Song of the Day 10/30: Rick Wakeman, “Morning Has Broken”

It’s rare for a hymn to become a hit on the pop charts, but that’s what happened with Cat Stevens’ “Morning Has Broken,” which owes much of its popularity to Rick Wakeman’s piano arrangement. Wakeman has performed it in concert for years, but without any vocals.

Because there are no lyrics, Wakeman technically isn’t playing “Morning Has Broken,” which is only the last of several poems set to the old Scottish folk tune known as “Bunessan.” The melody was previously best known as a 19th century Scottish Christmas hymn, “Child in a Manger.”

The lyrics for “Morning Has Broken” date only to 1931, when English children’s author Eleanor Farjeon was asked to write a hymn to celebrate each new day. The result was included in the Presbyterian hymnbook of 1955, but it got much wider distribution after Stevens chose it for his “Teaser and the Firecat” LP in 1971.

Stevens recalled that he was “going through a bit of a dry period” when he found the song in an old hymnal. As Wakeman tells the tale, producer Paul Samwell-Smith (the original bassist for the Yardbirds) was skeptical, because with just four verses with no chorus and no bridge it lacked both the length and the dynamics needed for popular song. Stevens, looking to bulk up the tune, heard Wakeman practicing one of his own compositions during the sessions and asked if he might use that as an introduction.

Wakeman was still just a session player but was planning a solo album. He told Stevens no, explaining he planned to record it himself, but Stevens convinced him to change it enough so it might use it too. That’s why if you hear “Morning Has Broken” during a church service, it might sound truncated — that intro is not part of the copyrighted song.

Back then, Stevens’ LPs didn’t name his supporting musicians. Not only was Wakeman’s playing unacknowledged on the album, he wasn’t given credit for the arrangement, either. Wakeman wasn’t even paid the £10 he was due for the session, though years later, after he got a lot of mileage telling the story on stage, a sheepish Stevens, now Yusuf Islam, made it good.

The kicker to Wakeman’s story: After releasing three other songs as singles, Island Records launched “Morning Has Broken” in January 1972. It became Stevens’ first Top 10 UK single in five years and reached No. 6 in the US. That’s when Wakeman got his revenge, because without him, Stevens couldn’t reproduce the record in concert. “I was the only one,” Wakeman said, “who knew how it went.”

This is what Wakeman was practicing that caught Stevens’ ear. “Catherine Howard” appeared on his 1973 solo album “The Six Wives of Henry VIII.”