Beautiful Star of Bethlehem

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O beautiful Star of Bethlehem, shining afar through shadows dim

Author: R. Boyce Fisher
Tune: [O Beautiful Star of Bethlehem] (Boyce)
Published in 15 hymnals

Representative text cannot be shown for this hymn due to copyright.

Author: R. Boyce Fisher

R. Fisher Boyce was born in the tiny community of Link, located in southern Rutherford County, in November 1887. The third of six children, Boyce loved music and was singing solo and in quartets by the early 1900s. In the spring of 1910, he married Cora Carlton from the Rockvale community. He later traveled to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, where he attended one of the annual music normal schools conducted by the James D. Vaughan Publishing Company, a publisher of shape note hymnals. After completing his studies, Boyce went on to teach shape note "singing schools" through-out the area. From http://www.notsba.org/Newsletters/December2004Newsletter.htm Go to person page >

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First Line:	O beautiful Star of Bethlehem, shining afar through shadows dim
Title:	Beautiful Star of Bethlehem
Author:	R. Boyce Fisher
Language:	English
Refrain First Line:	O, beautiful Star of Bethlehem
Copyright:	© 1940, Pace and Boyce, owners

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Notes

The State of Tennessee pretty much has but one Christmas carol that sprang out of Appalachia. Beautiful Star of Bethlehem was written by R. Fisher Boyce around 1938 near the Central Tennessee community of Link. Boyce had 11 children and said the only time he could really concentrate and write music with all the commotion going on in his house was when he went out and milked the cow in the barn. Among many other songs, this is how Beautiful Star came into being. Boyce sold the song for a one-time fee to the Vaughan Publishing Company where Adger M. Pace arranged it for the Vaughan Radio Quartet, which is why Pace is often given credit (wrongly) for writing the song.

Don Brandon (researcher)

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