains alive. They would become the parents of 11 children, five of whom lived to be adults. In the spring of 1910, he married Cora Carlton from the Rockvale community. Boyce was raised The third of six children, Boyce loved music and was singing solo and in quartets by the early 1900s. Robert Fisher Boyce was born in the southern Rutherford County community of Link November 25, 1887. The Hillbilly at Harvard, WHRB Radio, Boston, MAĪlso, please click on the link below to learn more about Robert Fisher Boyce: In an article in the Old-Time Times from 2004, Patsy Weiler writes, OK – now for the story of Rutherford County’s very own Robert Fisher Boyce of the Link community:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |