Like any story, it has many dimensions. At one level, it is about the impact the faith of one nameless, homeless street person has had on people over 25 years after his death. Tapes of this individual have been played in homeless shelters all across America. Thanks to the grinding of the rumor mill, this homeless person has erroneously been located in such diverse places as Miami's 7th Street and 1st Avenue, New York City's 54th and Lexington, and on the streets of other lonely, urban centers.
This true story involves Gavin Bryars, England's leading musician/composer. In 1971, Bryars agreed to help his friend Alan Powers with the audio aspects of a film Powers was making about street people. The filming took place in and around London's Waterloo Station.
Powers filmed various people living on the streets--catching with the camera's eye their daily rituals, trials and joys. Some were obviously drunk, some mentally disturbed, some articulate, some apparently incomprehensible. As Bryars made his way through the audio and video footage. He became aware of a constant undercurrent, a repeating sound that always accompanied the presence of one older man. At first the sound seemed like muttered gibberish. But after removing the background street noise and cleaning up the audio tape, Bryars discovered the old man was in fact singing.
The footage of this old man and his muttered song didn't "make the cut" in the film. However Bryars took the rejected audio tape and could not escape the haunting sounds of this homeless, nameless man. So he did some research on his own into who this homeless person might be. From the film crew, Bryars learned that this street beggar was not an alcoholic, but neither did he engage others in conversation. His speech was almost impossible to understand, but his demeanor was sunny. Though old and alone and filthy and homeless, he retained a certain playfulness. Crew members recalled that he took delight in teasingly swapping hats with various members of the film crew.
But what distinguished this old man from the other street people in this area was his song. The song he sung under his breath was a simple, repetitive Sunday-school tune, but for him it was a mantra. He would just sit and quietly sing it, uninterrupted for hours on end.
“Jesus' blood never failed me yet Never failed me yet. Jesus' blood never failed me yet. There's one thing I know For he loves me so....”
Like a film loop, the song's final line fed into its first line, starting the tune over and over again without ceasing. The man's weak, old, untrained voice never wavered from pitch, never went flat, never changed key. The simple intervals of the tune were perfectly maintained for however long he sang.
As a musician, Bryars was fascinated. He began thinking of ways he could arrange and orchestrate around the constant, repeated lines the old man sang. One day, while playing the tape as background to other work, Bryars left the door to his studio open while he ran downstairs to get a cup of coffee. When he returned several minutes later, he found a normally buzzing office environment eerily stilled. The old man's quiet, quivery voice had leaked out of the recording room and transformed the office floor.
Under the spell of this stranger's voice, an office of busy professionals had grown hushed. Those who were still moving around walked slowly, almost reverently about the room. Many more had taken their seats and were sitting motionless at their desks, transfixed by the voice. More than a few were silently weeping, tears cascading undisturbed down their faces.
Bryars was stunned. He himself was not a believer himself, but Bryars could not help but be confronted by the mysterious spiritual power of this unadorned voice. These words were able to touch a lonely, aching place that lurks in the human heart, offering an unexpected message of faith and hope in the midst of the darkest, most blighted night.
Bryars himself started yearning for the confidence and faith this old man's song celebrates, and began to face what it means to feel homeless and alone even when we are sitting in the midst of our families.
Bryars vowed to respect this person by creating a recording that would celebrate and accentuate his simple message that, no matter what one's condition, Jesus "loves me so...."
It took England's leading contemporary composer until 1993 to create and produce what he felt was a proper accomplishment to this homeless person's song of trust and obedience. This he did in partnership with one of America's leading composers, Philip Glass. The result is a CD entitled "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet."