Herbert Buffum – 1879-1939

Herbert Buffum

Born: November 13, 1879, La­fay­ette, Il­li­nois.
Died: Oc­to­ber 9, 1939, Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia.
Buried: Val­hal­la Me­mor­i­al Park, Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia. His ep­i­taph reads “I have fought a good fight.”

“Af­ter mov­ing with his fam­i­ly to Cal­i­for­nia and be­ing con­vert­ed to Christ at age 18, Buf­fum felt a call to the min­is­try. He held min­is­ter­i­al cre­den­tials with the Church of the Nazarene, and was a ho­li­ness/Pen­te­cost­al evan­gel­ist. He was al­so a prolific song writ­er, with ma­ny songs in­spired by per­son­al ex­per­i­ence; he had 10,000 songs to his cred­it, 1,000 ac­tu­al­ly pub­lished. Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” claimed he once wrote 12 songs in an hour. Though a tal­ent­ed mu­si­cian, Buf­fum re­ceived no mu­sic­al train­ing. He sold most of his songs for five dollars or less. When he died, the Los An­geles Times called him “The King of Gos­pel Song Writ­ers.” (CyberHymnal)

Lyrics

1. He Abides – Here
2. He Keeps on Loving Us Still (© 1931)
3. I’m Go­ing High­er Some Day
4. I’m Go­ing Through
5. Get a Smile from Je­sus (© 1927)
6. In God’s Cal­en­dar of Days (© 1930)
7. In the Ci­ty Where the Lamb Is the Light
8. Isn’t He Won­der­ful (© 1950)
9. Let’s Talk About Je­sus
10. My Sheep Know My Voice
11. Old-fashioned Meet­ing, The (© 1922)
12. When I Take My Vaca­tion in Hea­ven
13. When You’re One Step from God