Stuart Hamblen: Street beggars & Moslems.
S tuart Hamblen and a friend had been hunting bear in California’s high Sierras. The area was rugged. Th ey had ridden their horses down from the hard granite ridges and were working their way through fallen timber when they came into a clear ing. In the clearing was a miner’ s cabin. It was an old one. The door had blown loose from its hinges. A lean, hungry hound dog, too weak to bark, was sprawled in the doorway. Inside, on a bunk bed, lay a dead miner. Hamblen’s hunting partner suggested the old house would make a good theme for a song. The idea was evidently a fairly good one. Stuart Hamblen’s This Ole House is still selling at a brisk pace. Rosemary Clooney’s record of it has sold over two-million, M A R C H , 1 9 5 5
an almost unheard of achievement. The song has held a high spot on the Hit Parade for more than 22 weeks and even in England it is number four in the popular field. Stuart Hamblen has been writing songs for 25 years but it wasn’t until he became a Christian (dur ing the 1949 Billy Graham campaign in Los Angeles) that his songs gained world-wide popularity. His It Is N o Secret has been translated into 32 languages and today is even being sung b y Mohammedans and street beggars in India. Hamblen doesn’t think much of the way his new song is sometimes sung in popular circles. He has found that when he sings it with the feeling he meant it to have his audiences often weep. END. 13
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