Shedding light on the ‘sunshine singer’: J. A. Hultman
Somewhere around my late forties, a New Year’s resolution to take an introductory Swedish language class started a process of connecting with the Swedish part of my ethnicity. Within a few years, I was singing in the ASI Swedish Male Chorus and with the Salem Covenant Swedish Singers. My interest in Swedish hymnody was launched into high gear after a discovery at the house where I grew up. While rummaging through shelves of books that had belonged to my parents, I came across a small, old black book, Musik Till Cymbalen: Af J. A. Hultman from 1885. The signature inside the front cover, “N. F. Larson,” was my great grandfather and a founding member of the Sauk Rapids/St. Cloud Covenant Church. He had attended a Hultman spiritual songs concert and bought one of his song books.
My education at North Park Theological Seminary had acquainted me with J. A. Hultman as a founding figure of the Covenant Church and an important contributor in publishing the Covenant’s hymnal Sions Basun in 1908. I knew of him for contributing the tune to the well-known hymn “Thanks to God for My Redeemer.”
As the quest for the Hultman story began, I looked for it online, at Swedish museums, and even a vintage record store. My quest took me to the North Park University library and the Covenant Archives in Chicago. I learned from a traveling Swedish gospel group that there was a Swedish pastor who still gave talks and sang Hultman songs in Sweden. I got in contact with him and he provided me with life information and pictures of places of Hultman’s early life in Sweden. Pastor Glen Wiberg gave me his copy of J. A. Hultman Solskenssånger, the Hultman “hymnal” which was printed in Sweden after Hultman’s death and contained 500 songs. I became acquainted with another member of Salem Covenant who drove the Hultmans around to summer gigs in Wisconsin and Minnesota around 1940.
The Swedish hymnologist Oscar Lövgren (1899-1980) published a biography on Hultman, Solskenssångaren, in 1942 following Hultman’s death. The most detailed account of Hultman’s life had only been available in Swedish until around 25 years ago. In 1998, a trio of women associated with the First Covenant Church in Omaha, which Hultman pastored from 1881 to 1895, released an English translation of Lövgren’s biography, titled “The Sunshine Singer.” I obtained my own copy of the English translation from a descendant of one of these Omaha translators. This allowed me to access, as Paul Harvey would say, “The rest of the story.”
Hultman was a prolific performer of spiritual song concerts, extensively touring America and Sweden. His biographer wrote that Hultman estimated he had done some 12,000 programs of spiritual songs over 60 years, over 5,300 of which were in Sweden. As a testimony to his popularity, in 1923 Hultman announced in a Swedish newspaper that he was unable to respond to all of the 1,000 requests he received to give concerts. And by 1934, when over 70, he had a seven-year backlog of concert requests. One commentator wrote, “Hultman can sing the same songs day after day and year after year and always sing them as if they were new.”
In 1889, Hultman was invited by preacher P. P. Waldenström to provide special music during Waldenström’s preaching tour of America. Hultman’s biographer includes Waldenström’s evaluation of Hultman: “It is so overwhelming and touching to hear him sing, especially when he is inspired. His whole person seems to give out music and he sings, like Ahnfelt, with freedom which makes it so that not any one can or should sing along.” In 1901, Waldenström invited Hultman to visit Sweden and perform spiritual song services. Hultman performed 99 concerts during his visit and was warmly received by the Swedes on the trip. The trip ignited his interest in his homeland and captivated those who attended his performances.
Johannes Alfred Hultman was born in Småland, Sweden in 1861. He was the fifth of six children born to a Swedish farmer whose family emigrated to America in 1869 at the height of the early wave of the migration. The Hultman family settled in western Iowa and eastern Nebraska. The young Hultman was transfixed by organ music at the age of six in Sweden and played publicly at the age of 14 at a julotta service. Following his conversion experience at age 16 during revival meetings with a Mission Synod pioneer preacher, Hultman’s public music ministry began. The revival preacher, Reverend Hallner, recognized the musical gifts and spiritual promise in Hultman and asked permission of his parents for Hultman to work with him at his church.
In 1881, Hultman was called to pastor the young Mission Church in Omaha, Nebraska. The church grew and flourished under Hultman’s leadership in Omaha, a major crossroads of commerce and travel as American expansion pushed westward. During his years pastoring the Omaha Covenant church (1881-1895), he married Carolina Palmer, whose family had also immigrated from Sweden. Of their three children, the oldest daughter, Julia, married
P. P. Waldenström’s son. Hultman’s son Paul was a distinguished pianist and performed with his father some and worked in his music business. Carolina Hultman died in 1919. In 1927, Hultman married Margaret Jansson in 1927 and she was an invaluable partner and traveling companion on his concert travels for the rest of his years.
Between 1895 and 1901, Hultman spent time in Chicago and taught music at North Park College for a few years and performed spiritual song concerts. In 1901 he accepted a call to pastor the Swedish mission church in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he remained as pastor until 1906. During these years, the presence of an associate pastor at the church enabled Hultman to pursue his concert travels during his years there.
His Cymbalen sold over 75,000 copies. In 1912, Hultman recorded his first record in Sweden. He would record some thirty 78s for Columbia and Victrola in America. Thus Hultman songs made their way into homes in America and Sweden. Hultman was a prolific writer of spiritual songs and hymns throughout his lifetime. He published around 500 that contained either his music or his lyrics or those of contemporary writers such as Lina Sandell and Anna Ölander, who wrote the lyrics to 85 Hultman songs. Hultman was in the music publishing business throughout his decades of performances. Once during the prohibition years, Hultman was questioned by the authorities if he was smuggling moonshine in his suitcase of music. Hultman replied that it was “sunshine.”
Following his concert tour of Sweden in 1901, Hultman moved to Sweden in 1909 and stayed for four years. He traveled extensively and sang continuously. It was in Sweden where Hultman’s reputation as the “sunshine singer” developed. There was labor unrest and a general strike in Sweden in 1909 and Hultman was called upon to sing at large gatherings at the Valhalla Mission School during the day. One account of the origin of the “sunshine singer” moniker is that once when Hultman began to sing at an outdoor gathering, sunshine broke through and shone on the listeners. Hultman noticed that his “sunshine” songs were popular and he began publishing his pamphlets of “Sunshine Songs.”
Hultman played both the piano and organ. But it was his signature suitcase-sized, folding portable
organ that allowed him to perform concerts wherever he could travel across America and Sweden. The portable organ was of the type of the Bilhorn Pump Organ, which singer and composer Peter Philip Bilhorn invented for his evangelistic activities with evangelists Ira Sankey and Dwight L. Moody. The Bilhorn Brothers Organ Company was founded in Chicago in the 1880s.
Though a humble and unassuming man in private, in concert he possessed a stage presence and a freedom to sing for the gospel message in his unique style that captivated, entertained, and moved his audience. His driving passion to entertain and share the gospel defined his entire life. When friends and doctors advised him to slow down and rest, he would continue “to rest and sing.” He was restless if he had more than one day off from singing. When commenting on his frequent travel between America and Sweden, Hultman quipped: “It isn’t far. Gothenburg is the first station on the other side of New York!”
Hultman was generous and gave a third of his concert receipts to sponsoring organizations or charities. Over his lifetime he gave over a million kronor to charitable organizations in Sweden. Nils Lund described an important Hultman distinctive: “Whereas most men interested in irenics have labored either with creed, or liturgies, or forms of ecclesiastical organizations, Mr. Hultman chose the universal language of song.” Major themes of his songs included: Joy from fellowship with Christ, the hardships of pilgrimage of God’s people, and the hope of eternal life with God.
Biographer Oscar Lövgren notes, in speaking of Hultman’s extensive performing, that he reflected, “And in all this I have come to learn that all people have a heart, even though all may not have a head.”
Hultman died at the organ in the Burbank Covenant Church on the evening of Sunday, August 2, 1942, when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that ultimately extinguished the light of the sunshine singer. One of Hultman’s most beloved songs, “A Quivering Chord is Broken,” was included in the 1950 Covenant Hymnal. It included the following text:
A quivering chord is broken, when someone is called beyond,
A chord that is filled with longing, for heaven and the saints’ sweet bond.
Much of the J. A. Hultman story is the unwritten history of how it was imprinted on the hearts and impacted the lives of his listeners. His music and concerts blessed, comforted, entertained, and inspired the hearts of his audiences over six decades in two countries. His was the “contemporary” Christian music for several generations and provided a chance for Swedish immigrants in America to hear the gospel in their own language, be encouraged, and to experience community in their new land.